Faith is Reasonable

COWEN: Reason? Reason is the bottom line?

HART: It has to be, because even if you choose faith, you’re choosing to believe something for a reason. Even if you’re not able to name those reasons yourself, some compelling rational intuition has worked upon you to say, “Well, I believe I can trust this source more than that source.” You may say that, “Oh, I’m having faith in what it’s telling me,” but you’re having faith in that rather than something else, because at some level — maybe a tacit level that you have a hard time laying out — you’ve somehow reached the judgment. It would have to be a rational judgment if your faith is of any meaning, that you trust this rather than that.

A bit further along….

The act of faith is a way of engaging the mind, engaging reason so it can explore. If you don’t start with some trust of the possibility of discovering the truth, then you never will seek the truth to begin with. That search requires a combination of a degree of rational judgment and a degree of trust, and you hope that the two prove to be in harmony. If they’re not, though, if you reach a point where your faith and your reason come into conflict, then trust your reason.