Questions and Answers

It has been suggested that I avoid and/or ignore questions put to me on a religious discussion board, even though I try my best to answer every question. A cynical person might think these accusations are just needling,  but I think the problem is when the discussion board gets very busy, and then it can be difficult to follow threads with multiple branches, so it is easy to miss a response.

I thought it might help to clarify things if I create a numbered list of questions and the answers I gave at the time, to use as a reference, so here it is...

Question 1: Given these two statements…

a) "reason can be - and often is - the greatest enemy that faith has" 

b) "You say reason IS the enemy of faith and I wrote that it CAN BE. Very different." 

Question 1a) Explain exactly what the author meant. What was the thinking behind it. 

Answer
Obviously I can't read minds, so my answer to your question is based on what was said, and an assumption that the author says what he means and means what he says. So it seems to me that this is saying reason can be the greatest enemy that faith has - but is not necessarily the greatest enemy that faith has.

Question 1b: Regarding Statement (b) What was the significance, in the author's eyes' of the caps. What EXACTLY did he have in mind?

Answer
It seems to me that this [the caps] is stressing that reason is not necessarily the enemy of faith. It CAN be.  Emphasis [by the author] on "can" because it's not always the enemy of faith, but it can be the enemy of faith.  A comparison might be if someone says "Alcohol IS the cause of domestic abuse" and someone else points out that "Alcohol CAN BE the cause of domestic abuse." 

Question 2: Be specific. In what way/ways can reason be the enemy of faith?

Answer
Reason has the ability to expose the fallacies and human instincts upon which faith is mainly based. As you yourself said, If faith is true, then "it's the most reasonable thing in the universe." Reason is how we determine what is true and false and hence it can show when faith is not true. 

Question 3: Regarding the Mark Twain Quotation: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

Question 3a: Is this a factual statement or just the opinion expressed by a certain individual?     

Answer

I think there are more options than the two you've provided. I would say what we have here is a satirical statement expressed by a certain individual.      

Question 3b Is it a truth claim?  

Answer

The statement itself is not a truth claim, because it is satirical.  But I would say that the satirical statement gives clues regarding the truth claim held by  Mark Twain.