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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 17, No. 16 August 5, 1953

[Letter from C.S.G.]

Belief can be rational, and II is mere prejudice to insist that belief and reason are Incompatible. A belief can be rational and oven certain. E.g., if I argue. "I am either talking to you now or I am not talking to you, but I am talking; to you, therefore I cannot at the same time be silent." This, tike a fact which we perceive directly through our senson, e.g., "I am now looking at a piece of paper," is so self-evident that we do not say that we believe it, but that we accept it as necessarily true. These examples illustrate perhaps the only kinds of knowledge which do not Include belief. Our knowledge of such elementary facta as that the world is round, or that London exists rests on belief in the word of others; our daily experience is a [unclear: tinstic] of beliefs: we trust the railway guide and cooking recipes, the education we received from teachers and books. Why then, has belief been contrasted with reason? Perhaps chiefly because the word reason has become associated from the 17th century with natural science. The mathematical-physical method was adapted as an open sesume to all know ledge, and for a time It was believed that the only reality was the scientist's measurable praticies. Colour was explained in terms of vibration a violin solo was "the rubbing of the hairs of a dead horse over the intestines of a dead eat": the physical scientist therefore abstructed from the most Interesting things of life Just what he could treat by his method. His rigorous Justification of his experiments by testing has been of Incalculable service; but the method is not the only way in which reason run work. Reason works quite differently in the study of history, pyschology or religion. For a time, however, all these studies were regarded with is certain disdain, as dealing with what was not measurably real. Unfortunately too a number of religious thinkers conceded to the scientist the use of the word reason, and tried to defend religion as an experience outside its range. Among the old scientific school-tie types especially, this old taint of Irrationality still clings to religion.

—C.S.G.