Faith and/in reason (delete as appropriate)

I had a nightmare journey home last Thursday, but I made the good decision to check the paper shop before heading to the station. I ended up buying a magazine I very rarely buy, the last time being at least 15-20 years ago: it was The New Scientist. I was drawn to an article or series of articles headlined as “What's wrong with reason?”. It had a heading of “seven reasons why people hate reason” inside and included Archbishop Rowan Williams as a contributor so there would be at least some non-anti-religious opinion.

This did indeed prove to be a very interesting read for the 3 hours it took to make my 20 minute journey. It was a recognition that people are steering away to some degree from science & reason and some of the reasons why. There were several honest scientists who admit that there is much wrong with “science” as it's seen by the public and the wrong done, that reason was not always reasonable and is far more limited than the early founders of the Enlightenment would have you believe. That there were & maybe still are extremes of “rationality” that are at least as extreme as any religious bigotry.

Rowan Williams said that “There was a constant risk of slipping into the conclusion... that the unreasonable human didn't count”. That this may have helped contribute toward attitudes that allowed slavery in America and post-revolution France. There needs to be something outside of “instrumental reason” to an older/pre modern rationality which puts “reasonable” into the context of community.

Another Contributor, Neuroscientist Colin Frith, put forward the idea that no-one really uses reason. Most of our computing is made sub-consciously and we then use reason to justify our decisions rather than guide them. Sociologist David Miller showed how science was abused by governments and corporations, leading to more scepticism – his article really was enlightening!

This all fits into much of what I have long thought. That Science can easily become religion, that atheism is a faith (you cannot prove God doesn't exist any more than I can prove He does) and that reason is not always reasonable. The 7th article was by philosopher Mary Midgley and was titled “Reason's just another faith”. She spoke of “scientism” as well as science – that many plausible theories are accepted as fact without absolute proof and that some believe that science can answer everything: “Science then no longer stands for enquiry but for ideology, authority, a general approach to life which demands to prevail in all conflicts: that is, it is turned into scientism.”

“The central question” she says “is about trust. In what do you put your faith?” - indeed.