No One is Purely Rational
One of the chief complaints I have against my fellow atheists is the smug position they claim on rationality. We are the sane, we are the rational, we are the perfectly rational. It’s part of the reason that I could never bring myself to adopt the term “Bright.” I thought it was stupid when it first came out, and the fact that it is still not catching on bears out that it wasn’t such a bright concept.
Sorry.
Years ago, I was a member of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Humanists. It was a time shortly after I had decided that religion really would add little to my life, and I didn’t like the personalities I had encountered at the Minnesota Atheists (we have become a much more fun group since I recently joined.) At a monthly meeting, a Unitarian Atheist/Humanist something-or-other preacher stood up and made the bold statement that poetic references to the emotions of the heart are silly and irrational and that humanists should reject them. “Emotions come from the brain,” he said. “Not from the heart.”
Well, my first reaciton was “Duh.” My second was “So what?” I really had no idea what his point was, because he was not making it very clearly. And he hadn’t inspired me to dig any deeper into a subject I thought everyone had understood since first grade (or perhaps before.)
The guy had an irrational position on rationality, and he was an atheist. From my experience, there is no one who is capable of purely rational thought in every area of our life. We can’t even truly design software that is purely rational (beyond instructions to choose between “off and on.”) So, the atheist claim to be any more rational is rather arrogant. And I am guilty of it sometimes, and often catch myself when I am about to make that sort of grandiose claim.
I would way that the beauty of the scientific method is that it involves checks and cross-checks. It is a recognition of human faults, in that it provides a method to objectively determine the nature of causation and relation against the investigator’s personal bias. Religion provides no such means of checks and balances, so it has no objective measures with which to test reality. Does that make it irrational? No, I don’t think so.
Don’t take comfort in this, Christians, because you probably won’t agree with the reasons that I think this way. Hector Avalos’s two most recent books, Fighting Words and The End of Biblical Studies approach inscripturation as a scarce resource first and then examine historical and textual criticisms of The Bible second.
As inscripturation, the Word is set apart for understanding by a select few. Even the invention of the printing press and the “democratization” of scripture, which at least wrested the Bible from the clutches of the priesthood, created the need for faith to guide one’s reading of the Word. It is interesting to me that when I ask about the contradictions between various translations of The Bible (and even different sections of The Bible,) I am assured that with the guidance of The Holy Spirit and with the gift of Faith the contradictions are broken and the Word makes sense.
Of course, my own experience as a young Christian didn’t bear that out and so it doesn’t make sense to me still to approach an apology that way. So, why do I think that religion (in my argument here I am limiting myself to Christianity, but I think it applies to all inscripturated religions) is rational.
Well, as inscripuration creates a scarce resource of understanding, then faith is the commodity which gives it worth. Faith is that which you hold in order to make understanding of the Word. Even if, as I think, one has to fudge the words in order to give them that value.
Faith is a commodity which some people are given at birth, when they are born and raised in their parents’ religion. Even Stephen, who was raised a Catholic and found that the Christian Reformed Church meets his faith needs more effectively, is still holding onto the Christian version of the commodity. Others take it later on life if they convert from non-religion to religion.
The commodity is the societal value placed in faith, the constant message that subtly plays in our media and culture that faith is valuable and that people with faith have more of an understanding of their role in this life. It is a given, as communicated on our money and in the Pledge of Allegiance and few people even think to question its role. In our politics it is taken as the measure of our potential leaders as to whether we can trust them to make the right decision. That this assumption is cynically abused by politicians is the subject for another post.
Faith is also the commodity that buys “understanding of the word.” Letting go of such a commodity, so dearly held for so many years and which Christians value as a precious gift from God, would be irrational if it can’t be traded for something in return. No one gives up something as valuable as faith easily. Only an atheist would be so irrational.
That’s why it was so hard for me to accept that I am an atheist. And I accept that it was irrational, if unavoidable. I just had to be honest with myself.
Did I mention that I also buy lottery tickets? See? I am a highly irrational atheist.
Whaddya mean by rational?
The definition of rational is an important one to sort out. But what got me thinking was your concept of faith as a commodity. Commodities are getting a fair amount of attention in today’s market, but I’m a little uncomfortable treating it as something that can be traded in return for ‘items’ like political gain. There is the possibility of taking the metaphor a step further. Consider a card based game (maybe Settlers of Catan or Magic): is the faith commodity something that trumps others or could be traded in order to build a civilization? Inquisition, crusades and church-supported monarchy were the result. Or in present day, what would the currency exchange between the faith commodity and the science commodity?
Perhaps another reason I am bristling against the commodity imagery is that I don’t think individuals ‘buy and sell’ world views. Is the way I see the world useful to anybody else? Part of what I think is similar to the way a lot of scientists process information, and part of it is similar to what many Christians believe.
But if we step back to the political arena, I can see a similarity between how faith (or religion) is used, and how science is used. Don’t you hate it when you hear, “studies have shown…” in order to sell some idea or product? There are a lot of people – Christians even – who feel the same way when they hear, “the Bible says…”
This is the second time I have tried to work this concept into an article, and I am not sure I have been getting my point across.
What I mean by commodity is an emotional investment tool, and the trading partner isn’t other people but God. Faith is sometimes said to be a gift from God, and it is returned or spent in order to have a higher level of understanding of things not seen.
Society reinforces the value of the commodity, so that giving it up is to risk too much. Not just in separation from God, but also in rejecting something whose value your social miliue reinforces.
There’s an interesting radio show that mentions some of the ideas you’ve listed here. You might find it interesting.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/pointofinquiry/POI_2008_06_06_Taner_Edis.mp3
If you find this kind of thing interesting, consider subscribing. It’s a good show to listen to.
The problem with this approach to Christianity is that it is somewhat circular. That is, Avalos puts Christianity into a rationalistic box (the old round peg in a square hole), thereby making his version of Christianity appear rational within his spiritual economic theories.
As Josh’s question implies, this also depends on your definition of rational, but that’s another issue.
The truth is, God’s Word has always existed apart from the written text; this is clear from reading the NT especially- there are many references to the Word of God that are clearly referring to oral communication, not written. Even the written texts were written to be read orally. While the RRC of the past and some modern fundamentalists have tried to control God’s word, it doesn’t work.
Things like faith can be made a commodity – like bottled air – but that doesn’t mean it is in reality a scarce resource.
Nice blog, by the way…
Fideists are indeed irrational as they use faith, the we just say so of credulity, to defend their belief. Fundamentalists are irrational in believing in inerrancy. Non-fundamentalists are irrational for holding on to their faith when their scriptures are so irrational.
Faith doth that to people!
Of course, any of them could be more rational about some other subject than we, and some of us are irrational about some religious matter as was John Allegro and is Charya about Yeshua.
Then, I’m a fallibilist like Socrates and thus I could be wrong about religion in some aspect.