I love your writing, and respect you a lot, which is why I think it's worth sharing my different perspective here.
I can't understand how faith is the opposite of certainty, and nor do you explain that. And from what you've written here, it seems that you see faith as a sanctuary from uncertainty.
I don't know anyone, other than mindless ideologues, who sees science as a source of certainty. At its best, science is an indicator of your best bet. Science will never prove anything beyond all doubt, and I'm entirely comfortable with that. Science can tell me what is most likely to be true given the data we have so far, and that's enough. Knowing the odds is as good as it gets.
And that's enough because I'm comfortable with doubt, and comfortable with being shown to be wrong. Like you, I've acted with certainty and been proven wrong many times, but that hasn't shaken me in the way it seems to have shaken you.
I don't see faith as the opposite of certainty, but as a refuge from doubt. That refuge works so well because the faiths around us have retreated into making only unfalsifiable claims; that's their cast iron guarantee of never, ever being wrong.
But there are an infinite number of faiths we could invent, all replete with unfalisfiable claims, and I don't see what they would offer me. They survive by making claims with no ties to reality whatsoever, and I'm not sure I'm supposed to do with that.
I think you are in a very different different headspace to me. I think of reality as BC and AD -- there's before everything changed, in which your paradigm was sound, and there is now. After everything changed. (I'm being deliberately vague on what the event was that changed everything, because you could devote a whole book to figuring that out.)
Now, in the AD, all of what you say -- which is very much what I grew up with in terms of a foundational understanding of reality, so I understand what you are saying -- seems very outdated and even a bit adolescent.
I do completely get that saying certainty is the opposite to faith is very jarring. It definitely is. But, how can I put this? To me, it just makes sense. The truth of it is just...there. Apparent.
But if it makes sense to you without you being able to articulate it, doesn’t that diminish the meaning of “sense”.
I mean, trans people think their beliefs make sense, but nor have they ever been able to articulate them in a way that they could possibly make sense to others. If something is impossible to articulate, I’m not sure what sort of sense it can make.
That’s not to say that what you’ve experienced isn’t real, but that it can’t be the basis of truth claims. That is to say, how can we articulate truth claims based on something we can’t articulate?
You say that the paradigm you see me describing is the same as the one you used to experience, but I’ve never seen science etc as being certain.
The paradigm I describe is just an acceptance of doubt. Again, I feel comfortable with that because I’m happy to go with the odds. I feel like our understanding of the world is like poker; I’m happy to ACT certain, while understanding that I never can be.
Matt, you bring up excellent points and I am uncertain that anything I say here will clarify, but for my part, it's a bit like this: It does not diminish my heart and soul if I cannot explain it. It expands it. I have many friends, but I cannot tell you how I met most of them. I can, however, remember the day I met my wife. I fell in love with her before I knew here. I saw across a college cafeteria sitting with a friend of mine. I knew then. It hit me. I cannot explain love. I can't explain why seeing her changed me. But I know it did. Love does that. Faith is that.
I totally get your point but love is a subjective experience. That doesn’t mean it’s not real; if you experience love, as I do too, it’s absolutely real. My general point around this sort of thing is that you can’t base on objective truth claim on a subjective experience; they are real in different ways.
For this reason, I would never suggest that somebody’s faith is not real, but it can’t be the basis of an objective truth claim. Trans people “know” they “should” be the opposite sex. But for those of us who understand that sex is not a subjective experience but rather an objective truth, their claims are simply meaningless to us.
Which is fine, but language and meaning are tools that allow humans to explore the objective world as well as share subjective experiences. People often confuse the two, and often to assert dominance. I think it’s important to maintain the cognitive division between subjective experience and objective truth, and that requires clarity of language, particularly around words such as “to know”.
For this reason, I suggest that when we assert that something “makes sense”, that can only be meaningful if that sense can be articulated.
Stephen Gould once wrote an essay on how religion and science couldn't conflict, because religion by definition involved taking things on faith, whereas science (when done right, I think everyone who espouses "the science is settled" doesn't understand science) involved looking for evidence and proving things over and over.
Well said. If one looks seriously at the covid fiasco, it is precisely because we listened to people whose "certainty" told us what to do...and we bought it. Never again.
Thankyou for that. I have been holding to Miguel de Unamuno's writing - 'Tragic Sense of Life' - which included his words “Faith which does not doubt is dead faith" but he might also have said, but I don't think he did, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, the opposite of faith is certainty.” Those, although he says he heard them from another, were the words of our 'inappropriate' and 'unacceptable' Russell Brandt. As someone said to Oscar Wilde "I wish I'd said that". "You will" replied Wilde; also me, and I might even say they're mine, when I know damn well I couldn't have thought up something so simple and true and staring me in the face all the time. Thanks again Jenny and much respect for your generous and eloquent acknowledgment of the wisdom of their source. By the way my favourite saint is Thomas. (NOTE: The phrase used by bRB that you quoted is from “Dynamics of Faith” by the theologian Paul Tillich, most of whose work is incomprehensible)
24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. [St John's Gospel, C.20]
I believe the Wilde anecdote relates to a bon mot uttered by James McNeill Whistler, to which Wilde responded, "I wish I'd said that." To which Whistler replied, "you will, Oscar, you will", to the less-original-than-he-had-hoped Wilde.
yes! Grace is the answer. Control and certainty are illusions!
one of the beautiful mysteries of Faith is that it is like holding on and letting go simultaneously.
and yes, everything is fake and gay when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are shilling for the establishment and Russel Brand and Tucker Carlson are speaking truth to power. who saw that one coming..?
Perhaps the social breakdown in the west has been due to the loss of a faith life and community anchoring people, fueling a concomitant rise in apocalyptic climate fear and the nihilistic rise of Big Trans. The Climate and BT religious followers brook no debate with their certainty. I believe religion and science can live together in harmony until one or both try to become the other. I had a humanities professor who assigned us to write a paper explaining why (he was certain) science and religion are in conflict and one can't follow both. I disagreed with his thesis. We see today the loss of spiritual life with some creating new religion based on The Science. The void must be filled. Amen to Russell Brand and the video was hilarious.
To me, though, whether it’s trans, climate certainty or belief in the afterlife, these are all ideological positions.
I don’t know whether science and religion can interact and nor do I much care. But I do care about understanding, truth and language because these are vital to human flourishing.
As far as I’m concerned, people can believe what they like. But as soon as those beliefs are articulated as unfalsifiable truth claims, they become meaningless. I can’t respond to them because I can’t even conceptualise them.
I think this is the problem: language gets abused in order to assert things which nobody else could possibly access. There’s power in that, and it’s a power I consider unearned.
I noticed you used “belief” when mentioning afterlife. There’s the difference from the first two. There are some so-called believers who are militant about their evangelizing, and in that way are similar to the others. But most faithful just carry on without militancy or treating their beliefs like science.
I think this quote is very helpful. I think it would also be helpful to add that faith is not a stand alone word but must have an object. Faith must be in something and that object is the certainty, even if you aren't certain. To have faith in God is to be certain of God while being uncertain of everything else. In CS Lewis's framing; Aslan is not safe, but he is good. The certainty is in God's revealed, and observed, attributes.
Are you familiar with Joseph Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity” (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA 2004)? Your post rings a bell with its first chapter, “Belief in the World of Today,” which was written in 1968! The future Pope Benedict XVI offers a profound insight on faith, doubt, temptation, and uncertainty - for both believers and unbelievers- involving Terese of Lisieux,Paul Claudel, and Martin Buber (p. 42-47). Apologies if you’ve read it. I have no idea if RB or JP mention it.
It's my understanding that he was a teen-aged boy in the mandatory youth organizations of that era that all young German boys were required to join but that he avoided it all to the extent that he could get away with.
"In his obituary of Pope Benedict (31 December), Peter Stanford writes that membership of the Hitler Youth was compulsory for the Ratzinger boys. It was not. My sister, brother and I are very proud that our father, Walter Gomm, born in 1925 in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, resisted the pressure from his father (afraid for his only child) to become a member. Joseph Ratzinger had a choice. He didn’t take it.
Even if one assumes for the sake of argument that there was some way that the teen-aged Ratzinger could have avoided the Hitler Youth, it would have been a dangerous move for him to have tried. It is easy to sit back and Monday morning quarterback when one was not in that situation. Calling somebody a Nazi implies that the person bought into that ideology and there is absolutely nothing to indicate that Ratzinger did. All indications are that he did as little as possible, probably a little marching around and cleaning duty I suspect, and tried not to draw attention to himself until he could get to seminary.
Not about Benedict. I am not going to get into every Catholic (or Lutheran or anybody else) who might or might not have been heroic or even decent at that time of history. I will say that claiming a religious label and being a Christian are not the same thing. Jesus Christ knows who his true followers are. Many people who identify as Christian are followers of Christ, but many are just nominal Christians.
C. S. Lewis, the Oxford scholar, once a confirmed atheist, came to realize that there is a deity and then he came to learn about that deity. He became a Christian (arguably the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th Century). One can get a little hint of God from many places. Scripture says that "the heavens declare the glory of God." To get a full picture of God (as full as we can get until we see Him face to face in heaven and see fully) we have God's revelation in the Bible. There are passages that are confusing, but we can ask God for discernment and put them aside for the moment. There are other passages that are immediately wonderful for many such as John 14, John 15, and Romans 8. Blessings on your exciting journey.
Jenny, it’s like you’re reading my mind. Brand’s faith comment struck me in exactly the same way, and I was just describing him as a prophet-of-old, though I really couldn’t believe I was possibly thinking such a thing. And in the back of my mind, I was also thinking, “Is this really the Russell Brand of BBC Radio who prank called people in 2006??” My kind of prophet.
I too have had that moment of physically experiencing truth and it was so powerful, I remember it like it was yesterday even though it was 30 years ago. I am convinced it was supernatural. I’m a person of faith yet I have frequent moments or periods of doubt. But I’ve learned that faith can coexist with doubt, which makes a lot more sense when you don’t think of the two as opposites! Someone once said to me, “Doubt your doubts,” which was an important tool for me in thinking through what I believed.
We may not have certainty about anything, but we have to land *somewhere*. We have to have certainty in one thing more than another thing or we wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. In the end, whether we admit it or not, we have committed to a system of morality and beliefs and a worldview, because out of that flows how we make choices, how we form and keep relationships, how we prioritize and spend our time, what we worship, how we live our entire lives.
But I agree with you that the idea of faith being the opposite of certainty is very profound indeed and I will be pondering over that for the next few days! However, faith is not blind. It’s putting trust in something or someone because you have a reasonable assurance and reasonable evidence that that person or thing is trustworthy. I am a Christian because I believe it is the best explanation for what we see in the world and it is rooted in history, in actual events.
I’m sorry for rambling! I think you would really enjoy Shane Rosenthal’s podcast The Humble Skeptic.
“We may not have certainty about anything, but we have to land *somewhere*.”
Yes, and for me, the ideal place is that which is MOST LIKELY to be true. I’m playing poker, which means acting with certainty without confusing that with knowing with certainty.
If I understand correctly, our fundamental disagreement is that I believe that it is objectively TRUE that good is better than evil, whereas you see this as a personal preference luckily happened upon through life circumstances.
Its a bet because it’s impossible to take in all of the information relevant to any decision. You have to have a hierarchy of ideals in order to narrow your field of vision. A greater good so to speak. You have faith that your ideals are the right ones. I would say your “reasonable” decisions are truly acts of faith. Most westerners, knowingly or unknowingly, base their ideals off of the Christian ethos on which the west is based.
Well, you’ve reached your conclusion about faith by relying on vague, fuzzy definitions.
It’s not a hierarchy of ideals; it’s a hierarchy of reliable sources.
So science is generally considered the most reliable of sources because the scientific method is based on enabling ideas to be challenged. That’s why papers are published, with methods described.
If a hypothesis is wrong, it’s most likely to be shown to be so using the scientific method. And it will never, ever be proven right by the scientific method.
Come up with a better way of disproving a hypothesis than science, and I’ll demote science in my hierarchy. That’s not faith; that’s pragmatism.
I understand the scientific method. My point is that decisions rest in a greater framing because
1 - you can never have all of the information related to any decision. Therefore one must narrow one’s field of vision to that which one can process. This requires one to make decisions about how much attention to put where. These are value judgments based on a moral framework.
2. Science does not, and cannot, provide a moral framework. It cannot for instance prove the intrinsic value (or sacredness) of human life. Therefore one must develop a moral framework of one’s own in order to weigh one’s decisions against.
The science may provide some information that is useful in making a decision, but ultimately every decision is a moral decision and therefore an act of faith in one’s chosen hierarchy of ideals (GOD).
It’s useful to know who you serve and why. For most in the west the moral framework has been provided by Christianity - although many will be unaware - and the “trust the science” crowd will be loathe to admit it.
I understand what you mean re Prometheus. Technology is neither positive nor negative. Ditto science. But, there are no better alternatives. Reason is not the problem. Reason, obviously, needs to be tempered with altruism/love. Humankind is capable of all of it. We are malleable. The problem is capitalism. It fosters the opposite of altruism/love. it fosters greed, competition and violence. The solution is not superstition/magical thinking, tho. The solution is truth... the truth about capitalism, the current form of class system.
Wrong. You would fail that analogy on an SAT question. Jenny and Brand would pass.
The opposite of faith is indeed certainty.
Reason = we do not possess full reason because we do not have full knowledge and your response only works if you claim we do, i.e again that's certainty.
I'm glad though that you have it all figured out and that your reason i.e certainty will bring all of humanity into perfection. Bravo. You must be pretty amazing.
Look to Christ if you want perfect reason. He is the truth and pure logic. So back we go to faith because there are still mysteries (uncertainties) in the God-Man of Christ.
Faith keeps us on the journey. Like Abraham leaving Ur to seek out an unknown land he only knew of by faith. Your pointvabout faith is actually quite profound. Thank you.
‘Nothing’s for sure’ was an oft quoted thing when I was young and, as it turns out, it’s perfectly true. Even the great science we all worship can’t be 100% certain of anything. As actually already proven by Einstein and Quantum Mechanics. Even Schrödinger doubted if his cat was actually real except when it was being observed! I remember a great Priest that would come to give us Mass in our little primary school who used to always say that the best Catholics were the ones that doubted their own faith. It always stuck with me that. It was advice that particularly became relevant when writing my essays and dissertation many years later. Research would always throw up counter arguments to my own, perfectly reasonable ones as it turned out, and it made it harder to reach a satisfying full stop at the end of anything I ever submitted. It confirmed one thing to me - the road to wisdom is found in self doubt. Not crippling self doubt, of course which is an entirely different thing, but in an ability to question things and not take anything at face value. As far as Brand’s miraculous conversion, I’m afraid I will have to withhold judgement as I’m not sure if he’s actually found God or just a handy excuse. After all, nothing’s for sure - right?
I don't trust him, has he ever spread the gospel ? Has he spoken about the importance of the shed blood which can wash our sins away ? Jesu's death, burial and resurrection?
I might have missed that but until I see this I don't believe him.
I love your writing, and respect you a lot, which is why I think it's worth sharing my different perspective here.
I can't understand how faith is the opposite of certainty, and nor do you explain that. And from what you've written here, it seems that you see faith as a sanctuary from uncertainty.
I don't know anyone, other than mindless ideologues, who sees science as a source of certainty. At its best, science is an indicator of your best bet. Science will never prove anything beyond all doubt, and I'm entirely comfortable with that. Science can tell me what is most likely to be true given the data we have so far, and that's enough. Knowing the odds is as good as it gets.
And that's enough because I'm comfortable with doubt, and comfortable with being shown to be wrong. Like you, I've acted with certainty and been proven wrong many times, but that hasn't shaken me in the way it seems to have shaken you.
I don't see faith as the opposite of certainty, but as a refuge from doubt. That refuge works so well because the faiths around us have retreated into making only unfalsifiable claims; that's their cast iron guarantee of never, ever being wrong.
But there are an infinite number of faiths we could invent, all replete with unfalisfiable claims, and I don't see what they would offer me. They survive by making claims with no ties to reality whatsoever, and I'm not sure I'm supposed to do with that.
Because I'd rather be wrong, than not even wrong.
Thank you Matt, that's very kind.
I think you are in a very different different headspace to me. I think of reality as BC and AD -- there's before everything changed, in which your paradigm was sound, and there is now. After everything changed. (I'm being deliberately vague on what the event was that changed everything, because you could devote a whole book to figuring that out.)
Now, in the AD, all of what you say -- which is very much what I grew up with in terms of a foundational understanding of reality, so I understand what you are saying -- seems very outdated and even a bit adolescent.
I do completely get that saying certainty is the opposite to faith is very jarring. It definitely is. But, how can I put this? To me, it just makes sense. The truth of it is just...there. Apparent.
But if it makes sense to you without you being able to articulate it, doesn’t that diminish the meaning of “sense”.
I mean, trans people think their beliefs make sense, but nor have they ever been able to articulate them in a way that they could possibly make sense to others. If something is impossible to articulate, I’m not sure what sort of sense it can make.
That’s not to say that what you’ve experienced isn’t real, but that it can’t be the basis of truth claims. That is to say, how can we articulate truth claims based on something we can’t articulate?
You say that the paradigm you see me describing is the same as the one you used to experience, but I’ve never seen science etc as being certain.
The paradigm I describe is just an acceptance of doubt. Again, I feel comfortable with that because I’m happy to go with the odds. I feel like our understanding of the world is like poker; I’m happy to ACT certain, while understanding that I never can be.
Matt, you bring up excellent points and I am uncertain that anything I say here will clarify, but for my part, it's a bit like this: It does not diminish my heart and soul if I cannot explain it. It expands it. I have many friends, but I cannot tell you how I met most of them. I can, however, remember the day I met my wife. I fell in love with her before I knew here. I saw across a college cafeteria sitting with a friend of mine. I knew then. It hit me. I cannot explain love. I can't explain why seeing her changed me. But I know it did. Love does that. Faith is that.
I totally get your point but love is a subjective experience. That doesn’t mean it’s not real; if you experience love, as I do too, it’s absolutely real. My general point around this sort of thing is that you can’t base on objective truth claim on a subjective experience; they are real in different ways.
For this reason, I would never suggest that somebody’s faith is not real, but it can’t be the basis of an objective truth claim. Trans people “know” they “should” be the opposite sex. But for those of us who understand that sex is not a subjective experience but rather an objective truth, their claims are simply meaningless to us.
Which is fine, but language and meaning are tools that allow humans to explore the objective world as well as share subjective experiences. People often confuse the two, and often to assert dominance. I think it’s important to maintain the cognitive division between subjective experience and objective truth, and that requires clarity of language, particularly around words such as “to know”.
For this reason, I suggest that when we assert that something “makes sense”, that can only be meaningful if that sense can be articulated.
Stephen Gould once wrote an essay on how religion and science couldn't conflict, because religion by definition involved taking things on faith, whereas science (when done right, I think everyone who espouses "the science is settled" doesn't understand science) involved looking for evidence and proving things over and over.
And with doubt comes humility which is is in short supply these days, unfortunately the hubris of the certain may yet drive us to ruin.
Well said. If one looks seriously at the covid fiasco, it is precisely because we listened to people whose "certainty" told us what to do...and we bought it. Never again.
this may be what it's really all about, the key difference. Even more important than the binaries discussed above.
Thankyou for that. I have been holding to Miguel de Unamuno's writing - 'Tragic Sense of Life' - which included his words “Faith which does not doubt is dead faith" but he might also have said, but I don't think he did, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, the opposite of faith is certainty.” Those, although he says he heard them from another, were the words of our 'inappropriate' and 'unacceptable' Russell Brandt. As someone said to Oscar Wilde "I wish I'd said that". "You will" replied Wilde; also me, and I might even say they're mine, when I know damn well I couldn't have thought up something so simple and true and staring me in the face all the time. Thanks again Jenny and much respect for your generous and eloquent acknowledgment of the wisdom of their source. By the way my favourite saint is Thomas. (NOTE: The phrase used by bRB that you quoted is from “Dynamics of Faith” by the theologian Paul Tillich, most of whose work is incomprehensible)
Thank you Simon! Why is your favourite saint Thomas?
24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. [St John's Gospel, C.20]
I believe the Wilde anecdote relates to a bon mot uttered by James McNeill Whistler, to which Wilde responded, "I wish I'd said that." To which Whistler replied, "you will, Oscar, you will", to the less-original-than-he-had-hoped Wilde.
yes! Grace is the answer. Control and certainty are illusions!
one of the beautiful mysteries of Faith is that it is like holding on and letting go simultaneously.
and yes, everything is fake and gay when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are shilling for the establishment and Russel Brand and Tucker Carlson are speaking truth to power. who saw that one coming..?
Perhaps the social breakdown in the west has been due to the loss of a faith life and community anchoring people, fueling a concomitant rise in apocalyptic climate fear and the nihilistic rise of Big Trans. The Climate and BT religious followers brook no debate with their certainty. I believe religion and science can live together in harmony until one or both try to become the other. I had a humanities professor who assigned us to write a paper explaining why (he was certain) science and religion are in conflict and one can't follow both. I disagreed with his thesis. We see today the loss of spiritual life with some creating new religion based on The Science. The void must be filled. Amen to Russell Brand and the video was hilarious.
To me, though, whether it’s trans, climate certainty or belief in the afterlife, these are all ideological positions.
I don’t know whether science and religion can interact and nor do I much care. But I do care about understanding, truth and language because these are vital to human flourishing.
As far as I’m concerned, people can believe what they like. But as soon as those beliefs are articulated as unfalsifiable truth claims, they become meaningless. I can’t respond to them because I can’t even conceptualise them.
I think this is the problem: language gets abused in order to assert things which nobody else could possibly access. There’s power in that, and it’s a power I consider unearned.
I noticed you used “belief” when mentioning afterlife. There’s the difference from the first two. There are some so-called believers who are militant about their evangelizing, and in that way are similar to the others. But most faithful just carry on without militancy or treating their beliefs like science.
You are certainly on to something!! Keep at it. The Truth is not far off.
I also have been listening to Mr. Brand recently, and am moved by the seriousness of his belief. The Lord truly moves in mysterious ways!
I think this quote is very helpful. I think it would also be helpful to add that faith is not a stand alone word but must have an object. Faith must be in something and that object is the certainty, even if you aren't certain. To have faith in God is to be certain of God while being uncertain of everything else. In CS Lewis's framing; Aslan is not safe, but he is good. The certainty is in God's revealed, and observed, attributes.
Are you familiar with Joseph Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity” (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA 2004)? Your post rings a bell with its first chapter, “Belief in the World of Today,” which was written in 1968! The future Pope Benedict XVI offers a profound insight on faith, doubt, temptation, and uncertainty - for both believers and unbelievers- involving Terese of Lisieux,Paul Claudel, and Martin Buber (p. 42-47). Apologies if you’ve read it. I have no idea if RB or JP mention it.
You realize Ratzinger was a Nazi, right ?
It's my understanding that he was a teen-aged boy in the mandatory youth organizations of that era that all young German boys were required to join but that he avoided it all to the extent that he could get away with.
"In his obituary of Pope Benedict (31 December), Peter Stanford writes that membership of the Hitler Youth was compulsory for the Ratzinger boys. It was not. My sister, brother and I are very proud that our father, Walter Gomm, born in 1925 in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, resisted the pressure from his father (afraid for his only child) to become a member. Joseph Ratzinger had a choice. He didn’t take it.
Barbara Schurenberg
Vaison-la-Romaine, France"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/03/joseph-ratzingers-choice-to-join-the-hitler-youth
Even if one assumes for the sake of argument that there was some way that the teen-aged Ratzinger could have avoided the Hitler Youth, it would have been a dangerous move for him to have tried. It is easy to sit back and Monday morning quarterback when one was not in that situation. Calling somebody a Nazi implies that the person bought into that ideology and there is absolutely nothing to indicate that Ratzinger did. All indications are that he did as little as possible, probably a little marching around and cleaning duty I suspect, and tried not to draw attention to himself until he could get to seminary.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-find-evidence-pope-pius-xii-ignored-reports-holocaust-180974795/
https://origins.osu.edu/history-news/catholic-church-and-holocaust?language_content_entity=en
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state
Not about Benedict. I am not going to get into every Catholic (or Lutheran or anybody else) who might or might not have been heroic or even decent at that time of history. I will say that claiming a religious label and being a Christian are not the same thing. Jesus Christ knows who his true followers are. Many people who identify as Christian are followers of Christ, but many are just nominal Christians.
C. S. Lewis, the Oxford scholar, once a confirmed atheist, came to realize that there is a deity and then he came to learn about that deity. He became a Christian (arguably the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th Century). One can get a little hint of God from many places. Scripture says that "the heavens declare the glory of God." To get a full picture of God (as full as we can get until we see Him face to face in heaven and see fully) we have God's revelation in the Bible. There are passages that are confusing, but we can ask God for discernment and put them aside for the moment. There are other passages that are immediately wonderful for many such as John 14, John 15, and Romans 8. Blessings on your exciting journey.
Jenny, it’s like you’re reading my mind. Brand’s faith comment struck me in exactly the same way, and I was just describing him as a prophet-of-old, though I really couldn’t believe I was possibly thinking such a thing. And in the back of my mind, I was also thinking, “Is this really the Russell Brand of BBC Radio who prank called people in 2006??” My kind of prophet.
I too have had that moment of physically experiencing truth and it was so powerful, I remember it like it was yesterday even though it was 30 years ago. I am convinced it was supernatural. I’m a person of faith yet I have frequent moments or periods of doubt. But I’ve learned that faith can coexist with doubt, which makes a lot more sense when you don’t think of the two as opposites! Someone once said to me, “Doubt your doubts,” which was an important tool for me in thinking through what I believed.
We may not have certainty about anything, but we have to land *somewhere*. We have to have certainty in one thing more than another thing or we wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. In the end, whether we admit it or not, we have committed to a system of morality and beliefs and a worldview, because out of that flows how we make choices, how we form and keep relationships, how we prioritize and spend our time, what we worship, how we live our entire lives.
But I agree with you that the idea of faith being the opposite of certainty is very profound indeed and I will be pondering over that for the next few days! However, faith is not blind. It’s putting trust in something or someone because you have a reasonable assurance and reasonable evidence that that person or thing is trustworthy. I am a Christian because I believe it is the best explanation for what we see in the world and it is rooted in history, in actual events.
I’m sorry for rambling! I think you would really enjoy Shane Rosenthal’s podcast The Humble Skeptic.
“We may not have certainty about anything, but we have to land *somewhere*.”
Yes, and for me, the ideal place is that which is MOST LIKELY to be true. I’m playing poker, which means acting with certainty without confusing that with knowing with certainty.
So you are acting with certainty from a place of uncertainty.
If I understand correctly, our fundamental disagreement is that I believe that it is objectively TRUE that good is better than evil, whereas you see this as a personal preference luckily happened upon through life circumstances.
Sure; what else can you do? Every action is based on a bet, to a greater or lesser degree.
Its a bet because it’s impossible to take in all of the information relevant to any decision. You have to have a hierarchy of ideals in order to narrow your field of vision. A greater good so to speak. You have faith that your ideals are the right ones. I would say your “reasonable” decisions are truly acts of faith. Most westerners, knowingly or unknowingly, base their ideals off of the Christian ethos on which the west is based.
Well, you’ve reached your conclusion about faith by relying on vague, fuzzy definitions.
It’s not a hierarchy of ideals; it’s a hierarchy of reliable sources.
So science is generally considered the most reliable of sources because the scientific method is based on enabling ideas to be challenged. That’s why papers are published, with methods described.
If a hypothesis is wrong, it’s most likely to be shown to be so using the scientific method. And it will never, ever be proven right by the scientific method.
Come up with a better way of disproving a hypothesis than science, and I’ll demote science in my hierarchy. That’s not faith; that’s pragmatism.
I understand the scientific method. My point is that decisions rest in a greater framing because
1 - you can never have all of the information related to any decision. Therefore one must narrow one’s field of vision to that which one can process. This requires one to make decisions about how much attention to put where. These are value judgments based on a moral framework.
2. Science does not, and cannot, provide a moral framework. It cannot for instance prove the intrinsic value (or sacredness) of human life. Therefore one must develop a moral framework of one’s own in order to weigh one’s decisions against.
The science may provide some information that is useful in making a decision, but ultimately every decision is a moral decision and therefore an act of faith in one’s chosen hierarchy of ideals (GOD).
It’s useful to know who you serve and why. For most in the west the moral framework has been provided by Christianity - although many will be unaware - and the “trust the science” crowd will be loathe to admit it.
The opposite of faith is not doubt, the opposite of faith is reason.
I disagree.
Anything but reason is wishful thinking. How could it be otherwise ?
Ha! That is very funny. Although it actually has some very dark consequences which you seem to not be picking up on.
How so ?
Ask Prometheus.
I understand what you mean re Prometheus. Technology is neither positive nor negative. Ditto science. But, there are no better alternatives. Reason is not the problem. Reason, obviously, needs to be tempered with altruism/love. Humankind is capable of all of it. We are malleable. The problem is capitalism. It fosters the opposite of altruism/love. it fosters greed, competition and violence. The solution is not superstition/magical thinking, tho. The solution is truth... the truth about capitalism, the current form of class system.
Wrong. You would fail that analogy on an SAT question. Jenny and Brand would pass.
The opposite of faith is indeed certainty.
Reason = we do not possess full reason because we do not have full knowledge and your response only works if you claim we do, i.e again that's certainty.
I'm glad though that you have it all figured out and that your reason i.e certainty will bring all of humanity into perfection. Bravo. You must be pretty amazing.
Look to Christ if you want perfect reason. He is the truth and pure logic. So back we go to faith because there are still mysteries (uncertainties) in the God-Man of Christ.
Faith keeps us on the journey. Like Abraham leaving Ur to seek out an unknown land he only knew of by faith. Your pointvabout faith is actually quite profound. Thank you.
‘Nothing’s for sure’ was an oft quoted thing when I was young and, as it turns out, it’s perfectly true. Even the great science we all worship can’t be 100% certain of anything. As actually already proven by Einstein and Quantum Mechanics. Even Schrödinger doubted if his cat was actually real except when it was being observed! I remember a great Priest that would come to give us Mass in our little primary school who used to always say that the best Catholics were the ones that doubted their own faith. It always stuck with me that. It was advice that particularly became relevant when writing my essays and dissertation many years later. Research would always throw up counter arguments to my own, perfectly reasonable ones as it turned out, and it made it harder to reach a satisfying full stop at the end of anything I ever submitted. It confirmed one thing to me - the road to wisdom is found in self doubt. Not crippling self doubt, of course which is an entirely different thing, but in an ability to question things and not take anything at face value. As far as Brand’s miraculous conversion, I’m afraid I will have to withhold judgement as I’m not sure if he’s actually found God or just a handy excuse. After all, nothing’s for sure - right?
I don't trust him, has he ever spread the gospel ? Has he spoken about the importance of the shed blood which can wash our sins away ? Jesu's death, burial and resurrection?
I might have missed that but until I see this I don't believe him.
BTW the opposite of faith is fear !
1 John 4:10-18