Barth and Ellul - two unashamed Kierkegaardians - are also my favourites. Natural theology is weak in comparison to revelation. Whether you believe or not, there's something very different about those who talk about revelation first and those who talk about logical* proofs for God. Who's ever been converted by Plantinga's modal ontological argument?

Well, that's Kierkegaard's position - when you're presented with the choice between selfish hedonism, reason, and the spiritual life, we're given a contextless question with no way of building context or understanding why we have to make a choice without relying on one of the above categories to build context.

Instead of viewing the spiritual life as ideological, we might see it as submissive in the face of overwhelming knowledge - we are finite and in the face of the infinite, so we can't possibly begin to create justification within our finite spheres of understanding. See the contrast between Kierkegaard's treatment of the story of Abraham and Isaac and Kant's - if we side with Kant (the ethical/reasonable thinker), we basically deform the infinite into a greater (but imperfect) version of ourselves.

So, although ideology definitely plays a part, I see the spiritual thinker as someone who admits they don't understand and can't understand something because they are limited by their finite nature. You might also think about Lovecraft here - on being confronted with otherworldly horrors or four-sided triangles, how can we begin to create explanations for something that lies outside of our abilities to reason about?

Although it sounds like crackpot nonsense at first, the bigger question really comes down to whether the limits of our language and understanding as the limits of our world are the limits of the world. If we're not careful, we're at risk of claiming beyond what we can.

But what I'm saying is that there is a fanatical adherence to reason as a methodology. It's unquestionable that reason can be wrong, even though we know that it is going to be proven wrong eventually.

The faith in human reason is the same as the faith in a greater power. It's impossible to justify one without using the system that it is built upon. The Munchausen paradox, in short, and why living rationally is actually based on an irrational idea or begging the question.

Well, the Christian fanatic would probably say the same. Or the homeopathist. Or the psychopath.

Sorry, I don't necessarily agree with the above. I've just been reading a lot of Kierkegaard lately.

Yes, but it still maintains that it can find the truth and that understanding objective reality is possible.

Even then, you've arrived at your conclusion through begging the question again - we should use scientific reason because it is reasonable. The truth of science presupposes that the science will be correct because we have used scientific reason to understand the world.

And even then, if we take your position, why is science so much more valid than any other form of truth if we know that it's probably wrong?

I mean, don't you think "science is the way for humans to gain an objective understanding of the world" is equally an ideological position? The idea that science is truth begs the question - look at all the truth that science has given us... as long as we accept that science is the only way to understand truth and that non-science is not the truth.