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An argument for intelligent belief
By James Martin
Monday, October 8, 2007
An increasingly common argument against religion is to point out how irrational it is. Authors like Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion"), Sam Harris ("The End of Faith") and Christopher Hitchens ("God is Not Great") all make the point that the essential irrationality of religion leads people to do stupid, dangerous, and even violent things.
Let’s admit it: They’re at least partially correct. Many ostensibly religious people have done appalling things in the name of religion and, more importantly, because of their religious beliefs. In that long list of abuses you could include the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, and the bombing of abortion clinics.
To listen to these critics of religion, however, you would think that this is all that religion does, and that believing in God necessarily means being stupid, ignorant and narrow-minded. But ignoring the simple fact that religion is one of the foundations of modern learning is itself, well, stupid, ignorant and narrow-minded.
For one thing, saying that being religious means being stupid ignores some pretty obviously smart people, who were also believers. Reinhold Niebuhr, the Protestant theologian who wrote extensively on social and political issues; Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish scholar and civil rights activist; and Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement and inveterate writer, were deeply thoughtful and well educated people for whom belief was a central part of lives. Telling anyone who knew them that they were stupid would make them laugh.
Their lives embodied the insight of St. Anselm of Canterbury, who defined theology in the 11th century as fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding.
For another thing, the Christian church is largely responsible for much of the tradition of scholarship in the Western world. As most high school students know, one of the few bright spots in the so-called “Dark Ages” were Europe’s thriving monasteries, where dedicated monks kept the Greek and Roman tradition of scholarship alive, and without which the Renaissance would have never been born. The church is also responsible for many of the Europe’s oldest and most distinguished universities.
In the United States, roughly 400 institutions of higher learning are run by Roman Catholic religious orders, dioceses or other related groups. That’s not even mentioning the extensive network of Catholic grammar schools, middle schools, and high schools that educated the great waves of immigrants and continues to educate thousands of children of all faiths, particularly in the inner city.
The heart of the atheist argument over the irrationality of religion is that it is foolish to believe in something that cannot be proven. The syllogism goes something like this: Anything that cannot be proven rationally does not exist. God cannot be proven rationally. Therefore, God does not exist. (For the record, this believer took a course in logic during his philosophy studies.)
Of course there has never been any satisfactory rational “proof” for the existence of God. St. Thomas Aquinas gave the world five different ones, but since there are still lots of atheists, they obviously haven’t worked.
But the problem with the atheist’s argument is its premise. Why should we believe that anything our reason cannot grasp does not exist?
To me, this seems arrogant. Just because the human mind cannot fully “apprehend” God, to use Aristotle’s words, or there is no rational explanation for suffering, does not mean that God does not exist. Besides, on the level of personal experience beyond the rational - that is, emotions, insights, desires, longings, and interior peace - there are plenty of “proofs” for God. You can’t prove love either, but it still exists.
So the next time someone tells you that being religious means checking your brain at the door, remind them of religion’s fundamental place in Western learning. Remind them that the very logic that they treasure wouldn’t even be around if it weren’t for those medieval monks. Or remind them that theology is fides quaerens intellectum. At the very least, you’ll seem smart for knowing some Latin.
James Martin is a Jesuit priest. His latest book is “A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas and Life’s Big Questions.”