“All truth is God’s truth” – Arthur F. Holmes
Original Post: December 29, 2011
During undergrad, when I started to finally take my faith more seriously, I faced intellectual assault on all fronts.
We’ve all heard the objections. No point in listing them all out here.
More or less, they all boil down to thinking that religious belief is nice but not really anything you can know for sure and definitely nothing you can prove. Faith is irrational; reason and science are rational. They’re mutually exclusive. Some, like Richard Dawkins, go as far as to say that faith is belief in spite of the evidence, implying that it is by nature irrational.
I’ve never believed this, and still don’t.
The False Dichotomy
Reason and faith are not mutually exclusive. They can’t be.
All rational belief is based on faith (trust) of some kind; therefore reason presumes faith (at least faith as a general, cognitive construct). In fact, this is the very basis of the scientific method. Science presumes on faith that the world surrounding us is intelligible and that truths can be drawn from its analysis.
Here’s an everyday example. You trust, in faith, that the next time you get in your car it will not fall out from under your weight. Some now argue that you have rational grounds for believing that your car will support your weight – and they’re right. Based on rational grounds, you trust that your car will support you, but you can’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, so you trust.
I would contend that we do this all the time. You are always basing the decisions you make and positions you hold on both faith and reason.
In fact, we make these kinds of assumptions all the time in science.
A good scientist is wary of the word “prove.” Airtight certainty is nigh unheard of; instead, we trust our instruments, assess the evidence, and look for the best explanation given that evidence, ready for our assumptions and our methods to be challenged so that we can trim the fat of our thinking slowly but surely, seeking the truth that often escapes our limited reach.
Even the outspoken atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins states in his book The God Delusion that he would on a 7-point scale consider himself only a 6, where 7 would be a position of more absolute certainty that God does not exist (The God Delusion, p. 51).
What About Religious Faith?
But don’t religious people in general and maybe Christians in particular believe in things that are not rationally grounded at all?
It’s a fair question. Many religious people have a sort of blind faith, or what you might call faith without reason.
I would contend that biblical Christianity is not to be of blind faith. I believe this not only because I think my faith is rationally grounded (and it would make sense that God gave us brains and expects us to use them), but because the Bible teaches it.
What is the great commandment? To “…love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37, emphasis added). The apostle Paul wrote that “… if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile… we of all men are to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:16). Christianity is founded on truths like the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and its truthfulness is assumed throughout the Bible; it is therefore not to be believed on untruthful or irrational bases.
This is a long conversation, and I’m sure I’ll post more on it over the years.
Send me your questions or topics you want me to write on! Comment below or find me on social media.
Corey
“I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus Christ, John 14:6
This post is part of a series on reasonable faith and belief. Check out the other posts below:
Faith and Reason: Friends or Foes?
The (Reasonable) Resurrection of Jesus
