Some people feel that faith and reason are incompatible. They argue that those who have faith in God are not thinking rationally and those who think rationally can’t have faith in God. To support this, they cite the many irrational superstitions that are practiced in the name of religious faith.

Yes, much that goes on in the name of religion may not stand the scrutiny of reason. But that doesn’t mean reason has all the answers. In fact, reason can’t explain its own explanatory power.

By thinking rationally, we may find sensible explanations for many things. But why should things be reasonable? Skeptics take pride in science’s capacity to discover the rational order of things? But why should there be a rational order to things? Even more fundamentally, why should our mind have a capacity to think rationally and why should there exist in nature a corresponding rational order? Foundational to scientific progress is the assumption that there exists a rational order in nature that our reason-driven research can uncover. And assumption is essentially just another word for faith. Thus, faith is the reason for reason.

Indeed, the Bhagavad-gita (04.39) underscores this universal role of faith in acquiring any form of knowledge.

And the most reasonable explanation for this unreasonable reasonableness of the correlation between the working of our mind and the working of nature is that both manifest the work of a supremely reasonable intelligence. That intelligence, being the source of everything, can be understood only when we rise to a transcendental level of consciousness. Reflecting this inferential chain, the same Gita verse declares that we need to become committed spiritual researchers, minimizing sensory entanglement and developing devotional attachment.

With such commitment, we can discover and delight in the supreme intelligence that is the source, sustainer and summit of all reason.

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