Religion and Reason

Reading Descartes’ Meditations and considering the way we have so comprehensively applied the ideas he lays out in them to every aspect of our lives as Westerners (to the point that valuing individuality, reason, and the separation of mind and body have become part of our unconscious socialization, things we take for granted), I found it very interesting the way we have extracted the “reason” half of his musings from the religion. Or the other way around. Descartes’ final goal (or so he said) in writing the Meditations was to prove the existence of God, yet somehow in our reason and science-driven society have managed to sidestep this part of his argument, to the point of turning Descartes’ own logic around to disprove the existence of God. In fact, it’s possible that from this basic disagreement comes the deeply ingrained notion that science and religion are completely incompatible. Steven Pinker, for example, endlessly employs the reasoning of “I think, therefore I am,” as well as the very Cartesian practices of categorizing and labeling in order to understand the world around us, while unapologetically disparaging the validity of any kind of religious belief. I’m not saying this is necessarily a good or bad thing (though I don’t really condone disrespect toward anyone for any reason)—to be honest, I have a hard time wrapping my head around a way that faith and science could coexist peacefully in their pursuits. But perhaps these are the limits of my own imagination due to my inherent “Cartesianism.” I just think it’s funny the way we have taken Cartesianism to the point where, when considering the original text, it contradicts itself. It leads me to wonder what our views of and ideas about science will be in the future—as well as the fact that we almost blindly accept our current notions of science as truth. At this moment, we have come to see religion and reason as two innately contradictory subjects, but this is because Descartes’ ideas radically changed the way we think of the two in relation to one another. Who knows what kind of revolutionary thinker could come along and shake things up once again? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.