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Thank you so much for sharing your insights and testimony! Indeed, faith and reason are complementary. But reason cannot substitute for faith.

We just came to the end of a related discussion on this thread. The debate was largely between agnostics and atheists on the one hand, and Christians and philosophers on the other. It began when I made the observation off-the-cuff that:

The most certain - and therefore, highest priority - type of knowledge for me is divine revelation.

I aver that every Christian has experienced at least one divine revelation, namely that Jesus Christ is Lord:

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed [it] unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. – Matt 16:17

Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and [that] no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. – I Cor 12:3

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. – I John 4:1-3

I also aver that God the Father has revealed Himself in four ways: through Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, through Scripture, and through Creation both physical and spiritual.

The conversation obviously went into several different sidebars over some 200 posts. Without getting into all the rest of it, here is what I had to say about empiricism vis-à-vis the Christian walk:

To the empiricist, all knowledge comes from sensory perception and reasoning.

If he holds a concept of God, and even if he has received that definitive divine revelation that Jesus Christ is Lord, he will nevertheless insist that God must comply with his own ability to comprehend Him.

On principle, whether he realizes it or not, He rejects the Spiritual insight that God’s ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. He always anthropomorphizes God.

For instance, he would insist that God must comply with Aristotlean laws of logic, such as the Law of the Excluded Middle. Which is to say, in his mind God cannot speak two things which are to him mutually exclusive, e.g. do not kill, kill these. He will either reject such revelations in Scripture or seek to reconcile them by his own reasoning.

IMHO, some theologies look like pretzels because of this tendency to value sensory perception and reasoning above God's revelations.

Likewise, he would insist that God must comply with the physical laws and most especially causality, i.e. cause>effect. In his timeline oriented mind, God could not say that He hates Esau and loves Jacob before either of them were born.

That doesn’t mean the empiricist is a lost cause, however. Like doubting Thomas, the empiricist will always have a tendency to put himself above God by demanding physical or logical proofs. He is an idol worshipper and the idol is himself.

But if God reveals Himself to him, as Jesus did to doubting Thomas - he'll know. Doubting Thomas was an apostle, too. And God favored Job as well by revealing Himself to him even though he had deigned to judge Him (chapters 38 to 42.)

In his Christian walk, he’d be more like Martha in the story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42) – cumbered about much serving, missing that good part which came so effortlessly to Mary. The physical doing would be more comforting to him than the spiritual being. In that respect, he would tend to be Spiritually unplugged - but not without hope if he takes in the full counsel of Romans 8 so that he will understand that he can let go and let God.