Faith and Reason in Tension

“Faith has declined in contemporary western culture because contemporary westerners have become emotionally and imaginatively impoverished. We have ceased to care in the right way about the right things.” – C. Stephen Evans, “Kierkegaard: An Introduction”

Reason: If anyone is to have justified beliefs in what is true, then they must believe based on evidence and argument. Faith, you have little to offer when it comes to truth-gathering.

Faith: You’re not the boss of me!

Reason: If you mean by that odd remark to claim that faith is just as relevant to truth seeking, how do you know? What evidence do you have for such a claim?

Faith: You always ask for evidence but you can’t provide evidence for the claim that you require evidence. Stop looking around for what does not exist and live your life, Reason!

Reason: But what life should I live? How can I adjudicate between alternate possible lifestyles? Either one must live by reason or by faith. It is not the case that one should live by faith. Therefore one must live by reason.  Evidence for the second premise can be put in terms of the following modus tollens: If one should live by faith then any lifestyle will do. But it is not the case that any lifestyle will do. Therefore . . .

Faith: Stop right there. I can only live the life that’s been given to me and that’s what I choose to do. Embrace life instead of sitting around mulling over pseudo-intellectual problems that have an appearance of significance!

Reason: Faith, you appear to be making truth claims. What am I supposed to do with them? I’m happy to hear that you’re enjoying yourself but why tell me? If you want me to understand and, more importantly, believe, what you’re saying, I need to consider evidence provided through something that at least resembles an argument. If you disagree, why? (By the way, if you attempt to answer the ‘why question,’ you will need to use an argument to do so.)

Faith: And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
     For last year's words belong to last year's language
     And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
     To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
     Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
     In streets I never thought I should revisit
     When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
     To purify the dialect of the tribe
     And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight…

Reason: This is hopeless.

Faith: That’s the first thing you’ve said that I agree with.

Over time, well-worn intellectual debates pick up a number of elements that analysts will tend to use as a pre-analytic framework and unpack the issue in light of that framework. Many times, the framework includes the very positions being debated and analysis may proceed without questioning whether those positions are valid ways to frame the debate. In the United States, the “pro choice” versus “pro life” labels used to describe the two opposing positions on abortion may be an example. On even a cursory inspection, these labels are grossly misleading and designed to foster unfortunate caricatures that not only stagnate any forward movement politically but frame this important issue in terms that don’t allow for any analytic success (even anecdotally, it seems obviously true that most in the “pro choice” camp are not at the same time “pro death” and those on the pro life side of the question actually do not eschew significant reproductive liberties).

Are faith and reason opposed?

Characterizing the discussion about the intellectual viability of religion in terms of “faith” versus “reason” has a long history. It’s both effortless and obvious to adopt these two monikers as labels for a real conflict. But are faith and reason really opposed? Is this the right way to think about the debate? More fundamentally, is there a debate at all? As I’ve attempted to show in previous essays, I believe the answer to all these questions is yes. There is manifest evidence that there has been and presently is tension over the validity and role of religious belief in a modern worldview and there is strong historical evidence that the tension is centered around what broadly can be understood as a distinction between a rational—or in contemporary language, scientific—understanding of the nature of things and one that uses faith as the locus for understanding the essential aspects of the world.
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