lts. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, sought to prove the existence of God by postulating that, We see things changing. Now anything changing is being changed by something else... This something else, if itself changing, is being changed by yet another thing; and this last by another. Now we must stop somewhere, otherwise there will be no first cause of the change, and, as a result, no subsequent causes... We arrive then at some first cause of change not itself being changed by anything, and this is what everybody understands by God (Aquinas, cited in Haldane, xx). This First Cause was accepted as being the paramount proof of the existence of God until people stopped trying to prove something that was so clearly an element of faith.Most educated people today accept that faith is something personal and special that is not really subject to the laws of reason; if a person is inspired by his belief in angels, for example, it is insensitive to try to talk him out of it. They also accept that there are certain gray areas in which faith and science collide, such as a circumstance where a parent refuses medical treatment for a child on the basis of a religious objection, but scientists believe that the rejected treatment would save the childs life. In those instances, the law generally sets aside its hands-off policy toward religion, and rules in favor of treating the child despite the parents objections.But in general, we let faith alone. As Haldane notes, science is good at giving explanations of events and circumstances within nature, [but] it is not equipped to explain the preconditions of the possibility of there being a natural order (Haldane, xx). In other words, science can explain what it can see and test, but not what it cannot. For that we need faith, which can inspire us, ennoble us, and fill us with joy in a way that pure rationalism never could. While it may no longer be possible to merge faith and reason, it may be just as well ...
