Q&A: On Faith and Rationality
On Faith and Rationality
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I once read in your writings that in order for you to abandon belief in God, you would have to abandon rationality.
On the other hand, you also said that nothing is certain, not even God.
So my question is: how does that fit together? It sounds like on the one hand, not to believe is irrational and illogical and simply doesn’t fit with reality, while on the other hand it isn’t certain. How can something that simply has to be, with no other possibility, still be uncertain? Isn’t that some kind of paradox?
Answer
I don’t know where you heard that. I did indeed say that belief in God is rational and is a consequence of rationality. That has nothing to do with the question of whether it is certain. On the contrary, a rational claim is necessarily (!) not a necessary claim. So it is entirely possible that it will become clear to me that I was mistaken and that belief is not logical, and then, if I am honest, I would have to abandon it. At the moment, in my view, it follows from rational thinking.
Discussion on Answer
Giving up faith under the assumptions I currently have would indeed be giving up rationality. But changing the assumptions could bring about a change in belief (and not an abandonment of it).
A rational claim is one that accords with common sense and logic. I do not think anyone can offer an objective and agreed-upon definition of rationality. But in any case, the fact that others think something does not mean they are right. And if you are expecting a definition that will show that everyone else is wrong and bring them all to repentance, that is a childish expectation. Any foundational concept, by virtue of being foundational, cannot be defined.
For example, the principle of causality is a rational and logical principle. But clearly it is not certain, and certainly it is not the result of a logical argument (and even if it were, a logical argument always has assumptions). From it one can derive the existence of God. That does not mean there are not people who think there is no God, or that the principle of causality is incorrect (or correct in ways different from what I think).
“I would add that in my eyes the heaviest price I would have to pay if and when I had to give up my belief in God would be giving up rationality. For me, this is the basic relationship between faith and science.”
I copied this from your article here on the site about the Faith and Science series, part 1.
So are you basically saying that faith can be derived from rationality, and a rational claim is not a necessary or certain claim, and therefore the two do not contradict each other? It still seems that one has to define what “rational” means, because obviously there are people who do not believe and think that they are the rational ones.