Science, Religion, and the Human Experience

the depths and shallows of experience 81

such objects is passive; we have no real choice about whether to believe that
there is a house in front of us when we see one. Nor do we have to “take
responsibility” for believing that there is a house there when we see one or
walk into one. For the fanatic, it is as if he had as simply (and as unproble-
matically) seen God, or seen Jesus (or, in Kantian language, seen the uncon-
ditioned). For the fanatic, those who do not accept what is so obvious are wicked
or stupid or both, or, in the best case, waiting for the fanatic to enlighten them.
Such an attitude, Kant believes, misses the essence of true religious faith,
which (for him) involves the recognition that what one believes is not simply
forced on one passively. The uncertainty, the unprovability, of religious prop-
ositions is, Kant believed, agoodthing; for if religious propositions could be
proved, there would be nothing to take responsibility for. To put it in present-
day language, the fanatic is unconsciouslyfleeing responsibility. I find that my
perceptions are in accord with Kant’s here: I find that both his psychology of
fanaticism and the phenomenology of faith presupposed by that psychology
are very deep.
A third approach to skepticism, often associated with existentialism, is to
accept responsibility for believing what cannot be proved. I already mentioned
the note Avi Sagi found in an unpublished bit of Kierkegaard’sNachlasswhich
reads: “Leap of faith—yes, but only after reflection.” In this approach, the role
of religious experience is not toprovesomething but to confront one with an
existential choice, to make “believe or don’t believe” a “live option,” in William
James’s words. A fine, but deeply challenging, account of this third option can
be found in Wittgenstein’s “Lectures on Religious Belief.”^23 (Wittgenstein de-
scribed himself as not a believer, “although I cannot help seeing every question
from a religious point of view.”)
Here is what Wittgenstein says:

These [religious] controversies look entirely different from normal

controversies. Reasons look entirely different from normal reasons.

They are, in a way, quite inconclusive. The point is that if there were

evidence, this would in fact destroy the whole business.^24

Several paragraphs later, Wittgenstein discusses a “Father O’Hara”^25 who,
he tells us “is one of those people who make it a question of science.” And he
continues:

Here we have [religious] people who treat this evidence in a differ-

ent way. They base things on evidence which taken in one way

would seem exceedingly flimsy. They base enormous things on this

evidence. Am I to say they are unreasonable? I wouldn’t call them

unreasonable. I would say they are certainly notreasonable, that’s ob-

vious. “Unreasonable” implies, with everyone, rebuke. I want to say:

they don’t treat this as a matter of reasonability. Anyone who reads