The Skeptical Believer — A Definition: Don’t Let the Smoke Get in Your Eyes
This blog post is an excerpt of a work in progress–The Skeptical Believer: Telling Stories to Your Inner Atheist. Both the skeptical believer and the inner atheist make an appearance in this excerpt and throughout. See the “In Progress” part of the website (under “Writer”) for another excerpt.
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“Those who believe in God but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty,without doubt, without an element of despair even in the consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God himself.” Unamuno
“Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.” Joel 1:3
The skeptical believer. No, it’s not a contradiction in terms. It’s simple everyday reality for many people of faith. And it’s a way of believing that is acceptable to God. (Acceptable to God? How do you know, mister author, what is and isn’t acceptable to God?)
Skepticism is both a technical term in philosophy and, as used here, a more loosely defined term that suggests a certain attitude toward life. (When did God give you a list of things he finds acceptable and unacceptable? And in what sense is God a ‘he’ anyway?) My informal definition of skepticism is as follows: a habitual resistance to accepting truth claims of all sorts.
A more street level definition of skepticism: the suspicion that anyone who claims to know most anything for sure is blowing smoke. (For that matter, how do you know there is a God at all—he, she or none of the above?) And the less testable the claim, the more the skeptic smells smoke.
Smoke blowing is as old as human nature. It has certain characteristics that distinguish it from merely affirming that one believes something to be true. (And even if there is something bigger than us that you could call God, why the Christian version rather than anyone else’s?) Here are some tell-tale signs of smoke blowing:
— making claims with a confidence (often smugness) in excess of what is supported by either reason or experience.
–substituting strength of conviction for evidence. (And what about how awful Christians have been? Does the word Crusades mean anything to you? How about burning witches? Or calling people ‘fags’?)
–speaking as though anyone who sees things otherwise is stupid or ignorant or evil or all three.
–making excessive claims simply because there is no one else in the room equipped or given the opportunity to say otherwise. (Why IS there so much suffering in a world supposedly created by a good God? And please don’t tell me it’s our fault. We’ll both just end up mad.)
–all talking and no listening,
–perceiving contrary voices as enemies to be defeated rather than as fellow seekers from whom to learn.
–using the tools of the mind and the heart manipulatively, for the purpose of winning an argument, not for finding truths that help us live. (Admit it. Sometimes believing in God just seems far-fetched. Big Guy in the Sky—really?)
There’s a lot of smoke in the world. Always has been. People of faith often blow smoke. So do those who scorn faith. Smoke, smoke, everywhere smoke. How can one help but be a skeptic with all this smoke?
And then there is the term “believer.” What is a believer? In the general sense, a believer is someone who accepts something as true or real or worthy of affirmation. (I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth.) There are certain characteristics I tend to associate with the word believer:
–risk. A believer is someone who buys stock in a company that may not return a profit. (And Abraham went out, not knowing where he was going.) Believers’ hunger for meaning is stronger than their fear of being wrong—or looking stupid.
–openness. Openness to the spiritual, the unverifiable, the mysterious, the intuited, the imagined. (I have never heard God’s voice, but I have, at times, strongly sensed God’s presence and direction.)
–love of companions. (I think I believe the most when I am singing—together with everyone else.) To the believer a shared belief isn’t mass delusion, it’s multiplied pleasure and shared risk. There’s something deeply satisfying about hanging out with kindred spirits. (We both believe today; if I can’t believe tomorrow, you believe for me.)
Belief can be in anything. When it is in something deeply spiritual, we tend to call it faith. (If we can prove it; it isn’t faith).
The are millions of skeptics in the world. And billions of believers. But how many skeptical believers (or faithful skeptics)? The word ‘skeptical’ isn’t often linked with the word ‘believer.’ A skeptic is skeptical. And a believer, well, isn’t.
Unless you are.