Sorry about the long post, trying to address everything. @_@
@ Groovenstein: Reason can be used to create deductive proof about how I believe there is an all-powerful, all-knowing entity that created the universe. Now, mind you that this is not ACTUAL proof, it’s DEDUCTIVE proof. That is where the reasoning ends and faith begins, assigning actions and names associated with the all-powerful entity, in this case God. This is another way of how I think reason and faith can work together. Reason gets me to the first step and faith helps me get to the next.. Mind you, one could also reason that there wasn’t an all-powerful, all-knowing entity, and that’s where I sometimes find problems with embracing reason and rejecting faith - the fact that reason can lead to different conclusions from different people or that reason is used to, say, what the best method is for arranging tables in a coffee house.
I’m also an eternal optimist. ^_~ That’s how I believe that they need not be mutually exclusive. As for the flying spaghetti monster and Santa Clause… Well, here’s the thing - I believe in an invisible man who lives up in the clouds and gave his only begotten son to die for our sins, so why not aliens, ghosts, Santa Clause, and the flying spaghetti monster? ^_~ (Okay, I will reason that there’s probably a better explanation for all of these things ahead of time, but I won’t disregard them outright until I see the facts before me)
@Maarten: Sometimes, yes, if my reason fails me, I have to appeal to what I consider a “greater” reason and hope that I can find guidance there, through faith.
@Inspector: Yeah, I didn’t mean everything she wrote about literally, I was referring just to the Objectivist sutff. ^_~ As for your answer of no, then, I must ask a question and please forgive me if this sounds critical or anything, I’m not trying to start a flame war or anything, just trying to address a point: Christianity and many religions are sometimes criticized for their beliefs that salvation can only occur through grace alone (by grace, I mean in the case of Christianity, that one cannot be saved unless one accepts Jesus as their savior and becomes a Christian. I do not personally believe that the only way to salvation is grace, but let’s get on with the question). Now, this is different for Objectivism because it’s not an outright organization or religion, but a philosophical system, but isn’t it slightly hypocritical (again, NOT trying to start a flame war or an argument) to chastise religions for that argument of salvation by grace and then say that one cannot be an Objectivist unless they believe every aspect of the Objectivist philosophy that Ayn Rand wrote?
@Bold Standard: Considering part of Objectivism is the idea of no group rights (and I’m taking a bold leap here), only individual rights, could we not take a step forward and say there is no group thought or consistant belief? Taking that in mind, religion for each individual within a group has its own separate consistency, how each of them tackle the inconsistencies of their religion and make sense out of it (like I have with my Christianity). Cannot religion’s consistancy then be founded in each individual’s ability to make consistency of it?
As the inconsistency in the bible, this is another place where my reason kicks in to aide my faith. My understanding of the bible is not that it is the divine, absolute word of God, but it was written by many men over centuries by different people. While I doubt that any of them had direct contact with God, they may have been inspired by what they saw in either the old testament or by involvement with Jesus in the New Testament to get their writings down. Ultimately, the problem is still multiple writers with different books and their own unique viewpoint and memory of the event. Reason tells me, then, that I must use my ethics and moral standards, what I know through my belief of right and wrong, to tell me what I should agree with and what I should discard. As such, my “grab bag” philosophy doesn’t destroy my self-image or my integrity. 
(Makes note for another philosophical discussion in another thread: Why is it the common belief that emotion = irrational?)
@hunterrose: If you want me to dig up actual, specific examples of it, I’ll try to do so for you. On a general level, I’d say people who have a religious belief that says to help people incapable of helping themselves either through some type of church outreach program, missionaries who go to 3rd world nations in order to help the local communities (these do not necessarily have to also spread the religion, it just has to HELP the people). Now, one argument against this can be then that they’re not doing good out of a voluntary will but instead simply out of religious devotion and that they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t have that religion to tell them to do so, but I would reply that since people are given the ability to make choices for themselves, they should be more than capable of deciding whether or not they wish to give up time they could be using for other productive methods of benefiting themselves to help others. It is ultimately still their choice.
As for taking a moral stance based on faith grounds… that’s a very good question. And I’ll tell you why that’s a very good question. During last year’s fall semester, I got into an argument with some classmates of mine on the subject of whether or not ethics and morality are subjective (i.e. that ideas like “right” and “wrong” exist only from the perspective of the individual and they don’t really exist outside of it). I believed that there had to be something indepedent of our own viewpoints that states right and wrong exist, but I couldn’t use Christianity’s ultimate examples of God and the Devil to back me up, since one could easily argue back that one’s religion is also a subjective viewpoint. As such, the next semester when the issue came up again in my Modern Philosophy class (When we were discussing the rationalists), I embarked on a three-week quest of self-reasoning to try to come up with arguments that supported my claim independent of faith or personal viewpoints. As such, I finally came up with a reasoned, deductive proof that there was such a thing as good and evil (now, bear in mind - I did not ASSIGN anything to the categories. I simply proved that the two existed). In fact, I’m planning on posting the paper here soon in order to get some assistance in finding any flaws in my arguments or more support for the thesis.
Now, back to your original question. I suppose, then, because of all of this, it is hard for me to find specific morality that’s established in my religion, then, that I would take a stance on. What I suppose a moral stance I would take is that God is in some way responsible for any terrible thing that occurs on earth, like a natural catastrophe or an act of evil committed by man. My Christianity tells me that God does not force people to do one thing or another, nor does he kill people.
And actually, it wasn’t deliberate when I used “objectivist” and “Objectivist.” ^^;; I was trying to capitalize them all as a proper noun, but I missed it sometimes. Thanks for bringing it up, though, I have seen that the forum’s been having some discussion of objectivism vs. Objectivism.
@DavidOdden: I think I addressed what you were saying in some of the above paragraphs.
@JMeganSnow: I also think I addressed your stuff in the above paragraphs.
