The Prowess of the Believer’s Argument

At some point, science generates questions which pass beyond its own ability to answer them. Such questions have been called metaphysical: they form a distinctive and inescapable part of the subject matter of philosophy. Now, in considering the particular metaphysical problem that I have mentioned, people might have recourse to an authoritative system of theology, they might find their answer in the invocation of God, as the first cause and final aim of everything. But if this invocation is founded merely on faith, then it claims no rational authority beyond that which can be attributed to revelation. Anyone who lets the matter rest in faith, and enquires no further into its validity, has, in a sense, a philosophy. He has staked his claim in a metaphysical doctrine, but has affirmed that doctrine dogmatically. It is for him, neither the conclusion of reasoned argument nor the result of metaphysical speculation. It is simply a received idea which has the intellectual merit of generating answers to metaphysical puzzles but with the singular disadvantage of adding no authority to those answers that is not contained in the original dogmatic assumption. –Roger Scruton