Human Heart Needs Belief

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Human Heart Needs Belief

At last- something I can agree with in Joe Bennett’s column, (Northern Advocate, Sat. Oct 11) even if it’s only the header! I don’t have much objection to his appraisal of Hollywood’s cult status either, or the observations on fear.

I concede that he is right about human nature in so far as our need to believe in something; it’s endemic, it comes with the territory.

The acrid smell of falsehood really begins with the statement: “There is no joy in mere reason” Einstein would not agree with him, and I’m with Einstein.
[i]"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

Sounds like good reason to me, and, by his own lips Einstein iterated the inspiration and beauty of the mysterious (his need to know) was only satiated by his reason (his ability to know).

[ii]"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."

Again I’m with Einstein, firstly he finds no shame in assuming that ultimately the big questions are irrevocably metaphysical; matters of faith and reason. Second, blind faith- as he implied, is antithetical to reason, but that does not exclude a faith based on reason. This is the fallacy Bennett would have us believe (in common with all naturalistic thinkers) that faith and reason are like oil and water, mutually exclusive.

The “silly human heart” is not silly for its need of belief but silly for not being more careful in what it believes.

My hat goes off to you Mr. Bennett we are indeed creatures who need a belief system, the question is which one is the best and most suited to reason?

As a self-confessed “wordsmith” Bennett may find solace in a quote from an eminent wordsmith of another stripe. When asked by a journalist what is the most profound thing he’d ever heard, Malcolm Muggeridge replied (probably in a singsong voice): “Jesus loves me this I know ‘cause the Bible tells me so….”

Silly people believe that Muggeridge was a victim of circular reasoning and thereby invalidating his beliefs- not realising that reasoning on reason is equally circular. Muggeridge had faith in a transcendent reason- faith in reason per se is just mankind disguising that he has made himself God- whereby man becomes the measure of all things.
[i] Einstein quotes Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995,