The agony of faithlessness

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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