The Relationship between Reason and and Faith (or Philosophy and Religion)

The relationship between reason and religion or, between philosophy and religion, or in other words, the relation between religious belief and rationality is one of the most important issues in the field of religious studies and the philosophy of religion.An underlying question in this regard could be raised as such: is the religious belief rational or irrational and rather anti rational? With regard to answering this question, there are two major perspectives in the West:Rationalism, which means that religious beliefs are consistent with reason;Fideism, which means that beliefs are inconsistent with or even hostile to reason Here, we refer to, assess and review Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant’s views as the representatives of rationalists and, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Norman Malcolm and Platinga’s views as prominent pioneers of fideism. Kierkegaard’s three arguments on fideism (that is, approximation argument, postponement argument, passion argument.) are discussed in detail. In conclusion, Islam’s point of view with regard to the relation between religion and reason is discussed and argued that, in Islam, there is a total consistency between reason and religion. In Islam, there is no room for fideism of the form relevant to western philosophy. The reason lies in the mysteriousness and irrationality of Christianity’s basic principles and the rationality of Islam’s fundamental principles.