[I was hoping to develop the below into a blog post or perhaps
something even more ambitious, but I haven't had the time.]
The other day I was listening to a podcast of WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show.
The guest was a lady who was a progressive Christian and had written a
book about it. During the interview, she said something that initially
puzzled me:
"the opposite of faith is not doubt, its certainty".
This did not parse too well in my brain. I could understand how
certainty can be said to be the opposite of faith. Given my
anti-scientism, it was not long before I started fixating on the terms
"doubt" and "certainty" and their relationship to each other, rather
than each to "faith". And I arrived at a version of her statement that
was to me a sort of "eureka" moment (at least for pithily summarising a
previously known idea):
The opposite of doubt is not faith, it is certainty.
This is an excellent way to understand (a) the struggle between science
and religion, as it is played out today, (b) the framework and tactics
used by the science side, (c) the reason why the science side will not
win the war.
The problem for the scientistic (and the majority of science
practitioners and groupies are in this category, IMHO) is that they
want to claim two opposing grounds: one explicitly, namely "doubt"
(scepticism -- though not "radical" scepticism, mind you!). And the
other -- certainty -- implicitly in the type of arguments they offer
(which tend to be absolutist: "I know you are wrong because I know it
is TRUE that the world came about X billion years ago"). This
combination they use against religion which they characterise as
"faith".
In this crude format, they present their inquisitive, knowledge and
truth seeking scepticism as a better approach than "blind" faith.
But of course, without faith, one suffers a bootstrapping problem.
Unless I can [cautiously] believe in something, I cannot even propose a
hypothesis about the world, etc. And, on the other hand, religious
texts are replete with anecdotes, parables, and maxims on doubt, so the
faith is hardly a "blind" one. So, scepticism or doubt has an element
of faith in it, and faith constantly confronts doubt, often without
insisting on resolving it.
What really stands against the positive values of doubt and faith is
certainty. And it is this mistaken sense of certainty that underwrites
the arrogance of the typical "rationalist" which stands in stark
contrast with the [local] humility and compassion of a person of faith.
--ravi
