Faith, Reason and Common Sense:

…help thou my unbelief

E.M. Forester

If the search for truth is a constant and vital role for human beings – and surely is – we need to think about how we go about it, and the language we use to express our success in finding it. Archimedes is reputed to have discovered the law of floating bodies while lying in his bath, and to have run naked through the streets of Syracuse, shouting Eureka! – (I have found it). Few of us grasp truth with such exuberance, or announce it so dramatically.

When we communicate with one another (to express attitudes, perceptions, conclusions) we often find ourselves saying “I think” or “I believe” or “I know.” In common usage these three phrases reflect an ascending order of conviction or certainty. The first phrase ordinarily implies a conclusion drawn from evidence, which may or may not be reliable depending on the quality of the evidence. The second (if the subject is secular) sometimes carries an aura of doubt or uncertainty, perhaps reflecting a balance of probabilities. The third is the phrase of choice when we wish to convey our complete confidence in the conclusions we have reached.

Then we come to that word so fundamental to believers – faith. Ordinarily, faith is a noun, which equates with another noun, belief. However, we sometimes verb-alize it by linking it with “have.” For example: “ I have faith in you.” This is a mode of expression which links the subject to the object in an active rather than a passive voice. The same effect is achieved when we say “ I am happy.” To have faith in is to express commitment, to some one or to some thing, that cannot be explained by evidence alone. When we use the word faith, we are expressing a kind of covenant which involves our heart as well as our head.

The term “I believe” (in a religious context) means the same as “I have faith.” In other circumstances, however, “I believe” simply expresses a conclusion reached from a review and analysis of evidence. In the secular world, if the evidence is unreliable, so is the truth derived from it. Religious belief – a product of revelation – is indifferent to evidence. Because it stems from inspiration rather than demonstration, it involves emotional commitment. In time past, religion was something to die for. Time past? After the events of 9-11 in New York, and the proliferation of suicide bombing in Jerusalem, London, Iraq and Egypt (and how many more targets before this manuscript goes to print?), we can no longer regard dying for one’s faith as the stuff of history.

In this discussion of heresy I have made much of the Latin tag homo sapiens – in a rather unsubtle attempt to define human beings as creatures who rely on reason rather than instinct to meet life’s challenges. Up to a point we are indeed sapient, i.e. constantly exploring and examining the natural world to achieve a better understanding of our environment. This curiosity-driven rationality defines humans as surely as flight defines birds. It is the rational characteristic of humans that sets them apart from other living creatures. Birds fly. Humans reason. Both activities are instinctive. The conventional generality is: “God made us this way.”

But humans are not defined by reason alone; they are also defined by emotions. Perhaps it is the capacity of humans to articulate emotion that is the inspiration for, and driving force of religion. Certainly the uninspired (unemotional) rational mind does not produce great revelations. Despite Pope John Paul II’s zealous attempt to integrate faith and reason (in his encyclical Fides et Ratio) these two do not travel well together. Still, both are very much a part of who we are, and to pretend otherwise is self-delusion.

The glue that best holds faith and reason together is metaphor. Perhaps it is the power of metaphor that causes humans, either the crowning achievement of evolution or a Designer God, to generate such great good sense on some occasions, and to propound such transparent nonsense on others. Those who are moved by faith will emphatically reject the premise that Biblical revelations are nonsense. Reason, they say, is not the only road to truth. Nor, when faith and reason conflict, is reason to be preferred. Unqualified confidence in reason as the only way to truth, they argue, is at best arrogance, and when you are a lapsed believer, apostasy.

The enormous advances made by science in the past three centuries, in uncovering truth based on evidence, has led thinkers like Bertrand Russell to dismiss those who still embrace faith as throwbacks to a pre-scientific age. But, however often the faithful are dismissed by the thinkers, they never go away. Why this is so, is something even heretics should try to understand.

Robert Landon, Harvard professor and the protagonist in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, sums it up nicely – defending his reluctance to reveal the evidence that the New Testament is “false testimony.”

"But you told me the New Testament was based on fabrication.”

Langdon smiled. “Sophie, every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith–acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory and exaggeration, from early Egyptians through modern Sunday School. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors.”