Rationality of Revelation

Traditionally there have been two separate approaches to learning truth and the two camps supporting each approach have been at odds. Truth can be learned by the scientific method. Observations are made, data reflecting the observations is recorded, hypotheses are formed to predict patterns in observation and experiments are executed to support or disprove a hypothesis. Some people claim this is the only way to discover truth.

The crowd usually associated with religion espouses the discovery of truth by revelation. This is that truth, or knowledge about reality, can be revealed to us by an external influence or intelligence. Some philosophers have tried to argue that ultimate reality is something beyond what we can now perceive with our senses and that seeking this ultimate reality should be our life pursuit. What good is reality if it is other than what we can perceive through our senses at any particular moment? What good is it to label anything else reality?

The idea of revelation has been muddled through so many strange concepts and mystical thinkers through the ages that we must identify what we are talking about when we speak of revelation. Revelation is not communion with the all-being, or being 'at one' with the universe or anything else. Eternalism is characteristically individualistic. Man's progress and development are his own responsibility and the individual must make the choice to involve or collaborate with others when he sees that it is for his ultimate benefit and happiness to do so. Reality has no meaning in an absolute sense. Reality for an individual is all that we can identify and talk about; reality is what an individual perceives through his senses.

Remember faith must be rational; that is, there must be a reason for believing what we have faith in. Each truth learned by the scientific method is like a distinct point of a math function. Generally, the more points we know for a math function the better we understand the function as a whole. Revelation can help us extrapolate on distinct points of knowledge to see a continuous, differentiable function. Revelation fills in the gaps.

David Hume was a supposedly brilliant philosopher for pointing out that just because we know that a specific cause has yielded a specific effect ten out of ten times, or a million out of a million times, we have no basis for believing that that same cause will produce the same effect in the future. Just because I have burned my hand each of the ten times I've put my hand on a stove does not give me a basis for believing that I would burn my hand again if I put it on the stove again. Clearly life would not have continued to exist if this were the natural progression of thought. Living creatures would have no survival instinct. The law of causality cannot be proven to exist by experiment, but is rather revealed to intelligent beings. Putting your hand on the stove again will cause it to burn, again. This is a very rational revelation. And all people who have lived longer than two hours have done so because they have learned at least this one revealed truth.

Revelation can be described in many different ways. It works on an intuitive level. An idea forms in the mind and it feels good. It feels consistent with the other truths and beliefs of the individual. The idea does not create any cognitive dissonance; there is nothing bothering you about the new idea on any conscious or subconscious level. It is not possible to think about every truth you know to check for consistency with this new idea, so this intuitive leap is necessary.

Revelation and the scientific method bring the diligent searcher to the same truth in the same way that y=2x+1 and (0,1);(1,3) describe the same line. Both are necessary and both are rational. One cannot learn truth through one medium without simultaneously learning truth through the other. It is counterproductive to try to separate the two.