Hi Benson,
Re: your first question – No, I don’t think faith and ideology can exist independently, but then, neither can reason and ideology… as you say, ideology gives form our experience/reason/faith/whatever.
But it seems to me that therein lies the struggle: Since all human thought and activity is somehow tied together, then the path to error actually begins with thought and activity. The danger in ideology lies in forgetting this truth. I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but to exist, it seems, is to be in error. And I’m not as convinced as you apparently are that “reason” will change that.
I think even a cursory look at history and human experience shows that reason is an unreliable guide. It certainly provides much that is valuable, but it also leaves us with many dilemmas and new problems. Certainly the same can be said of faith, but my original point was that faith/reason/etc become positive or negative depending upon the ideology to which they are connected.
For example, Christianity in the 14th Century not only spawned corruption and the horrors of Inquistion, etc, but also the rise of Scholasticism and the Franciscan orders, both of which are generally seen as very good things. How can the same religion have such good and bad results? Because of its connection to differing ideologies – one humble, the other arrogant.
So I guess I would change the statement you made from “whenever you have faith, there is much you can get wrong” to: “If you are human, there is much you can get wrong.” To me, that suggests we ought to include both faith and reason in living our lives, trying to keep both in perspective and avoiding the arrogance that often comes with ideology.
