Faith and Reason

Many people consider faith and reason to be opposites.  Reason is an objective tool that allows us to arrive at the truth with certainty, while faith is something irrational and arbitrary.  Any belief based on faith, then, should be dismissed, and only beliefs based on pure reason should be taken seriously.  

This understanding of the relationship between faith and reason is, however, completely false.  Faith and reason are not opposites; in fact, they complement one another.  In order for us to have beliefs and to live in the world, we must use both faith and reason together.  

Consider the realm of scientific inquiry.  Most people consider science to be a realm of pure reason, in which faith can have no role.  However, the fact is, at the fundamental level science is based on philosophical beliefs which cannot be proven but rather are accepted by faith.  Scientific investigation rests on the assumption that the laws of nature are orderly, understandable, and uniform throughout the universe.  There is no way that this assumption can be scientifically proven, since that would require us to observe every event throughout all time and space.  Yet scientists, based on a relatively tiny number of experiments and observations, confidently reach conclusions about what the laws of nature are throughout the universe.  In order to do this, they must simply accept on faith the underlying philosophical assumptions they have about the uniformity of nature and its laws.  

Furthermore, no one scientist has the time or the expertise to personally scientifically investigate the basis of all of their scientific beliefs.  Rather, they must rely on the scientific findings of other scientists, and accept them on faith.  This is certainly the case when they consider scientific findings which are outside their field of study.  But it is also often the case even within their own field of study, as they accept by faith the scientific knowledge which has been handed down to them by previous generations of scientists or the findings of scientists in other sub-disciplines of their field and use that knowledge as a basis for further scientific investigation.

If this is the case for scientists, it is certainly also the case for the average person who lacks specialized scientific training.  Since we have neither the time nor the expertise to engage in scientific investigation for ourselves, we accept by faith what scientific experts tell us, trusting that they know what they are talking about.  And this is true of experts in every type of field (history, medicine, etc.).  We accept what they tell us by faith.  And it is a reasonable faith, because we have good reason to believe that these authorities know what they are talking about.

In addition to putting faith in the authority of experts, it is reasonable to put faith in the authority of tradition that has been passed down to us.  For reason should tell us that it is more likely that the accumulated wisdom of many others through history is correct than that our personal intuitions and thoughts are correct.  

Putting faith in the testimony of others is, in fact, the basis for most of our knowledge.  Most of our beliefs are not based on what we ourselves have directly investigated using our reason.  Rather, most of our beliefs are based on what others have told us, whether they be experts, teachers, authors, journalists, or just people we know and trust.  Thus, rejecting all beliefs that are based on faith would be absurd; no one actually believes and lives that way.  As long as we have good reason to trust the testimony of others, it is reasonable to believe what they say, even though it requires faith to do so.  

Thus, we see that faith and reason, far from being opposed, are two complementary faculties that work synergistically together as we seek truth and form our beliefs.  Some people may claim to be skeptics and to only base their beliefs in reason, but no one actually does that.  As G.K. Chesterton points out, “It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith.  Reason is itself a matter of faith.  It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.  If you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, ‘Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction?  Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic?  They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?’”^[1]G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1959).  

Pure reason gets us nowhere.  In order to have beliefs and to live in the world, we must accept things by faith once we judge that we have sufficient reason to think they are true.  It is thus wrongheaded to criticize adherents of religious traditions for accepting their religion by faith, since practically all our beliefs require an element of faith.  We can certainly question to what extent their beliefs are reasonable, and ask whether a different religion or worldview might be more reasonable.  But it is not reasonable for anyone to dismiss the deeply held religious convictions of another person simply because they accept them by faith.