“But don’t you sometimes just feel you are surrendering to an alternative, albeit much more positive and constructive, form of emotionalism over reason?”
There is no denying that emotion is part of faith in Christ. I do, however, believe that Christian faith is very reasonable. To read through the narratives of the people of Israel, the extremely rational argumentation by the apostles, the juxtaposed perfect justice AND mercy of the gospels - very reasonable.
But I must say my atheist life - a long time ago now, so I have to try hard to remember - also was very emotional. Certainly I tried and sometimes I succeeded to reason things out. But a lot of my reasoning was driven by an emotion. Anger.
So no, I don’t think I have surrendered to emotion over reason. I think emotion and reason are present in both Christianity and atheism.
Emotion and reason are present in both.
The question is what part do they play. If you use emotion to form your view of how the universe is put together, its seems that’s very shaky ground.
If you walk out to your car, and you have a long trip planned, and the tank is empty, all the praying and wishing in the world won’t fill the tank. You need to put gas in that car to take the trip. Only reason will tell you what’s needed to make the car go, not emotionalism.
In the same way, when you think about the universe, you can think it would be great that someone was in charge, you can wish it, you can want it, but the level of your wishing and wanting does not determine the structure of atoms, the nature of gravity, etc. That stuff is found out by using reason to figure things out.
The only way to square this problem and still believe in God is, apply one set of rules to the universe, and another set of rules to your emotional and spiritual thinking about the universe. Its a way of perpetuating two different sets of rules in order to change the part of the universe where you don’t like what you observe, the emotional and spiritual realm, to something more in line with your emotions, the philosophical equivalent of wishing for gas to make your care move.