Re: Faith, doubt and certainty

[Gassler Robert <rsgassle@xxxxxxxxx>]

I hve met many arogant rationalists, but the only one that I remember acting the way described here was Ross on Friends, who was put in his place by Phoebe.

My High school English teacher once put a quote on the board, surprising for Waco at the time: "Faith is what causes us to believe that which we know is untrue."

>[I was hoping to develop the below into a blog post or perhaps
>something even more ambitious, but I haven't had the time.]
>
>The other day I was listening to a podcast of WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show.
>The guest was a lady who was a progressive Christian and had written a
>book about it. During the interview, she said something that initially
>puzzled me:
>
>        "the opposite of faith is not doubt, its certainty".
>
>This did not parse too well in my brain. I could understand how
>certainty can be said to be the opposite of faith. Given my
>anti-scientism, it was not long before I started fixating on the terms
>"doubt" and "certainty" and their relationship to each other, rather
>than each to "faith". And I arrived at a version of her statement that
>was to me a sort of "eureka" moment (at least for pithily summarising a
>previously known idea):
>
>        The opposite of doubt is not faith, it is certainty.
>
>This is an excellent way to understand (a) the struggle between science
>and religion, as it is played out today, (b) the framework and tactics
>used by the science side, (c) the reason why the science side will not
>win the war.
>
>The problem for the scientistic (and the majority of science
>practitioners and groupies are in this category, IMHO) is that they
>want to claim two opposing grounds: one explicitly, namely "doubt"
>(scepticism -- though not "radical" scepticism, mind you!). And the
>other -- certainty -- implicitly in the type of arguments they offer
>(which tend to be absolutist: "I know you are wrong because I know it
>is TRUE that the world came about X billion years ago"). This
>combination they use against religion which they characterise as
>"faith".
>
>In this crude format, they present their inquisitive, knowledge and
>truth seeking scepticism as a better approach than "blind" faith.
>
>But of course, without faith, one suffers a bootstrapping problem.
>Unless I can [cautiously] believe in something, I cannot even propose a
>hypothesis about the world, etc. And, on the other hand, religious
>texts are replete with anecdotes, parables, and maxims on doubt, so the
>faith is hardly a "blind" one. So, scepticism or doubt has an element
>of faith in it, and faith constantly confronts doubt, often without
>insisting on resolving it.
>
>What really stands against the positive values of doubt and faith is
>certainty. And it is this mistaken sense of certainty that underwrites
>the arrogance of the typical "rationalist" which stands in stark
>contrast with the [local] humility and compassion of a person of faith.
>
>        --ravi
>
>