Reason or Faith
Today’s been odd. My sarong went all static all of a sudden and there were worrying sizzling noises when my leg came in contact with the material. I also watched Pride and Prejudice (the version with keira knightley), and took another step away from reading the book. It looks less and less like what would make a good thay koappe for me.
Enough about that. Shakespeare was wrong, the question is not To be or not to be, the question is do we need to have faith? George Michael certainly thinks so. I’ve always had doubts about faith, I guess that’s primarily bc many family members were critical of the notion of “blind faith”. They claimed that buddhism did not resort to blind faith and was thus superior in some way. I bought that at the time but don’t buy it any more. Every religion in some way adopts a degree of blind faith, I shall elaborate in due time. Anyway, faith was always associated with the word blind so I used to dismiss it. I’ve considered reason to be far superior and have tried to base my life around reason, resorting to faith as little as possible. I’ve begun to question this manner of thinking of late. The following is bound to be muddled since my thoughts on this are far from clear at this stage.
I just finished reading The Life of Pi, it was alrite. It started off a bit slow, was ok in the middle and got bizarre towards the end and finished with an interesting twist. The writing was quite good though. Anyway, the book deals with faith quite a bit. Not in a explicit philosophical manner, but through implication really. So what happens is this kid ends up on a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger, alone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and survives for almost a year until he gets washed up in Mexico. Good for him. The point is, any rational person would have given up hope, I mean what are the chances of surviving that? The kid’s faith carried him through. I’m not saying that faith saved him, but I guess it played an important role. The mind plays an important role in survival of the human body, half the battle is the will to live. Or so i’ve heard. So in this case irrational faith was certainly very handy.
When I say irrational faith, I mean it. Faith in the context I am dealing with refers to what is beyond the realms of human knowledge. Stuff like what happens after death, what our purpose on earth is, how we came about etc. The belief in God, in heaven and hell, in rebirth, all rely on faith. Organized religion tries to deal with things that we cannot explain using existing knowledge, we need to step beyond what we can experience in order to make decisions on these matters. Therefore the answers to any of these questions are irrational.
My doubts about faith began with doubts about organized religion. Organized religion requires irrational faith, and that means accepting one set of beliefs. Now the problem with this is the set of beliefs you accept will be highly contingent on the family your born into. If I was born into a family in Saudi Arabia i would be more than likely have a firm belief in Allah. Similarly if I was born into a Jewish family I’d have a totally different set of beliefs. The fact that one’s set of beliefs is so contingent on things like birth, education, experiences etc. make it hard to believe that by some lucky chance you were born into the “right” religion, the one that really shows the way. Now, one might argue that we do come across other religions and we can decide which set of beliefs to embrace. But that only applies to a minority of cases, I mean, I for one know very little about other religions beyond a very superficial degree. You need a far deeper knowledge of a religion in order to change your beliefs. So you’re more than likely to end up accepting the set of beliefs you inherited from birth. My worry is that I could well have been believing in God, in rebirth, in heaven and hell simply depending on the family I was born into.
My answer to this was to take a step back and try to be objective. To be rational. Reason can provide no answers as to what happens after death, as to why this earth is so perfect (in terms of being a cradle of life) and other questions. The most rational suggestion is that we are here bc we drew the large stick. What are the chances of having such a perfect planet? One in a Billion? Well, there are well over a billion planets, so the maths works. What happens after we die? The rational answer, zilch. Time just stops, no consciousness, nothing; our attraction to an after life is simply an extension of our attachment to life. But this is just a guess, conjecture. As are alternatives like immortal souls, heaven, hell etc. The fact of the matter is we can never know. To use reason, or to use faith are pretty much one and the same, you’re stabbing in the dark, using guesswork. At this point in human history, knowledge of such matters is not possible, bc it is beyond what we could possibly experience.
So what’s better reason or faith? Well, in such matters neither. Reason is not always right. Back in the day it was perfectly reasonable to believe that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the earth was flat. Based on human experience at the time, it sounded fine. But now we know. (Or do we?). If someone at the time had an irrational faith that the earth was round, he would have been duely hooted at. As our set of experiences expand, the realm of knowledge expands. When humans set out to sea, the notion of a flat earth was dismissed. When Copperniccus et al used telescopes to go beyond what the eye can see, we realised that the earth revolves around the sun. Similarly, with the good blessings of technology we might be able to have knowledge of what happens after death in several years time. Then we can make a reasoned judgement. Until such time it’s best to keep an open mind. If we didn’t keep open minds about things like flat earths we’d all be in our little countries huddled like kalaveddhas.
irrational faith is certainly very handy for all sorts of things, i agree.
but,
To use reason, or to use faith are pretty much one and the same,
not so, you are mixing two different things
to use reason or scientific method is to put forward a theory that can be tested for predicted consequences of that theory.
if some body put forward the theory, earth is flat, one can test it, say by finding the edge of earth or if he theory is earth is round, one can test it by circumnavigating it or using some other method. if the test fails theory is discarded. as long as all tests that can be attempted using technology available holds true the theory is accepted.
fundamental supernatural principles of religion like god, karma or life after death cannot be tested. either bc they are supposedly all powerful thus everything is possible and nothing can be predicted (god) or bc their predictions are imprecise (karma and other life after death theories). (in fact only theory about life after death that can be tested and holds true is the one that say there is nothing).
religious faiths do fulfill various purposes, they give us hope and security as you say among other things. but they are nothing like reason or science.
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Back in the day it was perfectly reasonable to believe that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the earth was flat. Based on human experience at the time, it sounded fine.
actually it did not. philosophers who reasoned about this did come to the conclusion that earth was round due to various reasons.
as for sun and planets going around earth, it is precisely because people had reasonable problems with ptolemaic system of orbits of planets around earth etc. that they put forward other theories (ptolemaic system was itself a heroic attempt to rationalize bc older systems were not reasonable) .
btw do read the pride and prejudice, jane austen and elizabeth bennet are way too witty and ’sparkling’ than any cup of tea
sorry for the length.
Comment by sittingnut — March 21, 2006 @ 3:39 pm
Sittingnut - Indeed, science and reason can be tested whilst supernatural phenomena cannot. They are similar in this case bc both cannot be used to answer the questions I refer to, but similar only in this case.
But there was a time when it was accepted that the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. At which point i’m guessing scientific reason supported this. It did change with time as knowledge expanded, and a good thing too.
P&P - Yeah that’s what ppl tell me, I guess I’ll have to give it a shot at some point.
No problem about the length
Comment by ddm — March 21, 2006 @ 7:02 pm
Keira Knightley couldn’t have been the cause for your sarong to go static eh?;0)…that aside I find the reason/faith conundrum very interesting. Being a man of science (technically) myself there are certain situations where I go by faith. Most of these situations where I give in to faith (everything happens for a reason and all that jazz) are those beyond my control, so I guess its really just a comfort thing. I’m all about science but I’m sure there are things that science cannot really explain and one must always keep an open mind.
Comment by childof25 — March 22, 2006 @ 5:26 am
Child of 25 - haha, who knows? Ah but it didn’t go static when I watched love actually. The thick plottens. You’re right about the comfort thing, I do that too from time to time.
Comment by ddm — March 22, 2006 @ 10:47 am
At which point i’m guessing scientific reason supported this
ddm - there was no such thing as the ’scientific method’ back then. sure, there were elements of it being practiced by some individuals and a few schools. as these were times where society was ruled by the church, god and at times superstition, the dominant ‘explanations’ were subservient to these forces but never within the gaze of a widely recognized, accepted and formalised scientific method. i don’t think it’s even reasonable to call it ’scientific reasoning’ since there wasn’t any science involved.
later … g’night
Comment by ivap — March 22, 2006 @ 3:54 pm
Ivap - You’re right. But, reasoning need not be scientific reasoning. To use one’s senses, experience and a bit of logic would be to use reason. I mean, when you see the horizon you’d assume that the earth was flat. Similarly when you see the sun do a full 180 degrees during the course of the day it seems logical that the sun is revolving around us. To make such judgements would be to use reason, it’s not scientific per se but it is reason nonetheless.
Comment by ddm — March 22, 2006 @ 4:41 pm
ddm - agree, it certainly was reasoning. just objecting to the scientific part but not the reasoning. these were ’scientific explanations’ which had been produced/reached via reasoning.
Comment by ivap — March 22, 2006 @ 9:35 pm
to clarify one point - while ppl in general accepted world was flat all ancient philosophers who reasoned about it came to the conclusion that world was round.
even the most rational explanations are not accepted by most ppl now as then. one just have to think about some implications of quantum mechanics to realize that.
Comment by sittingnut — March 24, 2006 @ 12:30 am
we all have faith
Comment by buddha statue — June 25, 2009 @ 8:07 am