Metaphysical Insight and Religious Faith
Unlike in other periods, though not too long ago, people involved in natural sciences today seem more inclined to be materialists. Placing aside sociological analyses and statistical surveys of different cultural areas, one can rightly surmise that this phenomenon is due to the prestige and amazing development of physics, chemistry, and biology in our scientific culture.
A person working closely with physics tends to see every problem in physical terms. Scientific information, classically reserved to a limited group of scholars and experts, is today available to everyone by means of education, news media, popular books and magazines, films, and the Internet. Natural sciences and technology constitute an essential part of daily life, even if simply for practical reasons.We could therefore think that this might be the reason—a cultural reason—for the particular difficulty that ordinary learned people experience in acknowledging anything immaterial, or spiritual, that transcends the material world. This often is, if not the unique reason, at least one of the relevant reasons for the current crisis, among many persons, of the faith in God, in the afterlife, in the human spiritual soul, i.e. in all the spiritual dimensions that touch upon religion. Western countries are living in a materialistic culture, although the great pioneers of modern science, as we have seen, usually were not themselves materialists and non-believers.
The problem is related to a massive eruption of atheism in contemporary culture and has been analysed from many points of view (historical, cultural, philosophical, pastoral, etc.). Science is just one of these aspects, and I will focus on this while highlighting several of Agazzi’s suggestions on the topic.
There is little doubt that grasping in natural sciences aspects that might be helpful for the acknowledgment of God’s creation and providence requires a metaphysical insight that extends beyond scientific methodology.
This can be done spontaneously, though at times runs the risk of seeming naive, or of inadequately mixing different dimensions (easily jumping from the Big Bang cosmology to God, from quantum’s indeterminacy to God’s interventions, etc.). Yet on the other hand, atheists and materialists are often too hasty in drawing conclusions upon the mere suggestion of science and hence run an analogous risk. We must ask ourselves: why do some so easily conclude to the existence of God (think of Francis Collins and his colleagues today) through contemplation of nature, whereas others, independently of philosophical positions, are not compelled to admit a connexion between the universe as disclosed by science and God as a Creator?I think this question is essential, though very difficult to answer. It is nothing less than facing the problem of why there are believers and non-believers. This is a very personal matter, irreducible to syllogistic constraints or to rationalistic evidence. It is personal because the solution involves the whole of our existential attitude with respect to life, death, persons, and moral duties. To rationally acknowledge God’s existence is not a matter of information, as when a scientist simply accepts or denies some explanatory hypothesis on logical or empirical grounds. The existence of God—especially as a personal God, or as a personal being endowed with the capacity of making voluntary choices concerning the universe and human existence—is not obvious. But, paradoxically, this non-obvious existence (or non-existence) is crucial for an absolute and overall sense of our lives. We may be attracted by the strong and at the same time soft thought of God’s existence, or perhaps intimidated by it, or even afraid of being deceived.[187]
Agazzi usually comments on this point by remarking that what is “at stake” in these existential questions is nothing less than the whole sense of our existence (Agazzi 1981: 335-336). But there are no compelling answers, and certainly none of a compelling logical or empirical nature.
The only existential pressure here is that any answer, positive or negative (“God exists”, “there is nothing beyond matter”, etc.) is for us a matter of “life and death”. Many ethically and anthropologically deep problems share this quality. Epistemologically, human knowledge in these matters is not purely rational (and philosophers are not exempt from this fact), rather it engages and unites in a profound and mysterious way both freedom and reason, to which must be added the role of various virtues such as honesty, humility and sincerity. To perceive what is true and good in these matters, classically associated with wisdom and to science, implies a very personal commit- ment.[188] [189] Even compelling evidence can be rejected if it clashes with an already rooted commitment, albeit irrational.11I agree with Agazzi’s claim that this personal conviction might be qualified as faith and that it is natural to every human person.
Every human being manages to give a sense to his/her life by adhering to a faith, not necessarily religious, yet nevertheless capable of showing him/her something for which it is worth living and dying. Insofar as they are endowed with reason, humans tend to ‘give themselves a reason’ for their being in the world, and therefore also to check the content of their faith using reason (Agazzi 2008, 109).
The relationship between religious faith, metaphysical elaborations and human sciences must be seen within this perspective. According to Agazzi, this rational faith, though frequently embedded in religion, cultural traditions and education (sometimes also in ideologies), corresponds to the ultimate sense of human life.[190] Its referent is sometimes mentioned as the world of Life (in the sense of the Husserlian Lebenswelt) (Agazzi 2010). It is not a faith in a subjectivist sense, for it encompasses all the cognitive intellectual resources (intelligence, perception of the world, acknowledgment of one’s self and of other persons), granting an ultimate meaning to what is known as a whole —we see this, for example, in relation to the value of human life and to other fundamental human tasks in science, politics, family, religion, etc.
Regarding the scope and the epistemological features of this “anthropological” faith, which cannot be confounded with a mere Weltanschauung or a pre- scientific general worldview, there is much to consider (Agazzi 1983: 155-156). It is a rational knowledge, though not in a rationalistic sense. It is metaphysical
inasmuch as it reaches beyond sensible perception and its object is not a material thing. Is it uncontroversial? It seems not,judging from the infinite debates and opinions surrounding the meaning of life. If it were indisputably obvious, it would not be faith. As faith (and not merely belief), however, it entails certainty and confidence, grounded in intellectual insight that invites one to believe, without the pressure of sensible perceptions or of analytic truths.
I would like to introduce a new element to this confrontation between science, metaphysics and faith, presupposing that the last two items touch upon ultimate questions “worth living and dying for” because they regard the meaning of human existence on earth. I refer to the first principles, which for Aristotle were objects of intellectus (nous), and not of ratio (logos). In my view, the first principles are not just a series of formal axioms, but profound and basic ontological and intellectual habitual convictions that ground all other knowledge, rational practise, language, and volition. The lively (not academic) certainty that one is a human person living in a world populated by other persons, and that our knowledge is capable of attaining the truth or of distinguishing between what is real, possible, potential, unreal, false, etc., are unshakeable convictions for any human person, even if the majority of people would be incapable of explaining the meaning of “real”, “potential”, “person”, etc. Indeed, this is a task for metaphysics.
I do not think that the first principles, in this brief account, include the ultimate meaning of human life, which is the object of faith as discussed above following Agazzi’s indications.
If the first principles correspond to what Aristotle assigns to nous, Agazzi’s notion of faith, instead, seems to concern classical wisdom (sofia). Now, science and wisdom are rational developments of human knowledge on the basis of the first principles (here “on the basis” does not mean “automatically deduced”). The world according to primitive knowledge is not self-sufficient. It requires explanations in different areas. Many of these explanations are implications which human reason derives under the requirement of coherence (non-contradiction) and of the principle of causality, and this is why people raise many questions on the basis of what they observe.But the use of reason is twofold. First, explanatory reason can systematically address the knowledge of particular things and properties of the world. This aspect can be called scientific rationality, which is not an absolute need for every human person. Secondly, people cope with the absolute need of articulating (or discovering) the ultimate meaning of their life in the world. What classically was known as wisdom is a response to precisely this aspect. This is not a privilege of philosophers, nor a way of knowing reserved only to those who are concerned with the ultimate questions. Not every person is a philosopher, but every person tends toward wisdom, or perhaps thinks that s/he has already sufficiently solved the problem regarding the meaning of life—this includes many convictions about what justice might be, and likewise injustice, values, the sense of doing science, or at least doubts and questions about problems such as what or who God is, or the meaning of human suffering and death. This is exactly the realm of rational faith as discussed by Agazzi in many of his writings concerning the problem of the relationship between science, religion and metaphysics.
Metaphysics as a scientific inquiry, or philosophy understood as a professional endeavour, deals with these universal, ultimate questions which every person necessarily copes at least with his rational faith.
This is the platform upon which Agazzi situates the interplay between faith and rational knowledge.An important part (not all) of the metaphysical discourse can be seen as a relation established between faith and knowledge (sapere[191]). The metaphysical discourse, in this aspect, is revealed as an attempt, within faith, to use reason in order to clarify what is believed and render it a form of a knowledge (sapere) (Agazzi 1981: 337).
From this perspective, reason as an extension of our intelligence beyond what is directly perceived by human senses and by the immediate intellectual perception of certain fundamental truths—namely, the first principles—frequently begins by establishing beliefs and opinions (in natural sciences, these are hypotheses or conjectures), and only afterwards attemps to operate a transition from faith to rational knowledge (metaphysical knowledge in the philosophical field; corroborated knowledge in natural sciences; well grounded opinions in practical knowledge).
A rationalistic account of knowledge considers faith as a popular view, and one that is completely submissive to reason, whether philosophical or scientific. Agazzi, instead, conceives both metaphysics and science as interplays between rational faith and reason as demonstrative knowledge, interplays that cannot ever be abandoned and replaced by pure faith or a pure reason. This point is equally valid in philosophy and science, albeit in a different way.
The metaphysical discourse is always a discourse which unfolds inside a ‘metaphysical faith’, which is not necessarily a religious faith, for it could very well be an atheistic faith, yet always a faith. Hence, metaphysics appears as a use of reason that tries to transform into rational knowledge (sapere), if possible, what is attained through faith (Agazzi 1981, 337-338).
It may happen that rational inquiry corrects some aspects of faith, or even forces one to abandon false beliefs.[192] Dogmatism, in a negative sense, is the attitude of always rejecting the possibility of a critical examination of one’s faith, even if only to clarify it.[193]
Contrary to a rationalistic view, metaphysics and the positive sciences normally operate within the framework of a previous faith. This does not mean that metaphysics would be a mere hypothetical science. Philosophers often claim to be able to attain true rational conclusions, with the exception of relativists and the followers of the so-called “weak thought” (but it can be argued that even the latter hold convictions, for example the strong conviction that there are no absolute convictions). Agazzi, too, acknowledges the merit of various important metaphysical conclusions—to be found in many different philosophical schools—that claim to be “non hypothetical, unconditionally valid and irrefutable” (Agazzi 1983: 150), something than can be fully attained if the philosopher succeeds in proving that empirical reality would be contradictory unless there is a metaphysical reality (Agazzi 1983: 150).[194]
The general conclusion of these considerations is that the opposition between faith and reason, religion and science, claimed by some authors since the Enlightenment and renewed by the so-called new Enlightenment—sometimes taking advantage of the achievements of recent science—is not valid. Perhaps one might object to this that atheists normally do not place reason in opposition with rational faith, but only with religious faith, claiming that the latter (which believes in supernatural entities) is irrational. This difficulty mixes various aspects. If atheists think that believing in God is irrational, they should argue their points using philosophical arguments, but not in the name of science. Natural sciences do not have recourse to God in their explanations because this recourse falls beyond their competence, just as it would be irrational to think that God could intervene in a football match as one secondary cause among others. Agazzi’s argument is that there is an interplay between faith and reason at the level of natural sciences, therefore within their competence, and another at the higher level of metaphysics. In the latter case faith might also be religious and not purely speculative, especially in religions like Christianity, which are by nature open to reason in all its aspects.
How, then, can these two levels be related? Each of them—namely the scientific level and the philosophical one—shows a dynamic interplay between faith and reason. The answer it that the latter provides an ultimate interpretation, which is both ontological and ethical, to the discoveries and technical achievements of the for- mer.[195] This can be done more effectively, in my view, provided philosophy explores such fields as philosophy of nature, philosophy of science, and philosophical anthropology. Otherwise, the exchange between religion and natural science runs the risk of being rather extrinsic.
From the perspective of the sciences, in turn, when one considers scientific results not in a piecemeal way, but globally—as it happens in the framework of great theories, for example, in cosmology, or in evolutionary biology taken as a whole—a philosophical interpretation is more inviting. Natural sciences today, considering their complexity and interdisciplinary relations, present a sufficiently consistent scenario—from cosmology to biological sciences—that more than ever seems to invite a philosophical overview (Vitoria 1994). This interpretation is a philosophy of nature or a philosophy of science that can be afterwards related to theological topics, such as God’s creation and providence. Science is very useful, moreover, for furnishing the material upon which the philosophical reflection might be undertaken. In this sense, science and philosophy are not extrinsic, but complementary and necessary to each other, and this despite the usual changeable state of scientific theories.
In conclusion, philosophy is a necessary cognitive mediator between science and religion (or between science and theology). According to Agazzi, it can be shown that the whole of the empirical experience—the epistemological space given to natural sciences—does not equate to the whole of reality as such. This experience is open to metaphysical investigation as well. Hence, the latter opens the conceptual space to transcendence (in the sense of God and the human spirit), which is in turn the cognitive space given to religious faith (Agazzi 1983: 134, 153-154).
Summing up,
1. Natural sciences are neither purely empirical nor purely rational. They presuppose metaphysical aspects—the first principles—and they possess a particular dynamism according to the intellectual interplay between faith and reason with respect to their object, which is the world as captured by the totality of empirical experience.
2. The answer to the problem of the ultimate meaning of human existence in the material world does not come from natural sciences, but from a higher metaphysical perspective. This perspective in ordinary people is given through faith, normally embedded in religion, or at least in some existential attitudes. This faith corresponds to what classically was called wisdom.
3. A systematic rational inquiry on the ultimate meaning of human existence pertains to metaphysics—considered as a philosophical discipline—or to theology, which is the science of religious faith.
4. From numbers 2 and 3, we can conclude that the relationship between faith and reason, or between science and metaphysics—including religious knowl- edge—is positive and natural, and cannot be prohibited by any artificial caveats. Philosophy of nature and philosophy of science are cognitive mediators that facilitate a positive and fruitful relationship between those items.