Faith and Reason: Just A Fling, or Can It Be Love?

This week, many news sources picked up the story of William Lobdell, a devoted Christian who, after working as a reporter covering the goings-on of the Church for eight years, claims to have lost his faith because of it.

It’s a marginally interesting case, the kind of thing that doesn’t really surprise anyone and is hardly what I’d call "news".  But it does beg an interesting question, one that I bet many people besides myself have had occasion to ask:  Can religious faith survive in the same brain with unrestricted critical thought? 

Is it part of the tax demanded by faith that logic has to be castrated, or locked out of certain areas, like a dog that might pee on the good carpet, or attack the precious little purebred cat?

One of the books I’m reading for one of my philosophy classes this semester defines two kinds of beliefs:  "High" beliefs and "low".  The difference is simple but profound:  Low beliefs are those that are either tested by us, or if we’re talking about social beliefs, those that we think were tested and proven by someone else (for instance, I’ve never seen hydrochloric acid etch glass, but I believe that it does due to others’ experience).  High beliefs, on the other hand, have not been or can’t be tested — so all religious beliefs are high beliefs.  It’s a principle of anthropology that human beings keep their low beliefs separate from their high beliefs as much as they possibly can.  When the two mix (and almost inevitably, a low belief disproves a high belief, since low beliefs have a much higher chance of being correct), there are known steps that people take to cope.

One is to ostracize, criticize, and discredit the person(s) or activities causing the offending low beliefs.  Hence, in an nationalistic country in the middle of a war, anyone claiming that they have evidence that (say) the government fabricated evidence to start the war is called "unpatriotic" and socially swept under the rug.  Rogue scientists who claim to have discovered something that goes against the majority religion’s doctrine are also often quieted (or, in nastier times and places, killed).   If someone climbs Olympus and discovers that there are no gods living there, mountain-climbing may just become illegal tomorrow.

Another tactic is to claim that the high belief was always intended metaphorically.  Hence, fossils buried in the ground don’t discredit the Genesis theory of the creation of the Earth, because, you know, it’s just a story.  It’s true, just, you  know, not on the same level that other things are true.  It’s not false, just…existing independently of reality.  Or some such explanation.

In other words, we protect our high beliefs by either seeking to discredit, bury, or lessen the importance of known, provable things that might get in the way.  Scientifically, these strategies and cop-outs are known to be very old, stable, and universal parts of the human collective mind.  It seems to be in our nature to "fence off" our faith in a place where reason can’t hurt it.

I think the question I find most interesting in all that is, do we do that "fencing" or protecting of our high beliefs because we have to — because no faith could survive in the same skull as an actively, unrestrainedly questioning mind?  Or do we do it simply because it’s easier, and because — inarguably — it’s necessary if one is to maintain the same high beliefs across a large group of people?

For the record, as far as I’ve thought it through just over the last few days, I’d say that the fencing seems to be a matter of convenience (or laziness, or fear) on an individual’s part, but yeah, necessary if one wants the whole Church (or the whole Collective or the whole Third Reich or whatever) to keep believing the same thing.  But I don’t think — so far — that giving doubt free reign precludes having faith.  It may make it impossible to have the same faith (or should I say "faith in the same thing(s)"?) throughout one’s whole life, but some of us aren’t too worried about that.

The reason I say that is because of another thought that accosted me the other day, as I was listening to one of the petty wars that occasionally go on in the media between atheists and Christians.  The UNIVERSAL mistake, to the point of being ridiculous, is for the religious to assume that the atheistic have no beliefs, or more specifically, no high beliefs.  Pardon me for even showing how stupid this is, because in doing so, I feel like I’m insulting my readers, but…an a-theist is someone who doesn’t believe in a theistic god, and that’s all.  Someone who attempts to have no beliefs is called a Nihilist last time I checked, and not only are real live nihilists very rare, but they tend to either give it up, go crazy or commit suicide within a very short time.

It’s human nature to have (high) beliefs.  (But it’s NOT human nature to believe in a theistic god, I hasten to point out.  Many, many large religions, past and present, don’t involve anything like a Christian god.)  And there are very many high beliefs, concerning a lot more than just gods, that simply cannot be proven or disproven, even peripherally.  Those are probably "safe" from most doubter’s questioning.  (Though of course, none is completely safe, since doubting may bring out something that simply makes a different belief more plausible.)

But why is that a bad thing?  If we’re talking about beliefs that can’t be proven, then what’s the attraction — nevermind the perceived necessity – of sticking with the same one for ages?  Let’s face it, if we were really concerned about all our beliefs being true, then we’d only ever have low beliefs!  High beliefs, by definition, must be graded on a different scale — they must be positive or negative in some way besides knowable truth-value. 

That’s as far as I’ve gotten, but of course I love your comments.  Email is always okay if you don’t want to throw yourself to the genius dogs that haunt my site.  ;)