Monday, Feb. 12, 1962 University Daily Kansan
On Faith and Non-Belief
Page 3
The next step follows inevitably. As adults, men carry over to the Great Unknowns the attitudes of easy acceptance which permeate childhood, clothing this in sophisticated terms, rationalizing their acceptance in philosophic systems, beautifying it with poetic myths, and then attributing to it a spiritual superiority to doubt. When applied to theological issues, this attitude derives powerful cultural support from the gentle brain-washing of children in our Sunday Schools. This familiar sample of what the adult world does in its relation to children arouses an uncomfortable conviction that the adult tends to exploit the spurious authority with which his physical size and verbal facility endow him.
THERE IS a later phase in the evolution of the courage to doubt, in which it can become as overdetermined as was the earlier acceptance. At this point the adolescent oscillates obsessionally between an acceptance based on fear, guilt, dependence, and a doubting which, especially at first, is an expression of an equally blind rebellion, over-driven by overt or masked hostilities. Out of this unhealthy soil comes an unstable balance between automatic faith and automatic rebellion. This low ceiling is the highest that most men achieve in their faltering flight into spiritual realms.
yet it is a measure of emotional maturity, of psychological strength, and of spiritual humility to be able to acknowledge gaps in knowledge without rushing to make self-comforting claims that we know the answers, poking puny fingers of what passes for "faith" into the holes of ignorance in the great dykes of knowledge. There is honesty and humility in saying, "I do not know; and therefore I will wait patiently for slow increments of further evidence, however partial they may prove to be." In contrast to this there is arrogance in saying, "That for which I have no factual data or evidence will be revealed to me." To assume that an act of faith creates its own reality is one with the naive arrogance of the child for whom words make facts. The ancient conviction that the world was flat never made it flat. The old song that "Wishing Will Make it True" is a child's song; whether the wishing is linked to a good fairy, or to some individual moment of personal revelation, or to direct knowledge, divinely bestowed. The slow movement towards maturity is like the slow deep heave of the ocean from which waves are born. Maturity begins with the courage to live with doubt, to accept with humility and without anger or fear the fact that the best we can do is to gather approximate evidence which points in the direction of approximate truths. This is a harder task-master than Faith: and throughout life it remains easy to slip back into childish ways. Maturity means freedom from the tyranny which childish ways threaten to exercise over us throughout our lives. As with the price of liberty, the price of maturity is eternal vigilance. Let me repeat, then, that it is an illusion to assume that the path of insistent skepticism, doubt, questioning, and challenging is the easy way. The struggle to live without credulity, without mythological thinking or superstition, is an incessant struggle; and it is never won completely. Every honest Doubter knows that the freedom to question is the fruit of an incessant struggle.
CONSIDER NEXT two closely related questions: Which has been merciless and bloodthirsty, the scientific spirit as expressed in scientific research, or the Inquisition. Salem witch hunts, the obscene cruelties of the Crusades? The pogroms of Tsarist Russia were carried on by religious zealots. Totalitarian liquidations have been the work of the Faithful among Fascists and Communists. Scientists fight with words; but they do not liquidate those with whom they disagree. This is the privilege of "party-line" zealots, whether in economics, politics, or religion. Human history has been marked by tragedies, in which Faith released unchecked the destroying impulses of Man by seeming to justify them. The Faithful can kill and torture in good conscience, because their conviction that they
are serving their various Gods rationalizes their hates and provides an illusion of righteousness. It is the arrogant assumption that The One Truth has been revealed to Me which justifies me in killing any infidel who doubts my personal revelation or my omniscience. It is never skepticism which releases and justifies the savage man. Science becomes an instrument of destruction only when the scientist allows himself to become the tool of the faithful. The Anti-Christ who kills is never a scientist or doubter. He too is a faith-filled fanatic. Precisely because science is based on perpetual doubt and self-doubt, the scientist does not kill. This is one of several reasons why science is the most humane among all the humanities.
A SECOND QUESTION: In the history of human culture and human progress, which has carved out new paths, new vistas, giving glimpses of new hopes? The little child in the seemingly grown man is always fearful of anything new. Consequently he clings to the familiar past, even when that past has been filled with pain and destruction. And since it angers us to be forced to face what we fear, the child in man is angry when science demands that he look forward and not backward. The man-child is one with those terrified sailors who cling to the familiar hand-rail of a sinking ship rather than leap into the unknown sea, even when a few strokes would take them to a waiting life-boat. The child clings to the fairy stories which comfort him
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.—Voltaire
in the dark. When the little child in us is allowed to lead us, he leads backwards and never forwards. It is only the adult in man that moves forward, and always on the spiritual wings of a driving quest for evidence, fired by doubt and by self-searching skepticism.
Furthermore, just as the adolescent attempts simultaneously to rebel and to conform, so many men continue to the end of their days committing themselves neither to faith nor to skepticism. However adult they may have become in other areas of their lives, on this issue they remain trapped in a 'teen-age straddle'. In this way even able scientists may split their world into two water-tight compartments. Six days out of the week they may work on the basis of a painstaking search for evidence. On Sunday, however, they reserve a pew for themselves and their children where they can conform to the ancient and nostalgic mores of faith.
(This is the second in a series of articles from an article by Lawrence S. Harvard University, "in the Oct. 28, 1961, Harvard Alumni Bulletin)."
Short Ones
History is little else than a picture of human crimes and misfortunes.—Voltaire
It Looks This Way...
The Republican national committee recently concluded that the party lost the 1960 elections in the nation's cities. The committee called for better financing and organization in these areas.
The party's future, however, depends not upon the mechanics for getting votes out of the cities, but upon policies and plans for doing something for and about the cities.
ALL BUT 11 of the 50 states are now predominantly urban. The overwhelming majority of Americans now live in cities. They live with such problems as decaying slums, increasing juvenile delinquency, spreading crime, scarcity housing, paralyzing traffic, inadequate health and welfare facilities.
Unless the Republican party is interested in these problems of the people,in trying to solve them,at all levels of government, then no amount of financing or organization can make it the party of the people.
If it persists, through its mal-apportioned legislatures in putting rural prejudices and fears ahead of urban needs, then it must content itself with being the party of a dwindling rural minority.
The latest example of Republican refusal to recognize where the majority of Americans live, came in the solid Republican vote in the House Rules Committee against President Kennedy's department of Urban Affairs.
THERE IS NO more assurance an Urban Department will cure all urban problems than that an Agricultural Department cures all agricultural problems. But Kennedy is trying to tackle city problems while the Republicans—including Kansas Cong, Bill Avery—on the Rules Committee, along with the Southern Democrats, are blocking the effort.
This is hardly the way to win the cities in 1964. It is hardly the way to represent the majority of Americans.
(An editorial from the Jan. 27 Hutchinson News)
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