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The Inadequacy of Reason, and why are we Trying to Prove that God Exists?
All throughout the history
of academia Christian thinkers have
attempted to rationalize their religion with rational arguments.
Christian philosophers and theologians try to prove the existence of
God with the cosmological argument, teleological argument, and so
forth; and also try and defend their beliefs by answering the problem
of evil and other logical/moral arguments against the existence
of God. Even on a non-academic level ordinary Christians believe that
the
existence of God, divinity of Jesus, the trinity, and all the other
dogma can be (and has been) proved by reason. This is demonstrated with
the common attitude that non-Christians are "irrational" or "blind to
the truth" or "foolish". Everybody in existence believes that they are
right and everyone else is wrong, and I am going to claim that
the fundamental principle that drives philosophy, theology,
religion, and
secular belief systems is this: belief precedes reason.
Or more
specifically, our beliefs are formulated before any intellectual
activity takes place. Hence, reason is mostly used to justify a belief
that is already in our minds. This principle can often be seen in
secular philosophy. Debates between philosophers must always have a
winner and a loser, and even if the loser's position is significantly
beaten it is not likely that he will abandon his belief. Rather, he
will attempt to make the arguments for his position stronger. In
religion this principle is even
more apparent. A person raised in Christianity will start doubting his
beliefs once he reaches an intellectually independent age, and so often
he will flee to the embrace of philosophy and theology in an attempt to
put his doubting mind at ease. Adults become threatened when someone
claims that their beliefs are false, and only in reaction will
investigate the epistemic status of a major belief of theirs (such as
the existence of God). Academics and ordinary people do not use reason
as a search for truth. Instead, it is used as a justification for a
belief that has already been formed.
For no man
has been converted to Christianity by way of reason. It is impossible for a man to believe in the existence of God, the
divinity of Christ, and other doctrines solely out of the
rational arguments behind it. It simply does not happen; belief precedes
reason and is formed from other factors. This does not mean that
Christians have to make an “intellectual leap of faith” to believe in
God. Belief never comes to us from a choice (whether a rational or
irrational choice), we can not choose to have faith in what we consider
an irrational proposition, and we can’t choose not to believe in what
we consider a rational proposition. Faith was never meant to mean
bending our beliefs against our intellectual or emotional will.
In general, beliefs
are formed through subjective lived experience, and religious
beliefs are formed through religious experience. It is our existential
experience in this world that gives us the “passional
tendencies” (to
borrow a phrase from William James) towards certain truths, and these
passions and convictions will determine what intellectual beliefs we
hold dear. I don’t consider it inherently bad that humans
form beliefs
by passions and convictions derived from experience. As the
existentialists so thoroughly communicated, a life guided by pure
reason is the one that is inauthentically human.
Belief formation that is entirely independent of reason contains one
specific danger, that of other people
controlling our passional tendencies. Since a very tiny minority of
humanity is intelligent enough to know the rational status of all
beliefs held by mankind, it is very easy to believe something that is
not only
irrational given to us from other peoples
experience and not our own. The phenomena of cults, pyramid schemes,
and the moral and economic misperceptions that shape western political
culture tell us how the persuasive power of a fellow human being can
have devastating results on our belief system. If a preacher gives a
fiery sermon that moves us emotionally to the point where we believe
that he is right on everything, or an author writes so beautifully
about his experiences that we follow his own convictions on certain
propositions, the formation of our beliefs is given to the hands of
other
people. Although passion should
and is a major contributor to our beliefs, reason is needed to
determine whether these passions were attained legitimately (from our
own self) or from external manipulation. In the sense of
Christianity we must be sure that the ideals we believe in are actually
our own, otherwise they will be impossible to strive for. If someone
does not understand why altruism affirms the self, but believes it
nevertheless because it is preached to him, he will not put his belief
into practice (which is seen everywhere today with our stagnated
Christendom). It is vitally important that we all find “the idea
we can
live or die for”, and a “truth that is true for me”
(both phrases
stolen from Kierkegaard).
So much effort is made to rationalise things like the
existence of God and the divinity of Jesus, but it is all irrelevant.
These logical arguments convince the people that want to be
convinced, and don’t convince people who don’t want to be
convinced; it
has no practical impact. It also does not, in the end, help stave off
Christian doubt. To doubt some proposition means the proposition is not
true for yourself, there is no conviction or experience linked behind
the belief (either in the first place or we lost that conviction).
Rational proofs do not make these truths intimate to us like they
should be, since such questions can never be solved entirely by reason.
Doubtless beliefs can only come through life and spiritual experience,
and people who leave Christianity do not do so because they have
discovered the irrationality of religious belief, but because they have
lost that experience and conviction that led them to religion in the
first place.
There is a gaping inadequacy in reason. I have
studied philosophy of religion, and I see it is as a stalemate:
Atheists cannot prove that God does not exist, and Christians cannot
prove that he does exist. And yet everyone who is worth listening to
has an opinion on God’s existence one way or the other, and the only
completely unbias and rational judges of philosophical issues are
coincidentally the ones who have no opinion. Belief precedes reason,
and our beliefs are formed through existential experience, not
intellectual reasoning.
-- By Timothy Neal |
