A Conversation on Faith and Reason in a Dream

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Last night a stream of conversation was running through my dream on the subject of Faith and Reason. I found it interesting. The upshot of it was that statements like “I live by faith and you live by reason,” or “I live by reason and you live by faith,” are not ultimately meaningful in themselves.

Faith and reason always have an object, a point of reference, a realm of activity.

The large majority of what people on either side of the equation believe to be true based on reason is actually based on faith, often on the assumption that they think it “reasonable to believe” this or that because some authority has said it that they trust more than others. Very often the real foundation of this sense of “reasonableness” is nothing more than the fact that “most people” think the same way for the same reason. In addition the true definition of “most people” in such cases is usually “most right-thinking people,” which may or may not amount to a majority. Which may in fact come down to one person who claims to speak for the majority.

In a sense this kind of “knowledge” may not actually qualify as real knowing at all. If this is so, then we only really live by reason and faith with regard to things we know and experience ourselves. Knowledge always combines the two. Let me use and example from outside my dream:

The first time I changed the timing chain on my old blue Chevrolet--named "Lucky" after a starving stay cat that froze to death one winter in Niagara Falls--I did so based on faith on two levels. In the first place I believed the mechanic who told me the timing chain was the problem. As it turned out he was wrong, (the real problem was the distributor cap). Then I took on faith the explanations as to how one changes a timing chain from people who seemed to know (not least a little bowling ball of a man from Baghdad named Majid, who stood by my car night after night giving me instructions like a father teaching his son). As it turned out Majid steered me right.

Now to return to my dream:

As was said earlier, Faith and Reason both always have an object, a point of reference, a realm of activity, the real difference comes down to a question of limits of those realms. The ultimate question is whether the extent of their realm of activity connects with the real. It is the issue hinted at in Hamlet’s “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” [I don’t actually recall that quotation being quoted in the conversation]. So, when one person says, “I’m in trouble! I’d better pray,” and another “I’m in trouble but I won’t pray because prayers don’t work,” are both making “reasonable” statements insofar as they fit within the realm in which they understand reason being applicable.

Just for the record, I can’t be held responsible for things that pass through my mind in my dreams, even granting they took place in my own head and do sort of sound like things I might say.

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