Happy twenty ten. I've been struggling to come up with a bit to write here at the start of this new year. There are plenty of thoughts stirring, but not many taking shape, not the sort I'm interested in posting anyway.
So I've tapped the archives, found something I wrote a while back that I don't think I ever posted. It's a touch morose, but I hope (dare I say plan?) to offer some constructive and good tempered ponderings soon. Meanwhile...
I grow weary of this insistence: authentic faith requires either an attainment of certainty or the fervent pursuit of it.
It frustrates me. Why insist on answers? The questions will return, and the answer isn’t to answer them. The answer is to enter them.
Perhaps religion is nothing more than an institute dealing in the currency of answers.
Once upon a time religion dealt with questions. It didn’t answer them. I’m tired of religion that gives away its answers with the flash of a smile.
I’m tired of religion that offers certainty as a synonym for faith, sewing the two together with a cross-stitch. I find myself tearing at the resultant seams for a glimpse of light, a breath of air.
That's a good point about religion. Or, the religion I grew up in. For a long time I was very sensitive to the claim that I was putting too much stock in science. That I wanted to be certain about stuff that I couldn't be certain about. And it's true, I realized, science doesn't give you certainty. But now I realize that the Christianity I was raised in was actually obsessed with what I now see as unfounded certainty. Exactly as you described it, an institute doling out answers and brooking no doubts. And that's the draw for many people, right? I mean, it can be refreshing to hear that, in this world of cynicism and relativism, there's something you can count on. That the Bible is the literal word of god. That it's inerrant and infallible. That you can trust it to answer all of your questions...
ReplyDeleteLooking at it that way, I think I now have a much better grip on what I can realistically be certain about, or confident about.
And the other thing I was reminded of is something that (I believe) Dennett wrote once. That philosophy isn't so much about having the right answers but asking the right questions. Or something like that (maybe he was paraphrasing Wittgenstein). In my life, philosophy is kind of a substitute for religion. And good philosophy will do this. It will be patient and careful about how we are approaching a question, a problem, before trying to sell any answers.