Are Pragmatism and Rationalism Reliable Ways to Find Spiritual Truths?

Pragmatism

The pragmatic approach to acquiring truth centers on a kind of utilitarianism. Something is true only so far as it is practical and serves a useful function. In particular, truth is determined by how well it meets human needs—not whether it flows from reality. Therefore, human experience becomes the testing ground for truth.

Actually, the pragmatic approach to truth is of some value in the religious arena. It highlights the value of religious experiences as confirming evidence for the existence of God. Nevertheless, pragmatism has serious drawbacks. Truth for a pragmatist may not be true at all because it simply describes what works rather than what actually may be right. Robbing banks may provide one with great wealth, but that does not make stealing right.

The most serious flaw of pragmatism in the religious arena lies in its inability to discern real truth from among contradicting truth-claims. A religion may appear to work because it meets the spiritual needs of its constituents, yet this does not automatically mean it reflects divine truth. A false religion is not spiritually satisfying; it is emotionally satisfying. Mormonism, Islam, and all other religions appear to satisfy practitioners’ spiritual hunger. But if these religions are not from God, sooner or later it will become evident. The tragedy is that this discovery may not come until it’s too late (Heb. 9:27). It is better to discover religious truth in this life and to be assured of eternal salvation in the next than to be content with just feeling spiritually satisfied now.

The Apostle Paul warns that even Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). The Apostle John instructs us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). This testing must rest on confirming objective evidence, not workability.

Rationalism

This approach to acquiring truth has had a powerful influence in Western thought since Rene Descartes in the seventeenth century. Its basic premise is that human reasoning, and human reasoning alone, is sufficient for acquiring truth. Rationalists believe that ultimate truth is deduced from self-evident axioms that are innate to the human mind. Because these axioms are inescapably true, the conclusions deduced from them must also be true. Thus, truth is not derived from traditions, authority, intuition, instinct, apparent results (see previous blogs in this series), or even empirical data, but rather from human logic reasoning from first principles.

There are logical first principles that are the cornerstone of human reasoning and that are necessary for coherent thinking. These first principles, which include the laws of logic, cannot be denied. They are part of universal human experience. But to go beyond them is to risk foisting a false system for determining truth that may not be true at all. Furthermore, rationalists offer no evidence to substantiate many of their first principles. If empirical or experiential evidence contradicts their axioms, this data is assumed to be incorrect because, to a rationalist, human reasoning supersedes all other avenues of truth. Rationalists don’t want to be bothered with the facts. This obviously puts serious limits on discovering truth. If the so-called axioms can’t be verified, how does one determine whether they are true or not?

There are also weaknesses with rationalism when applied to religious truth. In particular, rationalists put all their eggs in one basket. They stress that from self-evident axioms flow all truth. But what if so-called religious self-evident axioms are false? The result, of course, is false conclusions. Let me illustrate this.

It is in harmony with the concept of religious rationalism (although not all rationalists would agree with this) that God has placed in all human beings an innate knowledge of His existence and certain of His attributes (Romans 1: 18-20). Without some kind of objective verification, however, this can lead to pantheism or some other religion as well as it can to theism (e.g. Christianity).

As a test for determining truth, especially religious truth, rationalism fails. Its basic premises are assumptions, and these assumptions can’t be substantiated. Even when they are true, fallen humanity, more often than not, distorts them into erroneous conclusions (i.e. false religions: Rom. 1: 21-23). Thus, rationalism is unable to demonstrate absolute religious truth. We can’t reason ourselves to God. Somehow, religious assumptions must be tested by objective means if they are to accepted as divine truth. ©