Webassingment 5: A History of Doubt
Listen to a A History of Doubt from Speaking of Faith radio program and write a summary of it. Show which key ideas it illustrates, especially note if these ideas were mentioned in our Readings.
Historian and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht's latest book, Doubt: A History explores and explains the greatest doubters and questioners of religions and institutions throughout history. Hecht begins by noting that doubt has shaped the history of the world and rightfully defining great figures in history as those that can decide they believe in God, but don't necessarily claim that they know everything about the universe. According to Hecht, doubt is "the human inpulse to question what is given in order to invest one's days with meaning." She begins her history of doubt with the ancient Greeks and the three major groups that questioned the norm: The Cynics, The Skeptics, and The Epicureans. The literal meaning of Cynic is "dog" and, in short, Cynics strove to "live life as a dog". They maintained that the best thing to do was not accomplish anything, thus avoiding the cruelty of the world. The Skeptics, first associated with Socrates but not really gaining following until centuries later, questioned the human race's ability to really know anything and recognized that any of the very plausible philosophies could be right. Thirdly, Epicureans stressed a life of tranquility and freedom from fear, foundations established by the philosophy's founder, Epicurus. He identified three problematic fears that humans have to face and overcome: Fear of Pain, Fear of the Gods, and Fear of Death. Fear of pain, he claimed, is actually worse than the actual pain; he preached disregard to fear of the Gods, because he believed they didn't exist; most importantly, he believed that humans must overcome fear of death, because death exists no matter what, and the fact that it ends life makes life so much sweeter. An insightful Hecht reflects that doubters are doubters because, though they may accept and respect some answers from religion, they don't believe that someone(God) is guiding them and that morality comes from an outside source, so they feel a tremendous amount of responsibility and thus strive to live life in the best possible way.
She also cites Job as a great doubter, puzzling many readers upon first reading. In Job's time, a core idea of the Jewish faith was divine justice. Divine justice was the belief that if one lived justly and worked hard, God would reward him and give him blessings on Earth. It would seem strange to cite Job as a doubter, because when he loses his family, his material possessions, and his social status, he never doubts God. What he doubts is the concept of divine justice. When Job's friends consoled him, trying to convince him that he must have done something wrong to deserve this, his faith in God stood firm, but he doubted divine justice. Suprisingly enough, Hecht cites Jesus as a great doubter. She goes on to explain that Christianity was the first religion to come about after the birth of religious doubt and the great Greek and Roman philosophers, unlike Judaism or the polytheistic religions of the Greeks and Romans. Jesus was the first to embrace doubt, recognizing its presence but believing anyway. He cultivated the idea of "belief as a leap", something that isn't always clear-cut in front of you.
Great philosophers continue to thrive in the Roman Empire until, suddenly, they are driven away to the Byzantine Empire. After a time, they become unwelcome there as well, so they flock to the Middle East, to cities such as Antioch and Baghdad, and some of the philosophy of doubt intertwined with Islam; Islam adopted a tradition of doubt, starting with their questioning of the traditional Muslim belief that the beauty and truth of the Koran was a miracle. This tradition of doubt gets abrubtly shut down years later, but by this time these philosophy-influenced Muslim beliefs had spread into North Africa and Spain, where they were adopted by the thriving Jewish community.
Hecht concludes with some thoughts on doubt in today's world. These days in the United States, doubt is not appreciated as it was before the Cold War. Because of the Cold War, the United States had an uneasy and almost violent relationship with Communism, and Communism was associated with doubt and atheism. She ends with a very enlightening thought: that doubters are not trying to dismiss the magical, seemingly supernatural quality of the human experience; they are trying to work with and understand the same themes as religion (community, death, the meaning of human existence), but just without reference to the supernatural.
Source:www.geometry.net
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