FAITH MATTERS:
Faith vs. reason: A Journey to Space illustrates how the Quest for Understanding is part of Believing
Comments by the commander of the Artemis II mission to the moon inspire renewed debate over an age-old question.
May 9, 2026
By Bishop Gerard Bergie
Contributing Columnist
The flight of Artemis II around the moon and back was very impressive.
The images from space, especially of Earth, were stunning in clarity and beauty.
Upon their return to Earth, NASA had a press conference with the crew on April 16. I found the comments of Reid Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, to be very interesting.
Although he acknowledged he did not consider himself to be a religious person, he felt he needed some help to process what he considered to be a supernatural experience in space. He stated that after landing, the crew boarded a navy vessel where he asked to see the chaplain.
Cmdr. Wiseman explained that when the chaplain entered the room and he saw the cross on his lapel, he broke down in tears. He felt overwhelmed by what he called an “otherworldly” experience that he had not yet begun to process.
Although a great deal of medical and psychological testing had been conducted on the crew, he needed to go beyond just scientific understanding as he felt that humanity has not evolved enough to fully grasp the sights they witnessed.
It is interesting to note not everyone was pleased with this press conference.
Some found that, because astronauts represent a government agency (NASA), religious references were not appropriate. Others believed these sentiments seemed out of place because the nature of the mission was scientific and technological.
These opinions bring into focus the tension that exists between faith and reason.
Science needs reason in order to interpret empirical data and reach a conclusion; however, do we need faith?
From the Roman Catholic tradition, faith and reason are considered to be complementary rather than contradictory.
Pope John Paul II considered faith and reason to be like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth (Fides et Ratio, Sept. 14, 1998).
Two great theologians, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, taught that faith and reason are not in opposition.
Faith motivates the search for understanding and reason helps to explain the context or current reality. St. Anselm of Canterbury developed the phrase “Faith seeking understanding” (Fides quaerens intellectum) to describe the relationship between faith and reason.
This means the quest for understanding is an act inherent to believing.
In his writings, Pope Benedict often spoke about the need for both faith and reason.
He taught that while reason alone can discover how things work, it needs faith to understand why they exist and what they mean.
Throughout history we have examples of people of faith who also embraced reason and science.
Fr. Georges Lemaître was a Catholic priest who first proposed the Big Bang Theory 100 years ago in the 1927 “Annales of the Scientific Society of Brussels,” a French-language scientific journal.
Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk who is called the “Father of Genetics” due to his discovery that genes come in pairs and are inherited as distinct units one from each parent.
Sir William Lawrence Bragg was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1915. The following quote is attributed to him: “From religion comes man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are in the sense that the thumb and the fingers on my hand are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.”
I believe faith and reason are complementary.
Reason helps us understand the world around us. As we see with Cmdr. Wisemen, faith can help us accept what is otherworldly and beyond our human grasp.