Rational or Irrational World?

I have been thinking about this for a while, and like most people, I am not entirely sure whether our world, and the things that happen in it, are rational or irrational. Whether you approach the question through mainstream religion, mythology, or science, you always seem to reach a point where something irrational appears in the middle of an otherwise rational chain of possibilities.

What Science Says

If you do a bit of research on whether science places the world on the rational or the irrational side, as I did, you will find that "rationality" as we commonly discuss it is a human framework. From a scientific point of view, the world itself is neither rational nor irrational; it is amoral and mathematical.

But go a step deeper and ask whether the world is mathematically rational, and the picture changes. After a long run of confident answers, you reach the subatomic level, where particles do not follow strict, predictable paths. Scientists can only use math to calculate the probability of where a particle might be, not its exact location. And so, once again, things start to look irrational.

At this point, and at many others where science runs into seemingly irrational behavior, people offer many arguments. One common view is that the universe itself is not "trying" to be rational; rather, humans invented mathematics as a language to organize and measure the patterns we see around us.

At the same time, many others argue that mathematics is not invented but discovered, and that we have only invented the tools built around it. So if you follow science, you have to pick a side. Personally, I lean toward the second view: if we are still in the process of discovery, perhaps there are certain "x" or "y" values yet to be uncovered that would complete the equation. Then, even at the subatomic level, we might find a clear path instead of mere probability.

What Religion Says

Since the rational and irrational worldviews are both human frameworks, it is worth considering what religions have said about the question.

If you look at the Abrahamic religions from a broad overview, you will find that these faiths view the universe as a rational, created order, designed by an intelligible God. Historically, this view encouraged the pursuit of science, mathematics, and philosophy as ways of understanding creation. Look deeper, though, and you will find many great thinkers who disagreed with one another.

In Islam

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was a strict Aristotelian philosopher who believed the universe runs on necessary cause and effect. To keep miracles rational, he argued that they do not break the laws of nature. Instead, a prophet's exceptionally strong soul taps into higher, hidden natural powers to cause rare events, much like an extreme form of mental focus acting on matter.

Later, in his famous book The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Imam Al-Ghazali challenged Avicenna's rigid view of nature. He argued for occasionalism: fire does not burn cotton by its own inherent power; rather, God directly causes the burning every single time, as a matter of "habit."

In Christianity

The same debate appears in Christianity. Like Avicenna, Augustine of Hippo argued that miracles are not contrary to nature, only contrary to what humans currently know about nature. He proposed that God planted "hidden seeds" (rationes seminales) in creation from the very beginning, which bloom at specific moments in history to produce miracles.

Building on both Aristotle and Al-Ghazali, Thomas Aquinas distinguished between two kinds of order. Nature, he argued, follows secondary causes, the predictable laws God set in place, while God remains the First Cause, standing outside time and space.

The Fideists

Meanwhile, the fideists (Tertullian, Kierkegaard, Luther, and strict traditionalist schools) believe that human reason is trapped inside a box, and that true faith begins only where logic hits a wall and breaks down.

What I Think

As the person I am today, I believe, and it makes sense to me, that the world is rational in every way, whether we accept it or not.

If you think about it scientifically, I believe we are still missing some piece of the puzzle that would explain the apparent randomness. If you think about it through religion, I believe God is the First Cause, existing outside our space and time, and that He made everything rational, even the things we don't yet understand, like miracles. There must be some natural process behind them.

Take rain as an everyday example. If ancient people had never figured out that sunlight evaporates water from lakes, which later falls back as rain, they might have seen rain as something mysterious or divine. Today we know it is simply a law of nature.

Or take a more dramatic example: solar eclipses. For thousands of years, many cultures saw the sun vanishing in the middle of the day as a terrifying omen, a sign of divine anger, or even a creature swallowing the sun. Today, astronomers can predict eclipses to the exact minute, centuries in advance. What once looked like a miracle turned out to be the moon passing between the Earth and the sun, following the same rules it always has.

In the end, it is up to you what you think. These are just my thoughts.