Of Faith, Skepticism, and the Nature of Reality

It's reasonable, some may assume, that faith or the lack thereof has no deep roots. One often hears about people who have a sudden change of heart and begin to experience moments of spirituality. It's also not uncommon to hear about people who change their minds even after claims of brush with spirituality, and become skeptics.

But the arithmetic behind such changes isn't binary: One cannot say that the former don't rely on the faculties of the mind and the latter don't listen to their hearts. It appears that a complex interplay of factors goes on within the depths of the subconscious and what ultimately surfaces as a conscious decision on part of either people is actually a very chance happening. Of course, this is somewhat along the lines of the highly debatable problem of free will, which philosophers haven't laid to rest yet despite painstaking efforts.

The issue may never be settled at all because what is in question here isn't some physical theory, which being amenable to a sound and objective analysis can be accepted or rejected.

People who question their place in the universe— as some do of their own volition and some who, even if they don't like it for it brings with it excruciating existential terror, can't let go of such thoughts for some reason, and think rationally about what happens post death assuming no other such thing that logic and ratiocination would deny outright or be reluctant to accept, know quite well how troubling such questions are; indeed, these are notoriously hard questions with no conclusive answers.

Were this not the case, we wouldn't be having so many schools of thought whose mission to lay to rest these hairy and perplexing questions hasn't been spectacularly successful even after centuries of organized thought. The debates keep dragging on and on, new voices replacing old voices. Fresh perspectives emerge— some ingenious, some not so. Essentially, all such arguments employ a basic change of metaphor or a clever play on words in keeping with the age the thinker is a product of. But the kernel of confusion remains more or less unsolved.

There appears to be a clear line of demarcation beyond which organized thought melts into chaos and confusion— perhaps human mind isn't wired to deal with such questions in the first place. One could gauge the fallibility of human reasoning and calculation by perusing studies carried out to this end.

The late psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman did pioneering work in this area. In a nutshell, the point of such studies mostly is that human thinking is often flawed and that humans often overestimate their intuition. However, it goes without saying that the human brain can work wonders too. It can come up with something as intellectually challenging as the General Theory of Relativity.

When we see intellectual feats of this magnitude, we sit back with our mouths agape and marvel at the mind capable of such feats. We marvel that men such as Dostoevsky and Melville existed who were blessed with sublime intellect and a deep understanding of the human nature as is reflected in their profound works. And yet such feats are not the whole reality.

They are just a thin sliver of reality— a glimpse into some grand pattern if there's one in the first place. As the Harvard mathematician Barry Mazur says somewhere that we are all little mice nibbling on the infinite cheese of knowledge. Even so, some questions defy answers, thwarting all efforts to settle them once and for all because the powers of human cognition and reasoning are too limited.

Does one need more proof of the limitations of the human mind than the fact that despite intense efforts of philosophers of all ages to settle the mind-body problem, a consensus is still wanting? Or the infinite tussle among philosophers and psychologists alike to settle the problem of freewill? One wonders if the study of logic or some other abstract form of knowledge at the highest level convinces one of some higher truth, essentially the question of existence of some invisible force operating this whole universe?

There is a certain unnameable malaise such questions bring which has a direct bearing on one's life. For some folks, the malaise may surface most of the time or it may be buried deep within the depths of the subconscious for others but it's there all the time. Perhaps the everydayness of the life takes the edge off of such distressing questions.

To ease the pressure we distract ourselves with work or play or pleasure, the right choice seemingly determined by many factors. At the higher and more sophisticated levels of distraction we tend to rely on men with higher powers of reasoning than we ourselves possess. Or we indulge in our own ruminations.

But this form of distraction suffers from the terrible downside of subjectivity. However appealing to the mind his opinion, one tends to sympathize with Bertrand Russell when he calls subscribing to an unjustified belief (in response to a question about the existence of God) "a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity". This shouldn't really come as a surprise because logic and careful analysis of facts lie at the very heart of philosophy and no philosopher worth their salt would take bold and unverified claims without a pinch of salt. So the nature of reality appears to be an ever-elusive endeavor.

But faith, by its very definition, discourages any such attempt at analysis. This opens a Pandora's box and sets into motion an endless chain of futile discourses. How fortunate a man is to have religion in his life! Living all his life in a bubble, blissfully unaware of what actually his position in an indifferent universe is; picking random shards of information through the limited agency of his sensory apparatus and calling it reality. Limiting one's consciousness might be a survival mechanism for the poor man to resist being overwhelmed by the intricacies of the universe.

Marx calls religion "the opium of the masses". A different philosopher might use a different metaphor. It's funny to see how debates on religion almost always devolve into the well-known pattern of circular reasoning; which is understandable, given the very nature of the questions raised. On top of all this, there's schism between people of various religious denominations. The upshot is seeing men of high caliber duking it out verbally and in the end merely agreeing to disagree after long and futile discussions.

But isn't this the fate of all such discussions? There are of course brilliant religious apologists who try to defend religion. But then there are fiercely brilliant atheists as well who pick holes in the arguments of the apologists. Agnostics, who occupy the middle ground, live in perpetual confusion. Of course, generations will come and go and people will align with one camp or the other. Which camp one joins is merely a question of one's upbringing, one's genetic make-up, and other such random factors.

When all is said and done, one wonders if these vain attempts to arrive at the grand truth are anything but a wild goose chase? It's discomforting to know that  the greatest faculty a human is endowed with— the power of logic and ratiocination— would never take one too far in such matters. But Nature ensures that any serious attempt at unravelling her deepest secrets beyond a certain limit is pointless. Any attempt beyond that limit proves futile. It's as if Nature cocks a snook at such attempts by presenting deeper mysteries. Perhaps that's the way Nature runs her mysterious course.