A Reason to Believe

October 23, 2023 | By David Woods TD ‘26

image description: time lapse photography of ocean wave

What does it mean for the logician to accept that they cannot condense every argument into a neat set of statements, parsing their predicate logic into digestible terms as they go? Or for the philosopher: what does it feel like to encounter a set of premises from which no a priori conclusion can be deduced? At a certain point, we, as individuals, have to acknowledge that not everything life throws at us will fit into a schema or heuristic we have for making sense of the world, and Christianity is no exception. 

To the broader populace, those who gaze upon Christians with eyes of admonishment and confusion, we’re just another flock of sheep daydreaming for solace and letting reality fall by the wayside, either for our perceived ignorance or the fact that we abide some sense of blind allegiance to a God that we cannot possibly “know.” And for what?  One might say that this populace indeed belongs to the enlightened masses that deal in what “is,” rather than what ought to be (as David Hume might put it), with the realm of substantiated observation and “validity” as the philosophers say. But a brutal truth I’ve been forced to reconcile with, as a man of both reason and faith, is the diametric opposition to religion that so many academics find; most notably in the scientific sphere I belong to on campus. This is to say that, in my pursuit of veracity, I’ve found this opposition to be due solely to the lack of empiricism that comes inherent in any system of beliefs based neither in the world nor the self. Will it ever be enough for a scholastic who dedicates their life to the pursuit of knowledge to accept that we don’t have all of the answers? 

For those of us that live not simply with the burdening limitations of our present circumstances but instead with optimism of eternal exigence, such circumstances don’t sound so harsh. Christians have a reason to believe: for one cause or another, the light of God has been revealed, and a path to salvation exists. But faith is not something that we’ll find waiting for us at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box or at the end of a rainbow.

And so it goes: the frost-speckled, stained-glass window passes through my periphery as I trudge towards the lobby of LC, leaving the warm embrace of my philosophy of religion seminar, though feeling no less cozy. For, as it stands, I endeavor yet another introspection sparked both by the intellectual reverberance of Professor John Pittard and the liberation that adhering to naturalism seems to give the pantheist “amid hostile forces . . . concentrated upon the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears.” [1] 

Which is to say that the world is not an endearing place for the individual who seeks to rest his soul on something immaterial, and as such, it is difficult to find faith in a broken world, one upended by not only the imperceivable forces of nature ominously churching beneath the surface, but also by the weight of existence alone, of finding comfort in nothing more than the self, as the self is all we feasibly have to rely on for liberation.

So then, the academic tells us that man’s true freedom lies in thought, in which case we conceive of a God based on our love of perceived goodness—of golden trees flourishing in their autumn yields or of strangers huddled together for warmth amidst a biting winter wind. And, we become determined—through disillusionment—to worship that created God alone. So, why would we tarry ourselves with the energy of faith that enables us to live constantly in the vision of the good (belief in God) when we can descend, instead, into the world of fact, with that vision of the good perpetually before us? [2] That is, why must we derive our sense of the good from a seemingly ephemeral, unreliable, and hidden being (God) when we have the means to unlock our own visions of the good, of morality and justice, within ourselves? To the unbeliever that witnesses the pain and suffering in the world, seemingly justified by a benevolent and omnipotent God, there lacks an impetus to seek solidarity in anything other than the self—and the self-realizations of impending death, hostility, and evil that our world contains—as some sort of illuminating hue to crawl towards individual freedom in light of miring circumstances.

And so, if we can’t hope to elucidate a sense of faith in a world centered around the epistemological emphasis placed on being able to know and love our triune God, and if we can’t find redemptive faith in the self due to the damning perspective our natural, broken world imposes on individuality through libertarian free will, then how is it that even an ounce of conviction in belief exists, and why is it so ubiquitous?

Some might say that seeing is believing, but, if so, what reason do we have to speculate that anything supernatural, or, dare I say, divine, even exists? In the interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees, a social class of Jewish individuals that sought incessantly to disprove Jesus as the Messiah in the Gospel of Matthew, we see the Pharisees prioritizing seeing over believing. They draw lines in the sand and attempt to apply Mosaic law, a ritualistic and conformist sort of religiosity, to the acts and life of Jesus, looking for incongruities and trying to trap him in impiety. And while common sense might tell us that it is unwise to set standards of proof over Jesus, seeking signs of his unrivaled divinity and dominion over our lives, our intuitions, formed largely in accordance with our life experiences, both present and past, tells us to place faith in the tried and true, finding comfort in the things that we can tangibly possess or hold dear—material or otherwise—and to delegate the rest to the realm of superstition or folly. 

But what are those of us who have not fallen victim to the blasphemy of a cynical existence, embroiled only by the dogma of time itself, to do? How are those of us who teeter on the edge of finding plausibility in the belief of God despite the empirical evidence, or more narrowly, lack thereof, against theism? Is it even possible to make sense of a world that seems palpable and corporeal before our very eyes, though inexplicable in a way that is not necessarily beyond the realm of science and the laws of physics? Culture and society would tell us to remain steadfast in our beliefs, to stop craving the veracity our hearts so truly seek, to ask fewer questions and focus on making sense of our place in the barren landscape of depravity we call earth. However, in analyzing Bertrand Russell’s “A Free Man’s Worship,” I have come to see things differently. 

Russell's depiction, as well as most other individuals that profess naturalistic secularism, is of a universe that is indifferent and even hostile to human existence, one which calls for personal freedom and liberation through individual interpretations of ethical responsibility: two aspects that simply are not compatible. If our world truly is to be cruel and unending, a world in which “only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built,” then what are we to say of the idea of individual agency? [3] It cannot be true that, in a place where personal freedoms and moral virtues are considered to be insignificant, we are to find purpose and meaning in our lives by adopting these same personal freedoms and moral virtues because they somehow have inherent value. 

And so, it could be said that seeking these materialistic values and looking to the self for everlasting purpose leads to a slew of conflicts and contradictions—either in interests in the self, fellow man, or the universe. But when we look to faith for this same everlasting purpose, to matters of the heart and to the intersection between faith and reason, our motivations, directives, and futures in the world become, surprisingly, much less contradictory. That is, rooting oneself in the uncaring and unforgiving world is always a battle; it is no means to uncover the sacraments of a freeing existence based on the traits we innately know to embrace and seek in our relationships with others—things like humility and kindness, gratitude and patience, generosity and integrity, or sincerity and fairness. But what we must ask ourselves is if the questioning of our desire for something more to life is a sort of knowing or presupposition within our innermost being. Maybe there is something intangible that pushes us towards our better selves, towards a unification of perspectives and backgrounds, desires and passions. Because, in such a cruel, secular landscape, it is impossible to make something out of nothing, and we know this; otherwise, we would seek nothing more than to keel over and die at our repeated failures to live on in blissful ignorance to the wider tragedies of our situations. 

But who am I to calm the roaring waves pulling us all into the tumultuous depths of a grim and bleak reality? Though I don’t have the answers to the existence of my God, I have investigated what it means to live a life of faith. And while the answers weren’t waiting around for me in my philosophy readings, in seeking knowledge of how to rationalize faith with reason, I found just that: a reason to believe.

References:

[1], [2], [3] Bertrand Russell. “A Free Man's Worship.” 1903, https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/264/fmw.htm. Accessed 15 October 2023.