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
37 comments
Read more

Sanjay and other loyalists

AI-generated illustration Some people, especially those in politics, behave as if they are too great to have any contact with the ordinary folk. And they can get on with whoever comes to power on top irrespective of their ideologies and principles. Sanjay was one such person. He occupied some high places in Sawan school [see previous posts, especially P and Q ] merely because he knew how to play his cards more dexterously than ordinary politicians. Whoever came as principal, Sanjay would be there in the elite circle. He seemed to hold most people in contempt. His respect was reserved for the gentry. I belonged to the margins of Sawan society, in Sanjay’s assessment. So we hardly talked to each other. Looking back, I find it quite ludicrous to realise that Sanjay and I lived on the same campus 24x7 for a decade and a half without ever talking to each other except for official purposes.      Towards the end of our coexistence, Sawan had become a veritable hell. Power supply to the
12 comments
Read more

Thomas the Saint

AI-generated image His full name was Thomas Augustine. He was a Catholic priest. I knew him for a rather short period of my life. When I lived one whole year in the same institution with him, I was just 15 years old. I was a trainee for priesthood and he was many years my senior. We both lived in Don Bosco school and seminary at a place called Tirupattur in Tamil Nadu. He was in charge of a group of boys like me. Thomas had little to do with me directly as I was under the care of another in-charge. But his self-effacing ways and angelic smile drew me to him. He was a living saint all the years I knew him later. When he became a priest and was in charge of a section of a Don Bosco institution in Kochi, I met him again and his ways hadn’t changed an iota. You’d think he was a reincarnation of Jesus if you met him personally. You won’t be able to meet him anymore. He passed away a few years ago. One of the persons whom I won’t ever forget, can’t forget as long as the neurons continu
16 comments
Read more

William and the autumn of life

William and I were together only for one year, but our friendship has grown stronger year after year. The duration of that friendship is going to hit half a century. In the meanwhile both he and I changed many places. William was in Kerala when I was in Shillong. He was in Ireland when I was in Delhi. Now I am in Kerala where William is planning to migrate back. We were both novices of a religious congregation for one year at Kotagiri in Tamil Nadu. He was older than me by a few years and far more mature too. But we shared a cordial rapport which kept us in touch though we went in unexpected directions later. William’s conversations had the same pattern back then and now too. I’d call it Socratic. He questions a lot of things that you say with the intention of getting to the depth of the matter. The last conversation I had with him was when I decided to stop teaching. I mention this as an example of my conversations with William. “You are a good teacher. Why do you want to stop
12 comments
Read more

Uriel the gargoyle-maker

Uriel was a multifaceted personality. He could stab with words, sting like Mike Tyson, and distort reality charmingly with the precision of a gifted cartoonist. He was sedate now and passionate the next moment. He could don the mantle of a carpenter, a plumber, or a mechanic, as situation demanded. He ran a school in Shillong in those days when I was there. That’s how I landed in the magic circle of his friendship. He made me a gargoyle. Gradually. When the refined side of human civilisation shaped magnificent castles and cathedrals, the darker side of the same homo sapiens gave birth to gargoyles. These grotesque shapes were erected on those beautiful works of architecture as if to prove that there is no human genius without a dash of perversion. In many parts of India, some such repulsive shape is placed in a prominent place of great edifices with the intention of warding off evil or, more commonly, the evil eye. I was Uriel’s gargoyle for warding off the evil eye from his sc
11 comments
Read more