The rational basis of religious experience
by A G Oettle
I PROPOSE in this paper to endeavour to show that religious experience by no means contradicts rational thought and logical argument. While, however, claiming that it is not contrary to reason, I freely admit that religious conviction is not transmissible by argument. Here is a personal involvement, very much like falling in love. Two who have loved one another for many years may produce a dozen reasons, yet neither will think these a sufficient explanation. The possible courses of action “since first I saw thy face” are considered in a 17th-century love song, but it concludes “No! No! No! My heart is fixed, and cannot disentangle!” How much more is this true of one long acquainted with the love of God! With Job, and many since, he can
cry: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”[1]
In its most elementary form, the religious sense may consist simply of a feeling of awe, based on a belief in a supernatural order with which the person feels it is possible to establish harmonious relations. Generally this supernatural order involves a Person or Persons, whose existence
is relevant to each individual, and to whom every man is significant. Elihu reminded Job: “Behold, God is mighty, and does not despise any:”[2] – thus, personal committal is rewarded. The same message came from Jeremiah:
“Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”[3] The present discussion, however, while admitting the reality of these simpler
religious feelings, cannot but be affected by one’s own Christian standpoint.
WIDESPREAD MISUNDERSTANDINGS
To dispose of certain common misconceptions at the start, our subject concerns religious experience. We can dismiss from our considerations outward observance of forms of worship
by those merely paying lip-service, but lacking personal faith. It is also freely acknowledged that in their daily lives believers fall short of what they know to be right, and that they often accept the mores of a society whose motivation is utterly at variance with what they claim to profess. Christian behaviour is often a poor reflection of Christian teaching. Nevertheless, while acknowledging these deficiencies, and granting that faith trandscends reason – being “the conviction of things not seen”[4] – I believe that it is still possible to show that the claims of such a belief on its adherents are not unreasonable. Many segments of human experience cannot be comprehended by logical analysis alone. All forms of artistic appreciation, for example, involve values and percepticity that cannot be transmitted or proved to people who lack them. No argument can persuade the tone deaf to appreciate the subtleties of a piece of music. Similarly, reason may employ
oversimplifications such as mathematical formulæ or the terms of its syllogisms, but the world of experience goes far beyond these.
The claim to “rationalism” made by those who call themselves Rationalists does not really bear scrutiny. Their publications, and the titles of lectures to Rationalist Societies have often shown that they are not consistently attempting a logical examination of human problems. Had they
been, they would surely have examined road accidents, education, alcoholism and the like. Instead, their use of the term “Rationalist” seems to imply no more than “Anti-religious” and their members are primarily committed to the militant
creed that religion is vain and mystical, and parapsychological experience is delusory. They claim to accept reason as the only guide, but this is only as far as it suits them.
Admittedly they go further than the Logical Positivists, who dispose of ethical and intellectual values by labelling all the terms used as “meaningless”! Nevertheless, with them, the Rationalists repudiate a large
segment of human experience. In so doing they enjoy a simplified picture of the universe – but is it more accurate? It seems to me that while they are well aware of the foibles of Christian groups, and the corruptions of Christendom (and possibly derive some support for their position from these) they are either unable or unwilling to recognise the reality of experiences known to even the beginners in the Christian family. Apparently they have difficulty in distinguishing between Christendom and Christianity, between mere formal observance of the outward “trappings” and the reality, subjective as well as objective, or between the failures of genuine believers and the triumphant careers of the wholly-committed few. The Old Testament prophets frequently emphasised the inadequacy of religiosity. One of the clearest of these passages is in Isaiah, where the usual accompaniments of fasting are repudiated and the
description of the genuine fast is given. God says: “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bonds of wickedness and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast into thy house? When thou seest the naked that thou cover him; and
that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?”[5] The demands of the prophet were direct and realistic.
A Rationalist’s attitude reminds me of two other examples of a limited outlook, which, though wholly rational, happen to be incomplete. The first of these is colour blindness, in which the affected person may not suspect his deficiency until he makes some glaring error in colour matching.
The second is the mental disease known as paranoia. Here the sufferer from delusions inhabits a world which is completely reasonable, but which, as Chesterton observed, is too small. If such a person believes that men are conspiring against him, the very absence of any evidence becomes further confirmation of his suspicion. It shows the subtlety of the plot.
An example of grandiose self-centredness is given in the book of Daniel. King Nebuchadnezzar ignored the warning of his dream twelve months previously, and said in his pride: “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built . . . by the might of my power and for the honour of my majesty.”[6] Then his reason left him, and, following the psychiatric principles of the time, he was driven out from men until he lifted his eyes to Heaven and his understanding returned. Then he honoured that Ruler “whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation”.[7]
Similarly, I believe that Rationalists only acknowledge a world that happens to be too small and too self-centred. The limitation makes it false. Their bounds may go beyond those of science, and they might willingly agree that “Man shall not live by bread alone”, yet the completion of this quotation challenges them, for it reads – “but by every word of God”.[8] I do not pretend that the implications of this statement are easy to grasp, but it seems that, from insensitivity or from antagonism, they are unable to begin to understand.
THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE
a. Science requires acts of belief
Before setting out to show that certain beliefs are necessary in those embarking on the scientific field, I freely acknowledge that it is not much of an argument to retort: “You too!” It may, however, encourage some humility to remember that the study of Nature also requires certain unprovable assumptions. For example:
A N Whitehead, considering the 17th century, noted that in those days “the clergy were in principle rationalists, whereas the men of science were content with a simple faith in the order of Nature”. Today some of this simple faith has been replaced by a disillusioned resignation, yet there
are still areas where the scientist is obliged to take a stand without the possibility of scientific proof. Such situations are generally considered to be philosophical ones, but they are none the less relevant decisions.
The first of these assumptions is that of accepting the existence of an objective reality. That is to say, that our sensory impressions refer to a real and logical world outside of ourselves and that these impressions can be translated, sorted and arranged in a logical manner. The agreement of other observers provides confirmation that we are on the right track, but even without this confirmation we accept the validity of most of our sensory impressions. The reliable sensations are distinguished from similar but unreliable ones in circumstances where we have learnt to distrust them, e.g. those associated with vertigo, piloting an aircraft on instruments or with hallucinogenic drugs. We assume that we experience the same sensation of “blueness” as other observers do, though we cannot prove it. The identity of our sensations is not directly provable, though we can take comfort from the argument that a race that was seriously out of touch with reality would long
ago have disappeared from the earth. (This, of course, does not exclude other causes for extinction.)
A second assumption relates to the existence of causality. I have recently been obliged to examine this question in the matter of cigarettes and lung cancer. [9] The argument was put forward that no one had proved that the habit actually caused the cancer. How does one prove causation? The more I have read, the vaguer the subject has become, and apparently the position taken by Hume remains unassailable, that all that can be demonstrated
is a succession of events. Yet the idea of cause and effect, like so many things that have a practical use without theoretical justification, has a meaning to all men, and I cannot visualise a civilization that could discard this concept, however unprovable. It is implicit in the idea of responsibility
and achievement, the operation of justice, or the organization of contests. Whether philosophers approve or not, ordinary people, including scientists, take causation for granted, on the basis of human insight and a belief not far removed from faith.
b. The sphere of science
The scientific method is restricted in its subject matter. Undoubtedly the range will be extended, but certain spheres of experience elude scientific analysis, like those of æsthetics, ethics and religious experience. In handling one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, science can discuss the chemistry of the printer’s ink, or provide a carbon dating of the paper, but it cannot distinguish between great poetry and bathos. The tests which recognize a Piltdown forgery are not suitable for recognizing great art.
c. Science does not offer absolute certainty
The scientific world once seemed very secure, for it was thought that hypotheses could be tested by crucial experiments and settled for all time. The method of inductive-deductive reasoning has been amazingly successful, and it is small wonder if many should have considered it infallible. As Dame Kathleen Lonsdale has written, “A century ago scientists felt that anything that they did not know would be known sooner or later by scientific techniques.”
Despite the successes, limitations have become apparent. Much depends on the tractability of the subject matter. The steady progress of physics has not been matched in social science of psychology, and this is not for want of trying. Even in physics there have been reverses. A N Whitehead has noted that the 17th century was marked by “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. For they attempted to distinguish qualities which are inseparable, such as space and time, or matter and energy. Today these are combined in concepts wholly foreign to our day-to-day experience and common sense. The crucial experiment no longer guarantees finality, for the answer
depends on how the question is put. The wave-particle synthesis is an example of this limitation. In place of absolute certainty there exists today more than a hint of ambivalence.
Bronowski (1966) has expressed present attitudes in the following words: “Neither science nor literature ever gives a complete account of Nature or of life. In both of them, the progress from the present account to
the next account is made by exploration of the ambiguities in the language that we use at this moment. In science, these ambiguities are resolved for the time being, until it is shown to fall short. This is why the results of science at any given moment can be presented on an axiomatic and deductive machine.” He concludes: “It follows that the laws of Nature cannot be formulated as an axiomatic, deductive, formal and unambiguous system which is also complete.”
