“But right now I’m going to continue to show that those who protest the most against the reliance on faith are, even in their protests, manifesting their supreme faith.
“It was the philosopher David Hume who demonstrated just what a faith-based enterprise science really is. Science is in the business of discovering the laws of nature. It bases its conclusions about the laws of nature on empirical evidence. Sometimes we discover that what we thought was an inviolable law of nature actually isn’t, and so we discard it and try to find one to replace it. But when we find out that some particular law of nature isn’t quite right, we don’t give up on the lawfulness of nature. We never give up on that. We just give up on our old formulation of the laws of nature, and start searching for a new formulation that can accommodate the new evidence. And so we can ask-this is what David Hume in effect did ask-what would make us give up on the lawfulness of nature? Is there any kind of empirical evidence that would make us give up on that belief-not just give up on our belief that this or that is a law of nature, but on the whole belief that nature is lawful? Of course not. Anytime we get some counterevidence against a law, we go off searching for the right law. We never consider that maybe that counterevidence should be used against the whole idea that nature is lawful. Never! The idea just wouldn’t arise, because the whole enterprise of science is ruled by the search for laws. The unlawfulness of nature is unthinkable, not because there’s no evidence for it, but because nothing would ever be deemed evidence for it. And we can’t even offer any evidence for the lawfulness of nature-this is the tricky part of Hume’s argument-because even the notion of evidence already presumes nature’s lawfulness. If we were really going to ask for evidence for nature’s lawfulness, we wouldn’t be able to offer up any evidence without already presuming nature’s lawfulness. That’s what Hume showed.”
Fidley had paused and given a grand survey of the packed chapel. He had the audience’s full attention, and he knew it. Roz was not looking happy, and Mona was downright grim.
“Reason-logic and science-themselves demonstrate that faith is unavoidable. So it can’t be true, as this flock of ardent unbelievers has been trying to convince us, that there’s faith and religion on one side, and reason and science on the other, and that they are irreconcilable antagonists. Just as faith without reason is blind, reason without faith is crippled.”
So is Fidley claiming that Hume showed that faith in the lawfulness of nature is necessary for science to proceed, and that faith in religion is also necessary (for what?), and that science can’t say anything against it? That seems blatantly fallacious, and hardly the tactic that, in Lucinda’s words, “such a rationalist-University of Chicago and all” would take. But is that where he’s headed?
“And there you have it, my first prong of attack. Faith is unavoidable.
“Prong two,” Fidley says now, and calmly takes a sip from his glass of water. “Given that we sometimes have to rely on faith, when should we do it? What should we have faith in? Well, reason and science certainly. But what else? We need standards. To say that faith is necessary doesn’t throw open the floodgates to all beliefs willy-nilly. We can’t just start believing in superstitions, populating our world with leprechauns and Easter bunnies.
“You see, there’s serious faith, which is necessary, and then there’s frivolous faith. Faith in the laws of logic and the laws of nature is necessary if the world is going to present itself to us coherently. If I doubt logic itself, I don’t know how to proceed. There is no way to proceed. My knowing that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man will give me no reason to think that Socrates is mortal. Same thing if I were to start doubting the lawfulness of nature. If I doubt that nature is lawful, then I will never use the past as a guide to the future. Just because light has always traveled at 186,272 miles per second up until today, that would give me no reason to believe that it will do so tomorrow.
“The moraclass="underline" there are faiths that are unavoidable if coherent lives are to be lived. That’s presumably why Cass Seltzer has faith in logic and in science. Cass Seltzer is a man of faith because he can’t live his life coherently otherwise.
“These kinds of faiths can be compared to financial investments. When you make an investment, you can’t know whether it’s going to pay you back. You can only make the investment and see what happens. Has your money worked for you or not? The same principle applies here. Does investing in a faith in logic and science work for us or not? Obviously it does. Without it, we’re flat broke. So this is a faith we should keep in our portfolio.
“Are there other faiths that are like this, that are comparable to the faith in science and reason? Well, what about the faith that your own individual life has a purpose? What about the faith that human life in general has meaning, that it matters to the universe that we are here and that we survive and flourish? What about the faith in the dignity of human life, your own and others’? How is it possible to live coherently, leading lives that are worthy of us, without faith in a transcendent purpose and meaning and dignity? These, too, are faiths that pay a good rate of return. To accept them is to see the value of one’s life increase exponentially.
“Skepticism in regard to reason and science renders our lives incoherent to the point of unlivable. So, too, does skepticism about the purpose and meaning of our lives, skepticism about whether we have any right to pursue our lives with the seriousness they demand of us. A David Hume could demonstrate the non-demonstrability of reason, but that didn’t keep him from reasoning. A Bertrand Russell or a Cass Seltzer can argue for the purposelessness of our individual lives, yet that doesn’t keep them from living purposefully, from living as if it all matters. Cass Seltzer pursues his life; in fact, from the looks of it, he pursues it pretty well. Even if he argues that he thinks his life is devoid of purpose, of worthiness, the very vigor with which he is pursuing it gives the lie to his claim. It’s just like the person who argues that we shouldn’t have faith in reason-he gives the lie to his argument by expecting that his argument will be taken seriously, since if his argument really worked we couldn’t take it seriously. Some faiths are unavoidable because without them our very lives become incoherent. Faith that we have a reason to live is a faith like that.
“That is my second prong,” Eighteen minutes have elapsed, and he has yet to affirm the resolution that God exists.
“But I haven’t said anything yet about God.” Aha! “I’ve waited for my third prong of attack to introduce Him. I should have convinced you by now that certain faiths are necessary for coherence, and I should have convinced you that among such faiths is that in our own purposefulness, our sense that our lives matter. You know, even someone who ends his life is taking that life seriously, so seriously that he can’t stand to live it. We just can’t inhabit our lives without taking them seriously.”
Cass could be projecting-he’s been known to project before-but he seems to sense a slightly more sympathetic note creeping into Fidley’s delivery as he swerves toward the existential.
“But how can an individual life acquire this seriousness? What can confer it? It requires something outside an individual’s life to make it matter, and that something must itself have agency and purpose. It must have intentionality, which means it must have a mind. And that is exactly what God is. The mind of God is the purposeful agency that confers purposefulness on each of us, even on Cass Seltzer.”