Reason comes before faith

Faith and reason are the two modes by which we come to believe things. I have long had a sneaking suspicion that one was prior to the other, namely reason. The mind's ability to grasp reality precedes faith. The world must be intelligible before anything can be revealed to us, whether by God or by nature.

Another suspicion I have is this: the fact that the world is intelligble at all may argue for an underlying creative intellect that makes the natural world what it is. I think this may have been one of C.S. Lewis's points in Miracles. I read the book several months ago in Switzerland while waiting for Jessica to hop over the pond and join me. Maybe the idea took that long to gestate.

I also believe the writings of physicist Paul Davies speak of this. The one and only time I heard him give a lecture (at one of the Friday night lectures at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Ventura) I think he said that his understanding of God was related to the intelligibility of the universe, which convinced him to some degree of a design to the universe. I was heavily influenced by Davies's books in high school. They introduced me to the strange world of physics and philosophy and helped shape my interest in both.