Our Stories
Doubt, No Doubt?
By Stew | posted 09/13/2007
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:30-32)
I'm the sort of person who has no difficulty in questioning just about anything and everything. I do it relatively politely and benignly, but the questions are always there. I don't think you really get to truth unless you ask questions. The result of a questioning nature in an individual can be one of three things: 1) tons of doubt, 2) an ongoing question and answer dialog, or even 3) enough Q&A that you feel that you've come to some sort of truth and no longer need to ask questions. Some might call this Faith, many do not.
Religion - and Christianity in particular - are interesting animals when it comes to this sort of questioning view of the world, because Christianity is about fundamentals. It's about the foundations of your beliefs and what you take for granted and assumed, without questioning. It took me several decades to get to the point that religion was anything more than a subject that wasn't worthy of my time. I approached it as mainly a logical exercise: 1) Let me hear all the proofs of the existence of God. 2) Am I convinced? No? 3) Did God strike me dead? No? 4) Next subject.
Note that this logic isn't exactly a rejection of Christianity, but a rejection of all religions. It's not a deep rejection, but a shallow "logical" rejection that has little to do with who God might be - whether a God of love or fear, or a God of Judaism, Islam or Christianity. This isn't a militant atheism, but an apathetic atheism.
In this sort of secular worldview God isn't relevant to one's life and a discussion of Jesus makes little sense. For me this meant that I didn't even have the vocabulary to talk with believers of any faith. Surely, I thought, their lives must be misguided by believing in mythological beings. God's surely a crutch. God is dead. God is whatever. Do they really believe the Creation story? Have they ever tried to read Leviticus? Do they really believe all that stuff?
As the years and decades went by in my life a science-based form of religion evolved: evolution. Apparently, evolution began with a "singularity" that was practically infinitesimally small that exploded 13 (or is it 16?) billion years ago. As the universe expanded so did the bounds of time and space, all related by Einstein's theory of relativity. Eventually galactic stuff cooled and condensed into galaxies of stars, some with planets, and one of which is our Earth. The oceans cooled and out of the primordial ooze crept apes with gills, who, through the magic of DNA, evolved into people, one of whom is me. Through the wonders of evolutionary psychology all our mental content is explained as stuff that has evolved to allow us to create the fittest and most selfish genes. This is the "reductionist" argument. It reduces the universe to its constituents. Religion is unnecessary. Everything is happily explained.
Of course, not everything is explained. In fact, the explanations just produced lots of questions. Where did the singularity come from? Astrophysicists found that the exploding universe not only kept on exploding, but was expanding faster and faster. Suddenly people were coming up with theories of multiple universes that you could enter through "worm holes." And just as suddenly the universe of universes had expanded beyond all comprehension. And to explain the expanding universe physicists came up with "dark matter" and "dark energy" that made up most of the universe. A minor detail is that the dark majority of the universe doesn't interact with us lowly humans.
And microscopically, it used to be that atoms were the smallest things and too small to see. No longer. Now we're after the "quarks" that make up all the atoms. How small is a quark? Imagine an atom the size of the solar system. Well, a quark is the size of a garbage can orbiting the planet Pluto. And what are quarks exactly? According to string theory, which isn't exactly a theory but a way of thinking of things, strings are ten-dimensional super-symmetric vibrating strips of energy. (Can you see where all this is headed? I don't.) All I can say is that 100 years from now, we'll be figuring out what components are inside all those little garbage cans circling Pluto. My guess--and it's just a guess--is garbage.
Science is valuable and important. It's just not much of a religion. It can't really get its hands around things like good and bad and God and the soul. In fact, what's actually "real" seems to differ depending on what frame of reference you use to figure out what real is. I read the other day a book by a computer scientist that the self is an illusion. And then a book on physics where it was claimed that space itself is an illusion. I guess the point here is that questioning often doesn't converge on anything, but just produces more questions.
When I hear scientists say that the self and space itself are illusions, I think back to Gandhi who once said that prayer is the realest thing in the world. (He wasn't a Christian, he said, because the example of other Christians persuaded him that they weren't either.)
So how does a hopelessly questioning soul like me end up even taking a glance at Christianity? Well, by being more that a little disillusioned with a secular, consumer-based, scientific, capitalistic model of the world. But then by asking a few questions and getting some reasonable answers. Are all the answers there? No. Does everything fit together? It tries to. Can you prove everything? No. Can it even begin to answer questions about life and death? Yep. Is love even part of the vocabulary? Yep. Is the religion straightforward and human enough that I can relate to it as something other than another theory? Sure, with Jesus as an example and a standard for human behavior, it's easy to relate to.
So how strong is my faith? I still have questions, still have doubts. I read that even Mother Teresa had strong doubts at times. Doubt and questions are used to test faith. In some ways, they are proof that you have faith even when you think you don't. Is Jesus real? He's the realest thing in the world. How do you know? Well, no doubt you'll have to ask yourself a few questions.
To respond to this message, email Stew at stewka@comcast.net.
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Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:30-32)
I'm the sort of person who has no difficulty in questioning just about anything and everything. I do it relatively politely and benignly, but the questions are always there. I don't think you really get to truth unless you ask questions. The result of a questioning nature in an individual can be one of three things: 1) tons of doubt, 2) an ongoing question and answer dialog, or even 3) enough Q&A that you feel that you've come to some sort of truth and no longer need to ask questions. Some might call this Faith, many do not. Religion - and Christianity in particular - are interesting animals when it comes to this sort of questioning view of the world, because Christianity is about fundamentals. It's about the foundations of your beliefs and what you take for granted and assumed, without questioning. It took me several decades to get to the point that religion was anything more than a subject that wasn't worthy of my time. I approached it as mainly a logical exercise: 1) Let me hear all the proofs of the existence of God. 2) Am I convinced? No? 3) Did God strike me dead? No? 4) Next subject. Note that this logic isn't exactly a rejection of Christianity, but a rejection of all religions. It's not a deep rejection, but a shallow "logical" rejection that has little to do with who God might be - whether a God of love or fear, or a God of Judaism, Islam or Christianity. This isn't a militant atheism, but an apathetic atheism. In this sort of secular worldview God isn't relevant to one's life and a discussion of Jesus makes little sense. For me this meant that I didn't even have the vocabulary to talk with believers of any faith. Surely, I thought, their lives must be misguided by believing in mythological beings. God's surely a crutch. God is dead. God is whatever. Do they really believe the Creation story? Have they ever tried to read Leviticus? Do they really believe all that stuff? As the years and decades went by in my life a science-based form of religion evolved: evolution. Apparently, evolution began with a "singularity" that was practically infinitesimally small that exploded 13 (or is it 16?) billion years ago. As the universe expanded so did the bounds of time and space, all related by Einstein's theory of relativity. Eventually galactic stuff cooled and condensed into galaxies of stars, some with planets, and one of which is our Earth. The oceans cooled and out of the primordial ooze crept apes with gills, who, through the magic of DNA, evolved into people, one of whom is me. Through the wonders of evolutionary psychology all our mental content is explained as stuff that has evolved to allow us to create the fittest and most selfish genes. This is the "reductionist" argument. It reduces the universe to its constituents. Religion is unnecessary. Everything is happily explained. Of course, not everything is explained. In fact, the explanations just produced lots of questions. Where did the singularity come from? Astrophysicists found that the exploding universe not only kept on exploding, but was expanding faster and faster. Suddenly people were coming up with theories of multiple universes that you could enter through "worm holes." And just as suddenly the universe of universes had expanded beyond all comprehension. And to explain the expanding universe physicists came up with "dark matter" and "dark energy" that made up most of the universe. A minor detail is that the dark majority of the universe doesn't interact with us lowly humans. And microscopically, it used to be that atoms were the smallest things and too small to see. No longer. Now we're after the "quarks" that make up all the atoms. How small is a quark? Imagine an atom the size of the solar system. Well, a quark is the size of a garbage can orbiting the planet Pluto. And what are quarks exactly? According to string theory, which isn't exactly a theory but a way of thinking of things, strings are ten-dimensional super-symmetric vibrating strips of energy. (Can you see where all this is headed? I don't.) All I can say is that 100 years from now, we'll be figuring out what components are inside all those little garbage cans circling Pluto. My guess--and it's just a guess--is garbage. Science is valuable and important. It's just not much of a religion. It can't really get its hands around things like good and bad and God and the soul. In fact, what's actually "real" seems to differ depending on what frame of reference you use to figure out what real is. I read the other day a book by a computer scientist that the self is an illusion. And then a book on physics where it was claimed that space itself is an illusion. I guess the point here is that questioning often doesn't converge on anything, but just produces more questions. When I hear scientists say that the self and space itself are illusions, I think back to Gandhi who once said that prayer is the realest thing in the world. (He wasn't a Christian, he said, because the example of other Christians persuaded him that they weren't either.) So how does a hopelessly questioning soul like me end up even taking a glance at Christianity? Well, by being more that a little disillusioned with a secular, consumer-based, scientific, capitalistic model of the world. But then by asking a few questions and getting some reasonable answers. Are all the answers there? No. Does everything fit together? It tries to. Can you prove everything? No. Can it even begin to answer questions about life and death? Yep. Is love even part of the vocabulary? Yep. Is the religion straightforward and human enough that I can relate to it as something other than another theory? Sure, with Jesus as an example and a standard for human behavior, it's easy to relate to. So how strong is my faith? I still have questions, still have doubts. I read that even Mother Teresa had strong doubts at times. Doubt and questions are used to test faith. In some ways, they are proof that you have faith even when you think you don't. Is Jesus real? He's the realest thing in the world. How do you know? Well, no doubt you'll have to ask yourself a few questions. To respond to this message, email Stew at stewka@comcast.net. |
