Faith and rationality
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Faith and rationality are two modes of belief that exist in varying degrees of conflict or compatibility. Rationality is belief based on reason or evidence. Faith is belief in inspiration, revelation, or authority (The word faith commonly refers to a belief that is held in spite of reason and evidence).
Broadly speaking, there are three categories of views regarding the relationship between faith and rationality:
- Rationalism holds that truth should be determined by reason and factual analysis, rather than faith, dogma, or religious teaching.
- Fideism holds that faith is necessary, and that beliefs must be held without evidence or reason, or even in conflict with evidence and reason.
- Natural theology holds one can rationally infer that God exists, through inductive or deductive reasoning.
The Catholic Church also has taught that faith and reason can and must work together (see Fides et Ratio)
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The relationship between faith and reason
From at least the days of the Greek Philosophers, the relationship between faith and reason has been hotly debated. Plato argued that knowledge is simply memory of the eternal. Aristotle set down rules by which knowledge could be discovered by reason.
Rationalists point out that many people hold irrational beliefs, for many reasons. There may be evolutionary causes for irrational beliefs — irrational beliefs may increase our ability to survive and reproduce. Or, according to Pascal's Wager, it may be to our advantage to have faith, because faith may promise infinite rewards, while the rewards of reason are seen by some as finite.
Believers in faith — for example those who believe salvation is possible through faith alone — frequently suggest that everyone holds beliefs arrived at by faith, not reason. The belief that the universe is a sensible place and that our minds allow us to arrive at correct conclusions about it, is a belief we hold through faith. Rationalists contend that this is arrived at because they have observed the world being consistent and sensible, not because they have faith that it is.
Beliefs held "by faith" may be seen existing in a number of relationships to rationality:
- Faith as underlying rationality: In this view, all human knowledge and reason is seen as dependent on faith: faith in our senses, faith in our reason, faith in our memories, and faith in the accounts of events we receive from others. Accordingly, faith is seen as essential to and inseparable from rationality. According to René Descartes, rationality is built first upon the realization of the absolute truth "I think therefore I am", which requires no faith. All other rationalizations are built outward from this realization, and are subject to falsification at any time with the arrival of new evidence.
- Faith as addressing issues beyond the scope of rationality: In this view, faith is seen as covering issues that science and rationality are inherently incapable of addressing, but that are nevertheless entirely real. Accordingly, faith is seen as complementing rationality, by providing answers to questions that would otherwise be unanswerable.
- Faith as contradicting rationality: In this view, faith is seen as those views that one holds despite evidence and reason to the contrary. Accordingly, faith is seen as pernicious with respect to rationality, as it interferes with our ability to think, and inversely rationality is seen as the enemy of faith by interfering with our beliefs.
- Faith and reason as essential together This the papal view that faith without reason leads to superstition, while reason without faith leads to nihilism and relativism.
Views of the Magisterium
Dei Filius was the dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council on the Roman Catholic faith. It was adopted unanimously on 24 April 1870 and was influenced by the philosophical conceptions of Johann Baptist Franzelin, who had written a great deal on the topic of faith and rationality.
Fides et Ratio is an encyclical promulgated by Pope John Paul II on 14 September 1998. It deals primarily with the relationship between faith and reason.
Reformed epistemology
Faith as underlying rationality
The view that faith underlies all rationality holds that rationality is dependent on faith for its coherence. Under this view, there is no way to comprehensively prove that we are actually seeing what we appear to be seeing, that what we remember actually happened, or that the laws of logic and mathematics are actually real. Instead, all beliefs depend for their coherence on faith in our senses, memory, and reason, because the foundations of rationalism cannot be proven by evidence or reason. Rationally, you can not prove anything you see is real, but you can prove that you yourself are real, and rationalist belief would be that you can believe that the world is consistent until something demonstrates inconsistency. This differs from faith based belief where you believe that your world view is consistent no matter what inconsistencies the world has with your beliefs.
Fideism
Martin Luther taught that faith and reason were antithetical, in the sense that questions of faith could not be illuminated by reason. He wrote, "All the articles of our Christian faith, which God has revealed to us in His Word, are in presence of reason sheerly impossible, absurd, and false."<ref>Martin Luther, Werke, VIII</ref> and "[That] Reason in no way contributes to faith. [...] For reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things."<ref>Martin Luther, Table Talk.</ref> However, though seemingly contradictorily, he also wrote in the latter work that human reason "strives not against faith, when enlightened, but rather furthers and advances it"<ref>Martin Luther, "On Justification CCXCIV", Table Talk</ref>, bringing claims he was a fideist into dispute.
The rationalist point of view
In this view, there are many beliefs that are held by faith alone, that rational thought would force the mind to reject. As an example, many people believe in the Biblical story of Noah's flood: that the entire Earth was covered by water for forty days. But most plants cannot survive being covered by water for that length of time, a boat of that magnitude could not have been built by wood, and there would be no way for two of every animal to survive on that ship and migrate back to their place of origin (such as penguins). So one must choose between accepting the story on faith and rejecting reason, or rejecting the story by reason and thus rejecting faith.
Within the rationalist point of view, there remains the possibility of multiple rational explanations. For example, considering the biblical story of Noah's flood, one making rational determinations about the probability of the events does so via interpretation of modern evidence. Two observers of the story may provide different plausible explanations for the life of plants, construction of the boat, species living at the time, and migration following the flood. Some see this as meaning that a person is not strictly bound to choose between faith and reason.
In Jewish philosophy
The 14th Century Jewish philosopher Levi ben Gerson tried to reconcile faith and reason. He wrote, "The Torah cannot prevent us from considering to be true that which our reason urges us to believe."<ref>Jewish Encyclopedia, volume VIII, page 29</ref> His contemporary Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas argued the contrary view, that reason is weak and faith strong, and that only through faith can we discover the fundamental truth that God is love, that through faith alone can we endure the suffering that is the common lot of God's chosen people.
See also
- Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio)
- Asa Gray
- Atheists in foxholes
- William Alston
- Alvin Plantinga
- Epistemology
- Reformed epistemology
- Leo Strauss
- Presuppositional apologetics
- Theory of justification
- Methods of obtaining knowledge
- Relationship between religion and science
- Theory of everything
- Value (personal and cultural)
