Skip to main content

Faith and Doubt

Book Review

One of the characters in Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, argues that doubt rather than disbelief is the opposite of faith because disbelief is as certain as faith.  Doubt is uncertainty, a refusal to take sides.  Doubt is the ultimate openness towards phenomena.  Doubt can question both, faith as well as disbelief. 

Jennifer Michael Hecht’s book, Doubt: a History, is a masterpiece that presents to the reader all the great doubters from the ancient Indian Carvakas and the Greek Xenophanes to our own Salman Rushdie and Natalie Angier.  The best feature of the book is its readability in spite of the highly philosophical themes it deals with.  The next best is that it does not confine itself to philosophers, rather it discusses novelists, scientists, historians and others of some significance who have contributed to the history of doubt.

Thousands of people have been killed merely because they questioned certain religions.  In the heyday of Christianity and its colonial empires, doubters were killed mercilessly in the name of heresy and witchcraft.  Today Islam is doing the same thing in a different way.  Narendra Modi’s India has a unique way of bringing all Indians back to their original ghar.  

Doubt has driven the world forward, towards light and enlightenment, while religions have sought to keep it in certain degrees of darkness, the degree being determined expediently by the priest and the politician.  That’s why the French writer Denis Diderot (1713-1784) averred that “humanity would not be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest.” [Quoted by Hecht, p. 347]

Hecht’s sympathies are with the doubters though she does not share my abhorrence of the religious people.  She knows that “great doubters are often more invested in religious questions than is the average believer.” [p. 364]  But her approach to the subject is very balanced and objective.  She quotes the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), “Reader! To whatever visible church, synagogue, or mosque you may belong!  See if you do not find more true religion among the host of the excommunicated than among the far greater host of those who excommunicated them.” [p. 364]

Jennifer Michael Hecht
Jesus was a great doubter.  In fact, he questioned most of the beliefs and rituals of his religion, Judaism.  The more he doubted, however, the more he insisted on the importance of faith.  Faith was the ultimate means of redemption for him.  Yet his last words on the cross were, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”  Hecht says that these words could have been put into Jesus’ mouth by later editors of the Bible who wanted to make certain links between the New Testament and the Old Testament.  Jesus’ lament actually belongs to the Psalmist [Psalm 22].  Jesus, however, turned his religion upside down.  He brought faith and love in the place of the Jewish commandments and rituals.

I discussed the example of Jesus in slight detail to show that Hecht’s history of doubt is also a history of religions.  Anyone who is interested in understanding religions and/or religious doubt will find Hecht’s book a treasure.  It is written in the most lucid style possible.  It is even subtly witty at times.  It is indeed a masterpiece.


PS. Below are a few blog posts of mine inspired by this book: 
·         Galileo’s Truth
·         Marcus Aurelius Dies
·         God is within us



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Buddha in the Central Vista

Prime Minister Modi was taking a dip in the mineral water pond constructed on the bank of the Yamuna as part of his weekly photo op when Siddhartha Gautama aka the Buddha walked into the office of the National Committee for Correcting Civilizational Narratives (NCCCN) in Central Vista, New Delhi. An email was received by “Dr Sri Siddhartha Gautama Buddha PhD” from the PMO [Prime Minister’s Office] inviting him to attend a meeting “to authenticate and align the curriculum with indigenous perspectives as part of implementing the National Education Policy, NEP.” Siddhartha was amused on receiving the mail. “Is it possible they still wish to learn after proclaiming themselves the Vishwaguru?” He wondered with a wry smile. He was more amused to see the honorary doctorate conferred upon him by the Vishwaguru Vishwavidyala, in Spiritual Sciences. It’d be interesting to make a visit, he decided. When he entered the opulent office, whose floor was paved with Italian marble tiles, he reca...
11 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

Sardar Patel and Unity

All pro-PM newspapers carried this ad today, 31 Oct 2025 No one recognised Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as he stood looking at the 182-m tall statue of himself. The people were waiting anxiously for the Prime Minister whose eloquence would sway them with nationalistic fervour on this 150 th birth anniversary of Sardar Patel. “Is this unity?” Patel wondered looking at the gigantic version of himself. “Or inflation?” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi chuckled standing beside Patel holding a biodegradable iPhone. “The world has changed, Sardar ji. They’ve built me in wax in London.” He looked amused. “We have become mere hashtags, I’d say.” That was Jawaharlal Nehru joining in a spirit of camaraderie. “I understand that in the world’s largest democracy now history is optional. Hashtags are mandatory.” “You know, Sardar ji,” Gandhi said with more amusement, “the PM has released a new coin and a stamp in your honour on your 150 th birth anniversary.”  “Ah, I watched the function too,” ...
15 comments
Read more