The Dance of Reason and Unreason

Gardiner Harris reports for the New York Times that MMR vaccine has once again been cleared as a cause of autism. Scientific studies of this sort will change the thinking of some some people, but a great many others will continue to believe that vaccines cause autism. Presumably this will lead to higher incidences of measles, mumps, and rubella but no decrease in autism.

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There are complex reasons for the lack of trust in scientific findings. People are ambivalent about the explanatory power of science, and autism, which is on the rise for poorly understood reasons, is so fearsome that unreason simply pushes reasoned explanations aside. Also, as the article shows, vaccines do pose risks; they simply pose fewer risks than going unvaccinated. Since being vaccinated has some adverse effects, there is a store of ready anecdotes to illustrate how dangerous and unworthy vaccines are. Human beings have difficulty remaining reason-oriented when the stakes are high.

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Religions are human enterprises, and so they are tangled up completely within this dance of reason and unreason, between seeing straight and being caught in a web of fear.

Critics of religion like to point to the unreasonable elements of religion: the concept of revelation, for example, or the notion of resurrection from the dead; the idea of reincarnation or the belief in a loving God. How loving is God, they ask, when the world is a hellish and difficult place. Frequently, however, these critics err (as do some rationalist defenders of religions) in holding all religious claims to a standard of reason.

There are some human activities that are a work of reason (artistic work, love and family, for example), even though elements of them can be understood using the tools of reason. For example, a great painting (say Picasso's Guernica) is not produced as an act of reason. The painting is full of suggestions and 'ideas', but it is not an argument. The painting was produced through passion. Thus, it makes no sense to suggest that it is unreasonable. The painting is wondrous and terrible--those reactions can be understood using the tools of reason--but it is not 'against reason.'

Much of religion also is not against reason; it is drawing from and commending something quite different. Reason's defenders are right to worry when people doubt the work of reason proper, as for example when scientific studies are ignored or nullified by fearful reactions. Reason's defenders are on less secure ground when they mock the unreasonableness of something that is not a work of reason.