Concerning Aliens, Faith, Reason, Memory, and Religious Experience

The following gem comes from the movie "Contact" based on the novel by Carl Sagan.  A video of the scene from which the dialogue is taken can be found here.

Senator: You come to us with no evidence, no record, no artifacts. Only a story that, to put it mildly, strains credibility... Are you really going to sit there and tell us that we should just take this all on faith?

Ellie Arroway: Is it possible that it didn't happen? Yes. . . . As a scientist I must concede that. I must volunteer that.

...

Mr. Kitz: Then why don't you simply withdraw your testimony and admit that this journey to the center of the galaxy, in fact, never took place?

Ellie Arroway: Because I can't. I had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever... A vision of the universe that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how ... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not — that none of us — are alone! ... I wish I could share that. I wish, that everyone, if only for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and hope! But ... that continues to be my wish.

 Dr. Arroway, an admitted unbeliever, is here describing and defending the reality of her remarkable journey into deep space.  The surprise is that everything which this woman of science is describing about the effect of her journey can be applied to a mystical/religious experience.  Religious experience (and the resulting belief in God) is something which can't really be proven.  Evaluated in the cold light of reason, there is always another possible explanation, which is often simpler (cf. Occam's razor).  Yet faith is something given which touches the very core of a person's being, transforming the believer and opening up a way of seeing things which is endowed with meaning.  "The thing that people are most hungry for, meaning, is the one thing that science hasn't been able to give them," reflects the character, Palmer Joss.  Religion, on the other hand, has.

There is a difficulty, however, in communicating a faith which stems from experience.  It is the experience itself that creates certainty in the believer.  Reason cannot verify the experience, but somehow the heart knows what it has experienced is true.  As Pascal said, "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know."  But if faith comes from experience, my personal experience will probably not be convincing to you, no matter how vividly I feel it.  Recall Dr. Arroway's line: "I wish I could share that. I wish, that everyone, if only for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and hope! But ... that continues to be my wish."

In reflecting on the relationship between faith and reason, I've thought that perhaps faith ultimately has to come from experience, or something like it.  By some means or another, the heart has to be moved to believe.  Reason can't give us faith, because, without any premises from which to start, it is impossible to prove anything by reason.  We cannot even prove that we are awake instead of dreaming.  Again I turn to Pascal:

We know that we do not dream, and, however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this inability demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they affirm, the uncertainty of all our knowledge. For the knowledge of first principles, as space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those which we get from reasoning. And reason must trust these intuitions of the heart, and must base them on every argument.

Here is the real problem: If God is known through experience or intuition, then why are there unbelievers? Wouldn't God want everyone to know him?  Why doesn't he make his presence more known?  Why doesn't he give us surer intuitions or experiences, ones which our reason cannot so easily question?  There may not even be a satisfactory answer to this question, so I will not attempt a detailed explanation here.  Perhaps God reveals just enough of himself so that only those who want to find him can, and those who don't want to don't have to.  Pascal proposes another reason: it is our sinful passions which obscure God from us.  "Convince yourself [that God exists]," he writes, "not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions."  But if Deus absconditus est most of the time, God does appear in hints and shadows, if only in hints and shadows.  Orual sees the palace for a split second in C.S. Lewis' novel Till We Have Faces, a work which conveys Lewis' own answer to the problem.

I want to suggest that memory is indispensable for having faith in a universe where God's presence isn't overwhelming.  Experiences, like Orual seeing the palace, are isolated to a particular point in time.  Memory allows those experiences to be brought into the present.  This is part of the reason memory plays such an important role in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition.  The Jewish feast of Passover is a memorial of the original Passover meal, when the Jewish people were freed from slavery and bondage in Egypt.  When Jews today celebrate the Passover meal, they understand they are not simply reenacting the meal that saved their ancestors thousands of years ago.  Rather, they understand that they are participating in the ongoing saving action of God, who saves them personally in the here and now.  It is in a similar light that Christians understand the exhortation of Christ to offer bread and wine "in memory of me." The act of commemorating the Last Supper is understood as something which brings Christ's once-and-for-all, saving sacrifice on the cross into the present, so that the merits of this action can be communicated to the believer. 

Perhaps we've all had those moments of great clarity or insight, when we finally we able to see the meaning in all the work we've been undertaking.  Or we've had that moment when we're sure that God exists because of some great grace that we've received.  Some of the great saints, the mystics, report having experiences in which they were indescribably enlightened.  St. Ignatius reported mystical experiences that were so powerful that even if the Bible didn't exist and he had no other source of religious knowledge, he would have willingly died for the faith in light of his experience.  At the same time, the mystics, who had such vivid experiences of God, were often the ones who went through the greatest experiences of isolation, the dark night of the soul.  How could they have possibly gotten through those times?  The answer must be memory.  Their only source of hope was the memory of the Lord's blessings, the trust that at some point they would be brought from darkness into light.  Though to a lesser extent, I reckon we all go through moments when life seems meaningless and lonely.  These moments are the true test of faith, when a trusting leap is required.  It is then we are called to remember.

Faith is an inexhaustible subject for reflection.  I in no way intend to be definitive about the relationship between faith, experience, and memory.  Perhaps, I miss the mark in saying that faith comes from experience and intuition.  But, I do believe that faith is a gift.  It is not reducible to reason, but is something, like love, which goes far beyond our reason.

By the rivers of Babylon we sat mourning and weeping when we remembered Zion.
If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither.
May my tongue stick to my palate if I do not remember you, If I do not exalt Jerusalem beyond all my delights.

Psalm 137:1, 5-6