In a recent article for First Things, Christian Smith writes about the natural, but not necessary tendency toward religion for mankind. The article is well worth your time and in it, Smith argues that religion is natural to humanity, not because religious practices are universal, but because religious practice exists in every arena where the tendency toward religion is fostered. In other words, all cultures have the ability to be religious, but some simply do not cultivate that tendency.
Though Smith’s premise is well argued, I was particularly struck by his assertion that belief is a universal human condition,
The first of these natural human tendencies toward religion springs from our universal human condition in relation to what we affirm as true. As I have argued in my book Moral, Believing Animals, all human beings are believers, not knowers who know with certitude. Everything we know is grounded on presupposed beliefs that cannot be verified with more fundamental proof or certainty that provides us assurance that they are true. That is just as true for atheists as for religious adherents. The quest for foundationalist certainty, with which we are all familiar, is a distinctly modern project, one launched as a response to the instabilities and uncertainties of early-modern Europe. But that modern project has failed. There is no universal, rational foundation upon which indubitably certain knowledge can be built. All human knowing is built on believing. That is the human condition.
That means that religious commitment is not fundamentally different from any human belief commitment. It involves the same innate human need to believe more than one can “prove.” Otherwise we would live in a cognitive desert, unable to furnish our minds with enough perceptions and ideas to begin thinking. Religious believing thus shares the larger epistemic situation of all human believing.
The argument by many atheists is that religion is based on feelings and not founded on facts, that religion cannot be proven. Smith succinctly points out, however, that in the most exact sense, all human knowledge is built on believing. At the end of the day, Atheists have no ultimate foundation for knowing. Secularists believe that there exists a foundation for their positions (logic, objectivism, naturalism, etc…), but the key here is the word “believe.” There is no way to prove their foundations, all of their knowledge is built upon belief.
Smith’s point is that the secularist is in the same boat as the adherent of religion, their knowledge is based upon their beliefs. However, from a Christian standpoint, that is not completely true. Plantinga has argued that God should be the foundation for belief. God has revealed himself, and because of God’s revelation, we have a foundation to build upon. Sure, belief is still necessary, but it is certainly not a blind faith, it is a belief built upon evidence of God’s existence and his revealed will.
Christians must reject the world’s lies that secularism is founded upon reason and Christianity upon faith. Belief in subatomic particles (science) is no more reasonable than belief in God (religion). Augustine argued that we must believe in order to understand, but he never argued that understanding was not possible. Belief and understanding are only possible because the Christian faith has God as its ultimate foundation.
