Isn't the most robust faith the kind which is honestly questioned?

A spillover from the Golden Compass controversy thread. I usually steer clear of these debates (for various reasons I won’t go into here), but the thread reminded me of something which has bugged me for awhile, and I wanted to bring it up here.

I had a student the other day, and the conversation turned to the Golden Compass (she is a big fantasy fan). She told me that her pastor “warned” everyone in his congregation to avoid the movie like the plague, ostensibly because of this so-called controversy about it being anti-Christian and so forth (which IMHO is way overblown).

I then thought-“If your (rhetorical you) faith is so fragile that seeing a movie can fatally weaken it then it’s not much of a faith then, is it?” What exactly is this clergyman so afraid of? Is he genuinely concerned with the welfare of the souls in his congregation? And if so wouldn’t seeing the movie (or something else), using it to honestly test and examine your faith, and, after it has weathered the storm so to speak, it comes out of the experience stronger than before-wouldn’t that be a good thing?

That is my naive idealistic self speaking above. My cynical side will now speak, and point out that likely the only thing the pastor is interested in is maintaining his place in the church power structure, and if his bishop (or whoever is above him in the hierarchy-non Catholic church here) notices that his Sunday attendance is dropping he might lose his position. [And ironically enough that attitude validates one of the viewpoints of the book and film in question.]

One of my big peeves about mainstream Christianity is how it completely and utterly fails to further the spiritual growth of its members. Once you are “saved” nothing else needs to be done-you are home free and just need to wait around for Paradise to come along and claim you, show up every Sunday and mumble your platitudes and you’re just fine. Hence there is no room in such a structure for honest and reasoned debate, nor for sustained and sincere questioning which would hopefully further transform and strengthen your faith.

Thus once a Christian starts to question things in that way the Church will not help her, at all, and will in fact actively fight her efforts, thus inadvertently pushing her further away from the faith and towards something else (New Age/atheism/Eastern religions/fill-in-the-blank). There is no room in the power structure for anything like that, hence the person will find no recourse, no support, and no sympathy from the Church in her quest. Instead of a living vibrant faith full of sincere and honestly questioning/questing souls, you have an empty faith, one which is easily shattered by the first major quibble which is raised in a person’s mind. And the thing which the pastor is trying to avoid happens anyway (Law of Unintended Consequences). [Not to mention the Forbidden Fruit angle]

It is said that if a Christian sees Jesus coming down the road, he will bow down and kiss His feet. But if a Buddhist sees the Buddha coming down the road, he will pull a gun out and shoot Him. I think the Buddhists had it right, in that you must utterly destroy the creeds, codes, and beliefs which you have outgrown if you are to go beyond them, but still remain as a part of the Whole.

[Disclaimer: I know there are many Christian sects most certainly do not operate like that, and I know that many Christians most certainly do question their faith in the way I have outlined above, so I intend it not as a blanket statement at all.]

Doubt is as holy as faith.

Yep.

And if you check out several recent threads, you’ll find that “they” (Christian leaders) are quite right to be concerned with their flocks questioning and listening to those durn atheists. We’ve had a lot more Dopers admit to becoming atheists after reading debates with atheists than those who admit to becoming theists after debate with theists. If it’s in the best interests of the priest to maintain his rolls, then it’s in his best interest to squash inquiry and fraternizing with heathens.
(This is not to say that there are no thoughtful theists or Christians. There are. But my personal experience is that they are in the minority, and their theological doubts and questions are not welcomed by most church authorities - and when they are noticed, they are either quashed or funneled into seminary for proper authoritarian training. It’s a huge, huge part of why I became a neopagan - yes, we have our own dogma, but eccentricity and personal theo(thea)logy is far more tolerated and even welcomed.)

The most robust faith is the faith that isn’t questioned at all. That’s the kind that will spread across the world, and that will be passed down through the generations.

I think the OP has a good point and I mostly agree. However, my own personal suspicion is that pastors like the one the OP mentioned are not so much thinking about “maintaining his place in the church power structure”—rather, my guess is that he genuinely believes that the faith of his congregation is that fragile.

Which raises the questions of why he believes that, and whether he’s right, and why he hasn’t been working to strengthen their faith. Maybe it’s because his own faith is fragile and he can’t conceive of a stronger one. Maybe it’s because, by keeping their flocks spiritually and psychologically immature, religious leaders like him can control them better. Maybe he believes—and maybe he’s right to believe—that too many of them would be unable or unwilling to grow past a simple, fragile, immature faith.

I’m with the OP to some extent. IF I pastored a church, I’d probably have a Sunday School right now on Pullman’s His Dark Materials, focusing on what we can learn from it as Christians & how we can counter its blend of mysticism & materialism (the whole “Dust” up :smiley: ). We’d also be examining Gnosticism, Paine, the recent HarrisDawkinsHitchens & every other challenge the Faith in history, because I truly believe that basic Christianity will continue to survive & thrive in spite of, even because of them all.

Then again, many people aren’t deep thinkers- religious, spiritual or secularist.
And a spiritual leader does have the responsibility is to protect his/her people from seductive but destructive ideas. I will grant that the best way is to gird them up intellectually & emotionally to face the challenges, but not everyone has the basic internal resources or the discipline to be so prepared. The ability to determine the strength of one’s congregation & prepare them accordingly is the mark of a really able spiritual leader. Alas, many just go to the Default position of sounding alarm against the latest “Danger to the Faith”.

And that’s not exclusive to religious & conservative circles, either.

As opposed to the members of other religions or groups, however defined, who are completely thoughtful in their beliefs :stuck_out_tongue:

My view is that any person must seek to fully understand why they believe what they say they believe, and that means looking at other beliefs and questioning one’s own beliefs. Some would call that doubt, and maybe it is. But I think that taking something at face value is both an easy way out and leaves one highly susceptible to manipulation. That applies to Christianity, atheism, patriotism, and most of the other isms I can think of.

I’m Christian, BTW.

I must say I am automatically extremely suspicious of anyone or any system that feels that an adult must be protected from ideas. I acknowledge that some adults do desire to be so protected; I just see this protection all too frequently being extended towards people who do not desire it.

My local churches are fairly busy boycotting The Golden Compass. They are not traditionally welcoming to the idea of questioning the faith.

And this gets right to the heart of my point. It’s a shame that the Dopers alluded to above felt like they had no other recourse than to “convert” to atheism, just because their churches had no room to accomodate their questions and nay no path laid out for them to pass through the valley of doubt and come out on the other side-faith transformed, but intact. Perhaps, because said path will require a significant sea change in formerly dearly held positions, that is why so many traditionalists find such things abhorrent. But if the leaders went, “Yeah the old stories aren’t true in a literal sense, etc. etc. but if look deeper into their symbolic meanings it will set you free.” For example I have seen a number of Christians re-interpret the resurrection of JC as not a literal physical resurrection but one which occurs in the very depths of each Christian’s soul.

For certain church members beliefs in the literal events can still serve a purpose, and I don’t recommend nuking all that to pieces. Instead there should be room for those who reach a certain point of understanding to go beyond the literalism. But instead, based on the kinds of posts I see here and elsewhere, instead it’s more like “Hey Father, I’m not so sure I can buy the walking on water or water into wine stuff anymore,” to be immediately followed by the clergyman in question giving him a severe dressing down etc. etc., which at that point in the questioner’s quest will just leave him to reject the whole thing altogether, because the clergyman gave him no other recourse-it’s too late for the fire and brimstone to work. [Yes often such questions aren’t directly asked to an authority figure, but it’s still the same thing-a desperate search for anything which will adequately answer the hard questions and save the faith is fruitless, and the church loses another.]

While religious backlash to the movie has been somewhat extreme in the media reports, there are more reasoned responses.

Agreed, the faith that cannot weather a movie is no faith at all. But there are some other “legitimate” concerns - 1) Although people’s faiths might survive, the movie might lead to an inaccurate understanding or portrayal of certain religious facts and 2) They just don’t want their members to support the movie financially.

To a certain point, and for many many years it has worked out very well, from the standpoint of those institutions which hold those positions. But the world is changing so quickly now in so many ways that many people are outgrowing the old faiths, in precisely the same way that children outgrow the belief in Santa Claus. [People like Der Trihs would then argue that there is nothing suitable to replace a literal belief in either Santa Claus or God once you’ve outgrown the literal beliefs, but that’s a different debate.] Entities like the Catholic Church refuse to change because they claim that their truths are eternal and unchanging. If you accept the premises, that is arguably true, but the way in which we view such truths most certainly can and often does change. If the only possible responses to certain kinds of inquiry is a blank stone wall, all that is going to do is further push away the formerly faithful and they are thus lost completely.

We have seen such an upsurge in fundamentalism (of all stripes) lately precisely because of the huge amount of change in the modern world. Eventually, however, that kind of reactionism will fade as it runs out of steam, as has indeed happened in Europe. [I’d like to hear from some Christian European Dopers on how much their religious institutions have changed over the past 50 years or so.] It must because it just provides you with a dead-end if you embark on a such a quest to resolve your crisis of faith (if I’m laying on the cliches too thick please tell me), and the world will outgrow it. Or the world won’t outgrow it, and the world will pay a terrible price.

The OP reminds me of a question that I 've always had. (not too much of a hijack, I hope):

I’ve never understood why Thomas isn’t the patron saint of scientists. Jesus shows up, risen from the grave, all the other apostles accept it at face value. Thomas says “Dude, hang on, let me stick my hand up that hole there - Whoa!”

He didn’t get kicked out. He got to be a saint. Seems to me that’s a pretty good role model for questioning things.

-disclaimer-
I’m not a christian, I am a scientist, I’m not a saint (as far as I know)

  • end disclaimer-

As I understand it, Thomas was neither commended nor censured for his doubts. But notice that last line. Not everybody has the opportunity that Thomas had. If you or I are going to believe, we’ll have to do so without the hands-on evidence that was available to Thomas. In this life there are some doubts that we just have to live with, either temporarily or permenantly.

Which may or may not be relevant to the main point of this thread.

Based on this, I’d say protecting people from the spritual leader is far more important.

In principle, I agree that challenged faith should be more robust, however, I think many Christians believe that there are such things as arguments that are seductive and persuasive, but also false and dangerous, and consequently seek to insulate their impressionable or naive children from.

Whether or not they’re fundamentally right about this example is beside the point (well, it’s beside my point, anyway) - my point is that they’re not necessarily being inconsistent in this and that also, whether or not an argument is persuasive is not necessarily related at all to whether or not it is true - therefore exposure to opposing false arguments is only a good thing if the exposed individual is able to reliably discern that they are false.

I’d argue that this is exactly the point of th’ OP, and why I think Thomas should be the patron saint of scientists. We do have the opportunity that Thomas had-its all around us, and some of us spend their time trying to find out the answers to the big questions: Where did the universe come from, where did we come from, using methods of direct hands-on experimentation. Then the answers get subjected to as rigorous a testing and hole punching as we can devise, and whatever survives we call the current theory.

The OP was positing that a tested faith is more robust than a blind one, and I think it is correct. If we test our beliefs, either in a cyclotron, or in a classroom, or in the case of the OP, in a theatre, we run the risk of having them fail, or maybe they won’t, or maybe they’ll adapt. Regardless, we learn something. Perhaps we won’t be as blessed as those who have not seen and have believed, but on the other hand, neither will we be totally wrong and ignoring the evidence in front of us.

Not meant to be an anti-religion screed, but rather a pro-questioning argument. One of the things that impresses me is that Thomas did get to be a saint, and didn’t get chucked out, despite his apparently irrepressible experimentation. One can almost imagine him in heaven, pestering God- “C’mon, try to create a rock that you can’t lift, just try one time, c’mon, please”

This is a biased perspective, but ultimately the necessity of protecting people from reading stuff that challenges their faith points to the fundamental irrationality of religious exclusivism. I mean, there are a few reasons why a pastor/preacher/etc. would not want their flock to read subversive material:

  1. Their religious creeds are backed up only by authority, not reason, and cannot be rationally defended if questioned. Thus, belief in these creeds is very vulnerable. Obviously, so much more the reason to challenge these creeds.

  2. *Their religious creeds are backed by reason, but the ordinary parishioner is easily lead astray because he lacks the tools to evaluate the competing claims; the church leaders need to be relied upon for this. * Okay, this is a little better, I suppose, but what makes you leaders of the church so special? After all, you are not just setting yourself up as smarter than your parishioner, but also smarter than the leaders of all the other religions that disagree with you.

  3. Hi, Opal.

Good point, except I’d add that what those Christians fear as seductive and persuasive aren’t necessarily all arguments, per se, any more than all commercials are arguments to use the products being advertised.

If I wanted to make a movie that would seduce people away from some belief, there are easier ways it could do so than by presenting rational arguments against it. I could make all the characters in my movie who supposedly subscribe to that belief vicious thugs, or hopelessly uncool dorks, for example.

Good point - I did get stuck for an appropriate term, but plumped for ‘argument’ - but yes, the principle applies to arguments, viewpoints, beliefs, ideas, etc.

Remember that most forms of Christianity posit the existence of powerful and malevolent supernatural beings, so a challenge to the faith isn’t (from that POV) necessarily an intellectual one. To use a stupid analogy here, the pastors would thus be like the zookeeper trying to keep kids out of the tiger’s cage.