Faith and Reason
Jane Orton- Apr 14
- 9 min read
In previous posts, Dr. Orton explored the academic debate about how we define religion and whether society is becoming more secular. In this post, she explores the debate about how faith and reason can coexist.
For A Level Philosophy and Religious Studies students, this is an overview of one of the most important topics you will need for your exams. For university-level scholars or independent researchers, we’ve included clickable links to useful literature, primary sources and canonical scholarship you need to be acquainted with to get started.
When I taught adult interest Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh, one of the most popular topics was the coexistence of science and religion. Some students felt that faith and reason were incompatible by definition; others argued that science can support religious beliefs.
Atheism and Anti-Religion
Often, atheists have presented religion as an unreasonable position. In the early twentieth century, Sigmund Freud argued that religion is a ‘universal obsessional neurosis,’ because it suppresses our physical urges with the promise of rewards or punishments in the afterlife. This mirrors childhood, in which parents impose rituals that suppress urges, which children find comforting. In this way, Freud saw religion as a kind of wish fulfilment.
Famous atheist Richard Dawkins argues that there is no evidence for religious belief, unlike the evidence for evolution. Dawkins thinks religion is harmful as it creates conflict and indoctrinates children.
However, others have objected to Dawkins’ point of view. Scholars such as Stephen Jay Gould have suggested that religion and science belong to “non-overlapping magisteria.”
Faith and Reason as Mutually Supportive
One point to remember is that faith is not a direct synonym for belief. Some people do use the word “faith” as an antonym for “reason,” but to others “faith” means something more like “fidelity to a creed.”
Some scholars and theologians argue that faith and reason are mutually supportive. Alister and Joanna Collicutt McGrath point out that Dawkins overlooks the fact that many Christians do not see faith as independent from reason. Certainly, Catholics have argued that the two are not contradictory, based on the Confessions of St. Augustine and set out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio.
Some Christians believe that God gives us intellectual ability so that we can learn about the world. For instance, St. Anselm spoke of fides quaerens intellectum (faith through understanding). Catechism of the Catholic Church 283, “The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers.”
The Church of England’s position that scripture, tradition and reason constitute a single, “three-legged stool” of Christian teaching. The argument is that all three legs are required for the stool to stand. The origin of this idea is attributed to theologian Richard Hooker (although Hooker himself does not use this metaphor). According to this idea, scripture, tradition and reason are held in a dialectic – each one is in creative tension with the others.
In 1965, the Vatican issued Pope Paul VI’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), which explains the Church’s view of divine revelation. Jesus is full revelation of God and he commissioned the Apostles to preach his teaching, guided by the Holy Spirit. Through the tradition that develops within the Church, we move forward toward the fullness of truth, guided by Holy Spirit himself. John 16:12-13 speaks of “the Spirit of truth,” which “will guide you into all the truth.”
Science as a Challenge to Christianity
Some scientific theories have been seen to challenge religious doctrine. In terms of Christianity, heliocentrism was historically contentious. Copernicus (1473-1543) challenged the geocentrism of Ptolemy, proposing a heliocentric model which put the sun at the centre of the universe.
Galileo’s (1564-1642) improvements to the telescope led to his support of Copernicus’s model. Because his The Starry Messenger was more accessible than Copernicus’s original Book of Revolutions, Galileo got into far more trouble with the Church. At the time, Aristotle dominated church doctrine. Galileo challenged many Aristotelian assumptions, such as the mistaken belief that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones.
The Church opposed Galileo’s theory due to its contradiction of scripture, such as Genesis 1:14-18. It was also seen to contradict the authority of the Catholic Church and the theological claim that humans are special.
Evolution was also seen to contradict Christian teachings. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Erasmus Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck claimed to have observed the gradual development of the animal kingdom through evolution. Charles Darwin supported this with the theory of natural selection, process by which the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and reproduce, resulting in their characteristics being passed on. This is complemented by sexual selection, the process by which characteristics evolve due to their ability to attract mates, rather than for their ability to ensure survival.
Because Darwin’s survival of the fittest is a purely mechanical process, without any teleological principles, it can be said to explain the origin of species without the need for God. This was seen by the Church to contradict Genesis 1:27, in which “God created mankind in his own image.” Many Christians now accept evolutionary theory, arguing that a metaphorical reading of the Bible is consistent with it, although some Biblical literalists insist that the biblical account is correct. For instance, the Creation Museum in Kentucky suggests that humans and dinosaurs may have lived alongside each other, supporting a literal interpretation of the Bible.
The Big Bang theory has also been a challenge to Christian doctrine. In 1923, Edwin Hubble argued that the universe is expanding, as the Doppler Effect shows that nearly all galaxies are moving away from us. Albert Einstein disliked the idea of an initial big bang and wanted to explain the universe in terms of a previous contracting phase before the current expansion, but this idea has been challenged by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, who argue that Einstein's own theory of relativity implies that the universe and even time itself must have had a beginning. Hawking and Penrose proposed that this explained why the night sky is dark: if the universe was infinite, then the sky should have been full of light, since the stars would had infinite time to shine (this is known as Olber’s Paradox).
According to the Big Bang theory, no star could have been shining longer than the big bang, 10-15 billion years ago. Young earth creationists do not accept this view, as a literal reading of the Bible places the earth’s age at around 6,000 years according to Biblical scholar James Ussher.
Hawking himself points out that the big bang theory seems strange to us, as it implies a breakdown in causality: “We are used to the idea that events are caused by earlier events, which in turn are caused by still earlier events. There is a chain of causality stretching back into the past. But suppose this chain has a beginning. Suppose there was a first event.”
For many Christians, the Big Bang is not a threat to their beliefs. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church 296 says, “We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely “out of nothing”: If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants.”
Islam and the Western Enlightenment
Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905) was writing at a time in which the advance of Western technology, science, and military strength seemed inevitable. It seemed necessary for Islam to accept the secularization of the public sphere. 'Abduh's argument is that rationalism is compatible with and essential in Islamic teachings. His Risalatal-Tawhid (Theology of Unity) argues that reason is a feature of human nature, and human nature is created by God; so reason is a gift from God. Rather than being opposed to science, the Qur’an encourage the pursuit of knowledge.
Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) objects that, although human reason is important in some respects, only the authority of the divine can access the deepest truths about human nature. Qutb criticises the modernist assumption that reason and scripture are equally important for knowledge, arguing that human reason must consult divine revelation.
Buddhism and Science
As I mentioned in my post on secularism, there is disagreement between Stephen Batchelor and David Brazier about how to assess Buddhism in terms of its relationship to science and religion.
Some scholars argue that science challenges the supernatural aspects of Buddhism, such as miracles, rebirth and the different realms of existence. However, some Buddhists maintain that Buddhism’s claims that the observer helps to shape reality is in line with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. In addition, dependent origination to accord with scientific ideas of cause and effect, although there are differences.
Buddhist teachings caution against attachment to any single belief, rather than fully understanding the dhamma (Buddhist teachings). In the water snake simile, the Buddha likens wrong grasping of the dhamma to grasping a poisonous water snake in the wrong way. The snake will turn and bite us, whereas grasping the snake in thew right way can lead to benefit. Many Buddhists advocate aiming for akaravati saddha (conviction based on reason and experience) rather than blind faith. In the Kalama Sutta, the Buddha teaches the Kalamas “Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration ‘The monk is our teacher.’” Rather, they should investigate for themselves.
Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist monk Nagarjuna, writing in the second-century, holds that both faith and reason are necessary for full liberation.
Japanese Buddhist philosopher Inoue Enryo (1858-1919) argued that Buddhism is scientific. Enryo was living in a time in which Western science was replacing Chinese influence in Japan and traditional Buddhist cosmology was not seen as credible. Buddhism had to be reinterpreted to find a place in modern Japan.
HH the 14th Dalai Lama believes science to be of great importance in Tibetan Buddhism, leading him to question the Buddhist cosmology found in the Abhidhamma Pitaka. Having said this, His Holiness argues that Buddhism is aligned with science, particularly the doctrines of sunyata (emptiness), anicca (impermanence), and anatta (no soul). In 2000, he introduced science such as physics into the Tibetan monastic curriculum (e.g. psychology, physics). He also helped to found the Mind and Life Institute, which studies neuroscience and cognitive science.
Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh argues that science and spirituality are two paths of inquiry both interested in understanding the nature of existence and the meaning of life.
Having done a lot of my own fieldwork exploring Buddhism in the Himalayas and Muslim, Hindu and Munda beliefs in the Sundarbans mangrove forest of Bangladesh, my sense is that it would be difficult to try to reformulate religion in line with Enlightenment rationalism without losing aspects that are valuable in localised settings.
Pujas to ask local lhas (deities) for snow in the Himalayas and tiger-protection mantras and amulets in the Sundarbans may not be scientifically justifiable or a product of Enlightenment rationalism – but they are important to the communities that practice them. Religion and reason are not necessarily incompatible – but neither are they synonymous.
For A Level Students
We offer one-on-one online A Level tuition in Religious Studies and Philosophy. Your tutor has PhDs and Masters’ degrees in Religious Studies and Philosophy as well as teaching and exam-marking experience. Click the link to read testimonials from our previous students and contact us to find out more!
Tuition is also available for university-level Religious Studies, and Philosophy students.
Undertake Your Own Research Project in Philosophy and Religious Studies
Working on your own independent research project needn’t be a lonely task: Dr. Orton works with other independent scholars on projects in conservation and the humanities. Contact us for a chat with her.
We also offer adult interest courses in Religious Studies and Philosophy. Dr. Orton will work with you to design a course of private tutorials tailored to your needs, ability and schedule. Find out what it’s like to work with her or contact us to find out more!
If you’re not ready to reach out yet, follow our research methods series on this blog for more ideas! Dr. Orton has written posts on the importance of independent research and how to get started with building your own approach to ethical, people-centred fieldwork.
Reach Out
Follow our Orton Academy Instagram for our Bangladesh highlight reel to see pictures from Dr. Orton’s fieldwork in the Sundarbans – we would love to connect with you!
Opmerkingen