Faith vs Intellect:The function of human intelligenceThe function of faith

Many religious practices are premised on the faith of the practitioner. The practitioner must believe unquestioningly that deity will respond to his efforts in a way that will ultimately benefit the practitioner. Yet we humans are somewhat of a curious lot. It is central to our nature to question and to reason; to ask "why?" Why does the effect follow the cause?

If faith is the predicate, what then is the purpose of intelligence?

Intelligence

Intelligence - the ability to reason, to use language, mathematics, to extrapolate from the general to the specific and from the specific to the general; to be aware of our own existence in the universe and our our effect on our environment and its effect on us, is a hallmark of what it is to be human. It may not be arrogance to say that this trait is uniquely human. We can remember the past. We can forecast future events from current circumstances. We can draw inferences and reach conclusions.

Thousands of years ago, humans observed the position of the sun within the constellations of the Zodiac and noticed that when the sun traveled in the constellation of Taurus*, that calves would be born to the cattle they tended and that the length of the day was the same as the length of the night; that when the sun traveled in Leo, the length of the day was at its longest, the sun was at it northern most, and summer was at its hottest; when the sun traveled in Virgo that the harvest time had arrived. The early Egyptians noticed that shortly after the helical rising of the star we now call Sirius that the Nile river would flood. As men discovered the predictive ability of observing the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars, the field of astrology was born. Stories were told, perhaps to help remember or to teach others, about how the seasons and the stars aligned. Perhaps these stories were believed at first; perhaps they were not, but eventually they developed into the mythologies of solar astrology.

Humans noticed that seed planted in the ground would return with plants that could be harvested, and realized that planting and cultivating crops produced a better food supply than hunting and gathering, and humans became farmers. Intelligence allowed humans to tame fire and invent the wheel; to build houses and cities, and all of the other things that humans have invented.

Through intelligence men and women can distinguish between the concepts of good and evil. We can see our own nakedness and that of others. Only through intelligence can there be a sense of morals and scruples. Only through intelligence can we conceive of owning or possessing a thing. Perhaps it is only because of our intelligence that we are able to conceive of gods or question the belief in them.

Why? And why does it appear that humans are the only species gifted with intelligence?

Faith

Faith, in some ways, appears to be the opposite of intelligence. An Evangelical Christian who believes the Christian Bible to be the inerrant word of God will take the contents of the book of Genesis as literal and indisputable truth, and will hold to the notion of creationism despite any evidence that may be presented to the contrary. Some put so much faith into a religious or even secular leader that they will follow such a leader without questioning where he or she leads, even to the point of ritual suicide. Some of the greatest atrocities in human history have arisen from such faith. 

Another aspect of faith is the belief an individual has in a ritual practice to produce a desired outcome despite the lack of any visible connection between the ritual practiced and the desired outcome. We need to distinguish this type of faith from that where there is a visible - no matter how tenuous - connection between the practice and the desired outcome, though it can be said that they may be related by the apparent consistency of result. Putting money in a bank is an act of faith in the bank's ability to protect and grow the money, which is different than making an investment decision based on a consultation of the I Ching or the Tarot, or choosing a mate based on the astrological alignment of stars, planets, sun and moon at the time they were born.  

Or is it? The decision to use a bank is based - in theory at least - on the inductive reasoning that the bank is a sound place to put money, but do the majority of bank customers actually do the due diligence of examining the probabilities of bank failures and weigh them against the potential return from other investments? This has not been my experience. Most people that I know simply believe that banks are good and safe without ever checking - or for that matter, even knowing what to check - to determine whether or not a bank is safe.

On the other hand, if a person, or a group of them, have found that there is a correlation between the alignment of the stars and other events, making an inductive conclusion that the alignment of the stars is likely to be indicative of the other event, then the reasoning may be sound. Others, who follow later, may not be aware of the correlation or the observation, they have simply inherited the conclusion, have faith in it and follow it. If the correlation is really there, then they will have the desired result and their faith is justified. 

We must also examine the rituals of faith. Things that faithful people do in the practice of their faith for which they expect some sort of result. Here we are examining activities such as prayer, healing blessings, tithes and offerings, and other such practices, Many of these practices are ubiquitous, present in almost all religions and faiths; some are even present in practices of the non-religious in some form. The anecdotes of miraculously answered prayers are legion, but the conventional wisdom among those of faith is that if a prayer is unanswered the fault lies in the lack faith, not in the lack of mechanism.

We must ask the question: are the probabilities of the desired outcome better for those of faith than for those who lack faith. And if they are, what is the mechanism that makes it so. We must also examine whether the necessity for unquestioning faith provides a breeding ground for false prophets and others seeking to take advantage of the faithful and of course, how to detect such fraud. These are questions for another day,  however. 

The role of intelligence

Lets look at intelligence and see if we can puzzle out a reason for it to exist in humans under each of the three hypotheses>

Intelligence and the existence of deity

I have not included the creation of humanity by deity in our hypothesis, but I will adopt it here. If intelligence evolved from some other source, irregardless of the existence of deity, it is best covered in the other two hypothesis. I will also make a few a priori assumptions about our deity: first, that we are dealing with a rational deity or group of them working toward a reasoned purpose. We do not know, and perhaps do not need to know, what that purpose is. We merely assume that there is an objective. If we are dealing with a mad god or a group of gods at cross purposes it is unlikely that we will divine anything but insanity in out quest, so I will ignore those scenarios. I am tempted here to include an assumption that there is an afterlife, but I don't think we can consider that axiomatic at this point. We must also consider that there may not be anything beyond this mortal coil. 

It seems rather obvious to conclude that, if there is a deity or group of deities that created the universe and that created us, that it or they included intelligence in man for a reason. It seems equally reasonable to conclude that it is intended to be used.

Yet as humans have explored our existence and developed the great philosophies and sciences, intelligence - the ability to reason - draws us farther and farther from a belief in deity. (At least this is the case when the intelligence leads to the a priori assumption of Realism. Intelligence and reason inform the skeptic, not the devoutly faithful. It is the intellect that intrudes on faith. It is intellect that is capable of finding the fraud, but it is also intellect that dampens the working of fatih, and thereby may miss the truth.

Why would a reasonable deity hardwire the human brain to believe in him/het/it/they and then give us intelligence that works the opposite direction?

Some possibilities:

• Ambivilence: our deity doesn't care if we believe in him/her/it/them; faith and intelligence exist for some purpose other than for us to believe or not believe.  
• Entertainment: our deity or deities enjoys watching us struggle with the seeming contradiction.
• Education: our deity wants us to learn something by resolving the paradox.

The first two possibilities are dead ends. The third provides us with a very interesting puzzle. What if the purpose of our intelligence is to discover the mechanism(s) that make faith work? What if our current state of knowledge is similar to what men knew about magnetism or how migratory birds navigate a few centuries ago, and our deity wants us to figure out how to invoke the effects of faith without having to be blind to it, and perhaps even to invoke those effects in a much stronger way that we can by simple faith alone, and in so doing, become closer to our deity?

In future posts, I will examine the purpose of intelligence using the assumptions of "cosmic consciousness" and the atheist hypothesis. For now however, I invite your comments. Using the a priori assumption that a god or gods exist, what do you think the purpose of human intelligence is?

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*The astute observer will note that I have placed the equinox and solstice one house later that they are currently. This is due to the precession of the equinox, or the tendency of the equinox to move through the zodiac on an approximately 24,000 year cycle. Existing astrological records date to classical Greece, about 400 BC. The equinox and solstice would have been in the houses noted at that time. it is possible, even likely, that Hindu astrology goes back even farther; perhaps as much as 8500 BC.