The contemporary urge to separate knowledge from belief overlooks the essentially collaborative nature of human inquiry.

Astrophysicist: Students Must Be Encouraged to Intellectually Engage with Faith

By Kimberly Scharfenberger

Adam Hincks, a Jesuit scholastic and astrophysicist, spoke to The Cardinal Newman Society about his recent America magazine article (1) on the collaboration of knowledge and belief. Hincks urged Catholic educators to “encourage students to keep engaging with the faith intellectually, as well as on the affective and spiritual levels,” taking into account the Catholic faith’s venerable tradition of utilizing human reason to deepen theological understanding.

Hincks’ article, “Justified Reason,” confronts the cultural tendency to separate knowledge and belief, explaining that the separation “does not comport with the Catholic tradition… nor [does it] accurately reflect the way our minds actually work.” Through the piece, Hincks details the “intimately interlocking” relationship between knowledge and belief and how their “interplay” has aided scientific inquiry and research throughout human history, as well as laid the foundation for philosophy and Catholic thought.

This tendency to separate belief and knowledge is a problem that can be solved by acknowledging that both are “constitutive to human rationality” and both are an integral part of education, Hincks explained.

“In a school or college people come together to share knowledge, and often the content of that knowledge is transmitted by belief,” Hincks said. He provided an example of this relationship:

When I learnt my times tables as a child, I didn’t really know them, but rather believed them. I memorized a set of numbers and believed my teacher that they represented real mathematical relationships. Later on, as I used the times tables more and more, I saw the pattern in them and realized what it really means that five times six equals thirty. I saw the intelligibility in the times tables and came to know them. So there was an interplay of knowledge and belief that occurred in the context of my education.

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- See more at: www.cardinalnewmansociety.org
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(1) Justified Reason - by Adam D. Hincks

The collaboration of knowledge, belief and faith


She would have to leave her intellect behind, my friend assumed, if she followed up on a profound experience of God that had led her to Mass. Eventually she decided to enroll in the catechumenate in order to become a member of the Catholic Church. Taking this step, she explained to me, would require her to check her brain at the classroom door, but she felt her newfound religion was so important to her that she was willing to sacrifice reason for faith.

Happily, my friend soon discovered that the Catholic faith in fact encourages the use of reason. But her story reminds us that we live in a culture that tends to segregate knowledge, faith and belief. On the one hand, knowledge is seen as scientific, objective and part of a common fund. On the other, faith and belief (which are not usually distinguished) are considered unscientific, subjective and private. At best, the two categories are allowed to coexist if kept at arms’ length from each other; at worst, they are treated as mutually opposed, whether by strident atheists or religious fundamentalists.

Such attitudes toward knowledge and belief do not comport with the Catholic tradition. Nor do they accurately reflect the way our minds actually work. St. Augustine was correct when he wrote, “To believe is nothing other than to think with assent.... Believers are also thinkers: in believing, they think and in thinking, they believe.” Perhaps surprisingly, the clearest evidence for this claim can be found in the world of scientific research.
Collaboration in Science

William Wordsworth, whose college bedroom window overlooked a statue of Sir Isaac Newton, characterized this great scientist as “a mind for ever/ Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.” The image of a solitary scientist arriving at pure knowledge through the unbridled powers of his own ratiocination remains in force today, but this is out of touch with how real science is accomplished. Science is in fact a deeply collaborative effort.

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Readmore: americamagazine.org