And incidentally, the entire language of your example shows the depth to which you Don’t Get The Point. Unfortunately, saying anything else wouldn’t help. I’d suggest taking this as a koan, but that would be just as “irrational” (in your language).

Please go ahead and ask me if i’ve stopped beeting my wife (i don’t have to answer yes or no you know)

I’ve tried the same with Erich Von Däniken a long ago, but he is by far a lot funnier.

I’m sorry if you can’t see the distinction. Then again, if this trait extends to analogous situations I can have oceans of fun asking if you’ve stopped beating your wife yet.

It seems to me this is just a semantic game and that you don’t like the marking irrational, and therefore try to replace it with something else.

Oh and incidentally, you’ve never heard of Catholicism? Because it’s also their official position. See the papal encyclical Fides et Ratio.

For that matter, many mainstream Christian denominations are not literalist in their readings of the Bible. You just only ever hear about the fundamentalists because they’re the ones who make the most noise. So you’re willing to paint all Christians with that same brush. I admit, it bugs me that less objectionable groups don’t take a more public stance; standing up, pointing at fundamentalists, and saying “we’re not them”. But public relations are a different issue than what a given denomination actually claims.

Every religion I know of makes claims about the natural universe, and as such is subject to the same standards of reason and evidence as everyone else. In practice it’s even worse, it’s not just that they’re making unsubstantiated claims about the natural world and think they should get away with it, it’s all too often the case that they try to actively sabotage/interfere with the teaching of science (see contemporary USA and evolution).

Now, in theory you could have a faith that does not make any claims about reality, but that’s just not what happens in practice to any significant extent, and pretending that it is to avoid dealing with the ugly truth that there really is a substantial conflict here, is a big cop out.

Faith and reason are two distinct epistemologies. Many people think they’re opposed to each other, but I see them as more “perpendicular”.

An extremely loose analogy would be the way that the spin-up and spin-down states of an electron aren’t opposite each other, but orthogonal. The real state can be a bit of both.

I still don’t get the difference though. Perhaps it’s because english is not my mother tounge. Could you perhaps demonstrate with an example?

Oh wait.. if I say “moral” I’ll give people the impression that I’m a foaming-at-the-mouth fundamentalist, won’t I?