The Foundations of Religious Belief. A Symposium

Abstract

My starting-point, of course, is the trustworthiness of the testimony of my nature in what it compels me to accept without reasoning. It is only on this assumption that we can have any reliable data for thought, or that our very processes of thought can be depended on. Assume that our intuitive and necessary ideas are not worthy of trust, and all certainty in science and philosophy, as well as in religion and theology, is swept away, and all search for truth and reality is vain. So far as our intuitive knowledge has to do with our present living, it is found practically reliable. We may well believe, then, that when our natures have feelings and longings which have to do with morality, religion, and what is beyond present verification, they give true testimony. Besides, we cannot believe that our natures, which recognize truth as a supreme obligation, can have a constitution so false as to make their primary impressions delusive.In this way we have an assured basis for natural theology. But we cannot from this ground alone reach an answer to all the questions which have to do with God, immortality, and destiny. On some the light is dim, and on others it altogether fails. Is it possible for us to be assured of truth which is beyond the limits of our powers, perhaps beyond the limits of the powers of any who have not had a special experience or a special knowledge of truth in some other way?All men do have an ability to recognize truth which transcends their experience or power to think through for themselves. Were it not for this principle, no one could be taught anything in any branch of knowledge so as to be certain of it. But we can be made certain through this power of discrimination, and broaden the area of what we accept as established. But even the reliable knowledge gained in this way, reaching out far beyond what we can be sure of through our individual experience and thought, falls far short of satisfying the demands of our natures, as the voice of conscience and our constitutional cravings bring us into relation to these tremendous 258