Reason and Belief: Thoughts on communication practices

I am notoriously agnostic. Actually I am able to identify better with the atheist movement than anything else, but I do not call myself an atheist. As fellow Deacon and co-music director of the Church of What's Happening Now, Ian has noted: we share a natural disposition to be frustrated by wishy-washy people, but when it comes to the question of God we (at least I) find it almost noble. Now I suppose that raises the point of that making us wishy-washy, but that's another question better left for another post.

But one thing I notice by the fundamentalists of the atheist and the theist camps is that there is a tendency to use reason (or science) as a term that is the opposite of belief (or religion, or God). It's natural to think this way when we are confronted by it at all turns. Pro-choice vs. Pro-Life is my favorite example. Do you think that those that identify themselves as "Pro-Life" are constantly living their lives as though life is paramount to all things? Of course they don't all believe that. I point to the tired example of pro-life proponents that are advocates for the death penalty. This is one example of people using polarizing language and thought patterns but don't think about the consequences of the language they use.

Richard Dawkins, Bill O'Reilly, Ben Stein (stay-the fuck-tuned), Sam Hitchens, all of these men use this same communication habit, and when people attempt to engage in honest dialog about religion, they fall into the same trap. This isn't to say that faith or reason aren't real things with real qualities on both sides, just that they don't seem to be antonyms in my mind.

Do reason and faith intersect? I think it's clear that there are important people in each field that are being ignored to make way for the fundamentalists. There is no reason that these two fields cannot be related, or that one can have utter faith in one over the other. But the habit of saying faith vs. reason, or science vs. God, as though these two things are mutually exclusive is pathetic and unreasonable.

Look, I'm not trying to say that I have a better answer than anyone else, but living as though science doesn't exist is ignorant and wrong. And as Trey Parker (creator of South Park) put it (through Stan Marsh) "Couldn't evolution be the answer to how and not the answer to why?" I'm not convinced, and I've read some of Dawkins' stuff
and haven't found anything that suggests the existence of God is completely out of the question. But again this is probably left for a different post.

Here's my point: these terms are not used to benefit either movement, they are just meant to tear the other one down. That is no way to construct positive communication, but that should surprise no one. Neither side seems to want to convince anyone that they are right, just that another side is wrong.