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| A church in a village in Kerala |
The best definition of ‘faith’
I’ve come across so far is Ambrose Bierce’s: “Belief without evidence in what
is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.”
What does the word ‘faith’
mean to me? This is the question raised by fellow blogger, Parwati Singari, at a blogger’s community for this
week’s discussion. The word ‘Faith’ is primarily associated with religions
and gods. There are other meanings too, of course, like in ‘I have no faith
in my government’ or ‘You’ll cope – I have great faith in you.’ I stick to the
primary connotation here.
The first thing I did when I
saw Parwati’s topic was to take once again The Scale of Doubt Quiz given in the
opening pages of Jennifer Michael Hecht’s scintillating work, Doubt: a history.
[In case you wish to take the same quiz and see how much of a believer you are,
I’ve posted a pic of the page from Hecht’s book in my
Facebook timeline.] My result: I am an atheist, but I “may have … a pious
relationship to the universe.” True. There is an eerie romantic in me whose heart
is still capable of leaping up
at the sight of a rainbow in the sky. In other words, I’m not utterly
without any faith. But religious faith is our topic and I lack that in
toto.
Philosopher Walter Kaufman made
a very charming observation. The atheism of Buddhism, he said, is born
of intense suffering which cannot but shriek, yell, accuse, and argue with God –
not about Him – “for there is no other human being who would understand”. Evils
in the world and God as the omnipotent creator of that world is more a pain in
the brain (no, not in the posterior this time) than an amusing oxymoron. Yet the heart longs for a God, an entity out
there that is the sum and substance of all human longings and aspirations. The
Buddha was racked by that longing.
I experience that longing
again and again. Each time my brain will mock my heart. And my brain walks away
with the trophy invariably. Most genuine atheists are people who experience the
agony of this conflict between the heart’s longings and the brain’s
certainties. Such atheists are more religious at heart. That is one of the most
comical paradoxes of life that I know.
Yes, Dr Parwati. I am a
professed atheist. But I talk to God almost every day. I question him, accuse
him, raise my fist against him. I also smile at him once in a while – like when
something good comes along in life blown by a stray wind. But I don’t believe
in him. I know that he doesn’t exist. I wish he did.
That wish – do you want to
call it ‘faith’? I don’t anyway. For me, it’s just my human frailty. Faith is
my frailty. It could have been my strength if the world had been a little
better place.
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