RATIONALITY OF FAITH

direct argument as an explanation of material things. It continued to be believed that the kind of argument which is applied to apparently tangible things could not be applied in the case of religion. But by the early twentieth century, specifically after the First World War, this mental climate changed completely. The ancient Greek philosophers believed that matter, in the last analysis, was composed of atoms. And the atom, though very tiny, was a piece of solid matter. But with the breaking of the atom in the twentieth century, all the popular scientific concepts underwent a sea change. The theories about faith and reason seemed relevant only while science was confined to the macrocosmic level. Later, when science advanced to the microcosmic level, it underwent a revolution, and along with it, the method of argument also changed. Till then, science had been based on the proposition that all the things it believed in, like the atom, could be directly explained. But when the atom, the smallest part of an element, was smashed, it was revealed that it was not a material entity, but just another name for unobservable waves of electrons. This discovery demonstrated how a scientist could see only the effect of a thing and not the thing itself. For instance, the atom, after being split, produces energy which can be converted into electricity. This runs along a wire in the form of a current, yet this event is not observable even by a scientist. But when such an event produces an effect, for instance, it lights up a bulb or sets a motor in motion, this effect comes under a scientist’s observation. Similarly, the waves from an X-ray machine are not observable by a scientist, but when they produce the image of a human body on a plate, then it becomes observable. Now the question arose as to what stand a scientist must take. Should he believe only in a tangible effect, or the intangible thing as well which produced that effect? Since the scientist was bound to believe in the tangible effect, he had no choice but to believe in its intangible cause. Here the scientist felt that direct argument could be applied to the tangible effect, but that it was not at all possible to apply direct argument to the intangible cause. The most important of all the changes brought about by this new development in the world of science was that it was Reason and faith are now standing on the same ground. No one can legitimately reject faith as something irrational, unless one is ready to reject the rationality of scientific theories as well.