Faith - 2

Continuing from where we left off, the first thing we need to recognize is that any debate that posits religion and science (or, more particularly, faith and reason) as irreconcilable rivals (or, at least, inhabiting totally different spheres) would make almost no sense to some of the greatest philosophers, theologians and – yes – scientists of the ages.

When Socrates went on trial for (among other things) blasphemy, he did not defend himself by declaring his monumental intellect to have superseded the might of the Gods.  Rather, he pronounced himself a pious man, even if his form of piety was as eccentric as every other aspect of his life and belief. 

While many have an image of the Middle Ages as a period of stifling religious orthodoxy which snuffed out the merest hint of an inquiring mind with accusations of heresy and the stake, in fact the world did not stop thinking for a thousand years between the fall of Rome and the birth of Galileo.  In fact, the embrace of Plato by first Millennium Christians and the rediscovery of Aristotle by second Millennium Christians and Jews led to some of the most rigorous logical proofs for (among other things) the existence of God.   And these proofs demonstrated the power of reason to the religious and not-so-religious, a process eventually leading to Enlightenment.

Even great scientists (although not necessarily the religiously ambiguous Charles Darwin) did not set out to prove that gospel was filled with fairy tales or that belief in God was an evolutionary quirk.  Rather, these were believing men whose brand of faith (sometimes referred to as “Natural Philosophy”) felt that since God had created a universe ruled by unbreakable laws, that it was their duty to discover those laws and, in the process, glimpse slightly more of the divine.

Now it is true that faith in such “Natural" science rubbed more-conservative believers the wrong way, implying as it did that God might not have flooded the entire world or stopped the sun in the sky (or, at least, that we should live by a science that ignores the possibility that such divine intervention could happen again at any time).  But those disputes, like most historic arguments over faith vs. reason, managed to produce at least a little light. 

Would that we could say the same thing about discussions of this topic today. 

Is it only me, or do most of our debates over religion in the public square or the role of church and state in contemporary American society seem to be about something else?  Now I’m in favor of a rigorous, even tumultuous debate on this subject in particular.  But are we really on the verge of becoming a woman-enslaving theocracy or wiping out all trace of religion in a frenzy of secular revolution?  Certainly such religious (and secular) excesses can happen and have happened, particularly over the last 100 years.  But are paranoid fantasies that such terrors are being repeated today in America really our most burning issues of faith vs. reason? Or have we reduced discussion of this important topic to something resembling a different medieval tradition: that of bear baiting (or, perhaps, elephant and donkey baiting)?

Most supporters of faith tend to fall back on claims of religion as a transmission belt for moral virtues, or claim that long-held traditions (while mysterious) might contain forgotten wisdom that even the most enlightened among us might not know enough to decode.

That last notion was raised in one of many important essays written on this topic by my favorite political philosopher Lee Harris.  In addition to helping us look at hot-button religious topics such as tradition and evolution (written largely to reconcile believers and non-believers), Harris also points out in this essay that in our debates over faith we might be making a fundamental mistake by confusing scientific reason for reason itself.

For example, can reason tell us if one religion is “better” than another?  Scientific reason certainly can’t, since in terms of science, any faith-based belief system is equally unprovable and thus equally invalid (or equally valid, if a scientifically minded judge is feeling generous).  But what if you had two faiths that were exactly the same in all respects except that believers in Religion A were content to live alongside unbelieving men and women of  reason (and even be ruled by them) while Religion B believed that all men and women of reason should be killed immediately?

Ancient thinkers would have no problem answering this question (and thus avoid what Harris calls “The Suicide of Reason”) for, to them, reason could be applied to any subject, including (or should I say especially) questions regarding the relationship between man and God(s).

That’s all I’ll say (for now) on the subject, but as the Presidential candidates take to the pulpit (figuratively and literally) over the coming months, it might be best if we find a way to discuss the relationship between them, us and the divine that goes beyond sneers, suspicion and selective outrage.