Do we expect too much from human reason?

[Ben Davis]

Thoughtage is talking trash; written sleight of hand. There's no direct equivalence between religious faith and human reason. Further, he's stretching the definitions of both the usefuleness of holy books and of faith. Let's look at the headline claim:

It's proven beyond doubt that holy books have brought comfort and meaning to billions of people over thousands of years. So holy books have convincingly demonstrated their usefulness in some regards.

False. The usefulness does not derive from the holy book but from the belief in it: holy books claim that 'supernatural occurrence A will provide benefit 1' and people's belief in that claim brings comfort, irrespective of the accuracy of the claim in the book. The best that can be supported here is that belief has demonstrated its usefulness in some regards. People can and do believe in pretty much anything. In fact, I'd challenge anyone to provide a unique, practical and direct use for a holy book.

As the basic premise in support of his defense of religion fails, there's little reason to pay attention to the rest of the piece. However this bit deserves some attention:

It is proven beyond all doubt that human reason is very useful for very many tasks. But it doesn't automatically follow that human reason is therefore qualified to address and answer the very biggest and most fundamental questions about all of reality.

If we are to make that huge leap, somebody needs to provide very strong evidence for such an enormous assertion of ability.

Well said. This question should be at the forefront of any rational enquiry.

What we usually see is that those who challenge religious authorities are rarely willing to defend the qualifications of their own chosen authority, human reason. It usually doesn't occur to them that such a defense is required. That's typically because they sincerely take those qualifications to be an obvious given, even though the existence of human reason's ability to address and answer the very biggest and most fundamental questions is not yet proven. That is...

They are people of faith. Most often an unexamined faith. That faith is very common and understandable in human terms, but it's still faith.

*GASP* Sounds dire, doesn't it! Fortunately, this is more nonsense and we can show this to be so because of the demonstrable results that the application of human reasoning provides on a daily basis: almost every aspect of human life relies on reliable results from human reasoning. If something regularly shows itself to be reliable, it ceases to be 'faith' that underlies one's belief and instead becomes 'trust', earned trust. The most robust version of human reasoning is the scientific method which, whilst far from flawless, is demonstrably trustworthy in answering questions regarding 'the very biggest and most fundamental questions about reality'. It has the added bonus of being a learning, self-correcting system meaning that results become more trustworthy over time. No 'faith' required and Thoughtage's main challenge is rebutted as easily as his initial premise.

Also, it's telling that the best defense of religion that he can think of is 'religion can sort of be useful, sometimes... well not really but your method's just as bad as mine!'.