I always enjoy getting a message from my favorite (and, really, only) regular Christian correspondent, Steve. He sent a thoughtful response to my post, “Reason unites, faith divides.” I’ll include it in its entirety as a continuation to this post. Steve is so reasonable, I certainly don’t include him in my category of Closed-Minded Religious Faithful—they who ignore unmistakable immediate reality in favor of unproven faith in what may lie beyond what is known now.
I agree with Steve that “science is but a limited tool,” so long as it “doesn’t deal with things outside the natural, physical realm.” This was one of the central themes of my first book, “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder.” Since science doesn’t know whether the essence of ultimate reality is material (physical) or non-material (spiritual), it needs to be open to any and all possibilities about what lies at the root of manifest existence.
So if “religion” means embracing really real reality, sign me up. But I don’t want any substitutes for the Real Thing. Give me the truth about the cosmos, or give me nothing. And this is what faith is, compared to truth: nothing. It’s a hope, theory, hypothesis, conjecture, wish, desire—whatever you want to call it. Whatever, it isn’t the real deal: something directly experienced.
Last Sunday I gave a talk to our local Radha Soami Satsang Beas group on this very subject. I heartily agreed with a statement by Lekh Raj Puri in his book Radha Swami Teachings: “True faith is that which is based on one’s inner transcendent spiritual realization. In that faith there is no scope for doubt; it is faith in true transcendent knowledge; it is real and reliable faith.”
But this definition of faith is far distant from what people usually mean by the term. Puri’s “faith” is precisely what I call “reality,” something directly and truly experienced. By contrast, the criticism which Sam Harris has of faith, which I echo here in the Church of the Churchless, is that shaky beliefs are mistaken for rock-solid truth. Worse, most people of faith (but not Steve) expect that other people should think and act like they do.
Steve correctly notes that “Science is not immune to folly or arrogance.” However, scientists don’t try to force their beliefs on other people, and scientists also have to offer solid evidence for the correctness of their beliefs (theories). Without such evidence, no one is expected to give those beliefs any credibility. Many religious faithful, though, expect that their unfounded beliefs about creationism, homosexuality, stem cell research, and so on will be treated seriously by society.
Sam Harris writes:
Imagine that we could revive a well-educated Christian of the 14th century. He would prove to be a total ignoramus, except on matters of faith. His beliefs about geography, astronomy, and medicine would embarrass even a child, but he would know everything there is to know about God. We could explain this in two ways: Either we perfected our religious understanding a millennium ago—while our knowledge on other fronts was still hopelessly inchoate—or religion, being the mere maintenance of dogma, is one area of discourse that does not admit of progress. The fact is, with each passing year religious dogma conserves less of the data of human experience. By this measure the entire project of religion seems perfectly backward.
By and large, I agree. Yet I encourage you to read Steve’s message, which presents religion and faith in a more favorable light. Each to his own.
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