Reason & Religion
( the divine law )
Reason & religion. what is reason?, what is the divine law? Are they contradictory? Life based on reason is best or based on religion?, Is reason the right answer in the abcence of religion? these questions are the most debatable questions among us.
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish facts, and to justify their acts and beliefs and be able to realize whats wrong and whats right.
Aristotle states that the part that distinguishes humans from animals is the third part of the soul. This part is strictly rational. It allows humans to have intellectual virtues such as reason.With respect to aristotle life according to reason is best. His philosophy states that knowledge of the world begins by looking at and examining what exist, and that men should observe in able to understand the world. Aristotle also says that a person to reach their satisfaction in life and to be good they should depend on their reason to reach the ultimate happiness. Reason is what makes people think of what they do whether its good or bad, the right thing to do or not, Aristotle also believed that to be moral, one must find a mean between two vices. He said that there was a vice of deficiency, which is having too little of one vice and a vice of excess, which is having too much of one vice. The middle of these vices was the virtuous mean.Therefore, one must have moderation between the two extremes. To be able to obtain these virtues in the proper form, one must be able to control their desires. This is done by using reason.
So reason is a mean that makes people stop and think twice about a thing before acting. To realize whether what we are doing is the right thing to do or not it’s a measure to the good in our life.
Many says that reason and religion are contradictory to each other but accoording to aristole religious beliefs emerge from rational reflections. In other words religion comes from reason, that means that reason makes us know the existance of God and the divine law.
What is the divine law?
Divine law is any law (or rule) that in the opinion of believers, comes directly from the will of God.
Aquinas states: Reason covers what we can know by experiece and logic alone. From reason , we can know that there is a God and that there is only one God. Faith builds on reason, since faith and reason are ways to of knowing the truth, if we undertand faith and reason correctly there will no conflict between what faith tells us and what reason tells us …
Aristotle and Aquinas have many similar thoughts on the way that the human should live. Both of them believe that humans are rational beings. They also believe that because humans are rational they can follow their instincts and live a life of moral goodness. Aquinas however, believed that God was leading human beings to a rational, moral life, while Aristotle believed that being moral was naturally inherent in human beings.
Reason and religion differs with respect to peoples belives for example sometimes in certain situations a person reason tells them its ok to do it but their religon doesn’t allow them to do so here in this situation reason and the divine law are contradictory but in my belife religion puts boundries and limits to our action and this way our reason is limited to our religion believes. Such as in some daily situation u face some obstacles where you find your reason is the same as what your religion as of you to do or to act.
In conclusion as mentioned earlier “Reason covers what we can know by experiece and logic alone. From reason , we can know that there is a God and that there is only one God. Faith builds on reason, since faith and reason are ways to of knowing the truth, if we undertand faith and reason correctly there will no conflict between what faith tells us and what reason tells us” which means that both reason and religion is linked together in a way not necessary contradictory to each other all it needs is understanding of both.
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