Faith and Logic: We often do a disservice to both, and to ourselves
Some might find this posting a bit of a surprise. I recently posted “25 things about me” on Facebook, following the lead of many of my friends on the site. Of all the things I listed…the fact that I had converted to Catholicism at the age of 27 brought the strongest reaction. Some expressed disbelief that someone so seemingly committed to logic and reason would actually be…a believer. Others attempted to reconcile how I could belong to a faith when I so clearly oppose certain specific church doctrines. Another friend wished to question how I could accept certain “unreasonable” ideas such as the “virgin birth.”
So…I’d like to share something it took me a long time to learn. I pledge to be succinct in reciting the historical, narrative portion of this entry.
As a child, my parents, my sister, and I attended a Presbyterian Church. I found the experience somewhat empty. Each Sunday, the members of my northern, affluent community would gather, drink coffee, set up tee times, sing a few old hymns, and listen to a sermon…usually telling some “feel good” tale of someone who had achieved something great, or who had overcome some terrific adversity. It did not seem “holy” or “sacred“…it was all very mundane.
As I entered college, I chose quickly to study philosophy. The logic and reason appealed to me and in short order I felt I was quite brilliant. We all did – it’s a symptom of the age. When I had free credits available I took courses in anthropology, because I am fascinated by other cultures, and perhaps because I knew that having grown up in a somewhat insular (I’m being generous here) community, I was lacking a conception of the diversity of the world and its people. I also took several courses in the world’s theologies. I was intrigued by the multitude of faiths in the world and their adherents…and a skeptic by nature, I think I longed to understand “believers” and to, just maybe, one day have such a faith.
I analyzed each belief system in turn, but found that none of them could be logically reconciled with my thinking. They all had such obvious “flaws.” So…I mercilessly stole elements that I liked and discarded the rest. My own belief system rapidly grew into a cobbled-together and generalized notion of spirituality. I proceeded in this fashion until I was 26. Much as Rene Descartes had done, I accepted little that could not be proven through force of reason or that didn’t strongly appeal to me on some sort of romanticized, personal level (for example, I always just really thought Tarot cards were cool…so I found a way to work those in).
Then a dear friend, Abby, asked if I wished to attend a mass with her at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Nashville, Tennessee. I gladly accepted the offer; I had never passed on an opportunity to attend a service performed in a faith that I had not yet personally observed, and at this point had been to the designated temple of nearly every faith and denomination. What happened next was a complete surprise to me, for I had come to accept that I was a sort of “confirmed, lifetime, sort of spiritual, agnostic.”
It simply felt “sacred.” It felt “holy.” These feelings were just that…feelings. It had nothing to do with the academic study and evaluation of the church’s beliefs or doctrines. The same way I could not reason away a feeling of anger, or sadness, or love…I could not apply logic to what I felt. I quickly came to realize several things:
1) Belief, like emotion, is separate and distinct from science and logic. If I had desired to find (or even understand) faith…I had been pursuing the wrong path for years. My academic studies had provided me with information…but little else. My friend on Facebook argued (much as I might have years earlier) that he believed in God…and that God created the universe out of nothing…but that anyone who believes in the virgin birth is a fool because Mary and Joseph were married, had been so for some time, and had to have been having intercourse. Really? So, you believe in an entity that whose existence you cannot prove or otherwise quantify, and you believe in the scientific and logically impossibility that this entity created the entire universe out of nothing (impossible due the logical concept of “nihil ex nihilo”, and the laws of conservation of mass and energy)…but the virgin birth, that’s just crazy? No. One can’t pick and choose when to apply logic…articles of faith are IMMUNE to logic, like feelings. You believe them to be true because you believe them to be true…NOT because you can prove them to be true. Science and logic are similarly IMMUNE to belief-based arguments. If your final “ace in the whole” in a scientific or logic debate is simply “because God made it so” then the debate is not even worth starting…you have already lost it (“lost it” in terms of holding to a logical or scientific argument).
2) Belief is separate and distinct from any church’s governing body. It continually amazes me that people assume that if a person belongs to an organized church…they must accept and agree with every piece of doctrine that the church’s governing body supports. Additionally, they will hold the entire belief system to be invalid if any members of the church’s organization commit any immoral or illegal acts. This would be no different than saying “You are an American, so I’m going to assume that you must agree with everything the American president says, and if any members of the government do anything improper…well then the American ideas of liberty, equality, freedom, and the rule of law must be invalid.” It’s clearly asinine. Perhaps the reality of being a member of an organized religion could be summed up best by saying, “I believe what they believe, but I don’t always think what they think.” I believe, in terms of the cosmology of the universe, the origins and the nature of the divinity, and the importance of love, peace, mercy, and forgiveness, most of what the other members of my church believe. I believe, as they do, that the sacraments we perform are sacred activities of spiritual value. Now, as to the edicts and ever-changing dogma of my church’s governing body…I often disagree and realize that these things are more matters of human interests (ie. money, power, politics) than they are matters of the divine. As humans making human decisions, these edicts are often flawed and frequently later overturned (sound anything like Congress?). But since they are, as I said, separate and distinct from the actual belief system, they do not modify my conception of God, the afterlife, good and evil. They do not diminish the experience I have observing the ritual of mass. They are a clearly part of the human world, not the sacred one. In the RCIA (new member) classes, people always used to asks the priests, “what does the church say about <>?” There answer was always the same: “The church says <>, but what is more important is the position you take after your private, personal reflections with God.” I always though this was a fair response to a concept that far too many people fail to grasp.
So, we often waste our time. We waste it attempting to punch holes in the faith of others using logical arguments to question that which exists in a separate sphere from logic, and ignoring that our own beliefs are no more “logically valid” than theirs. We waste time attempting to punch holes in scientific and logical truths with circular arguments based on faith. We make ourselves appear foolish when we condemn the beliefs of a person or a church because their church’s “corporate leaders” behave as we know “corporate leaders” are prone to behave. In doing these things we show (as I did for many years, and at many times) that as a child cannot discriminate between his or her feelings and his or her thoughts, we have not yet learned that much as oil and water cannot mix, faith and logic will not, can not, be subjected to each other’s scrutiny.
