Sat, 13 Sep 2008
Faith and Trust
It's commonplace criticism of religion to compare it to science. The criticism says that while religion merely has beliefs taken on faith, science has knowledge based on experiment. Many Buddhists take this criticism to heart and try to package Buddhism as a scientific religion, where meditation and the experience born from meditation take the place of experiment. I personally think this challenge and response miss the mark. It neglects one side of faith and that is trust. One believes because one trusts. Without trust there can be no friendship and no community. All communities, including scientific ones are built on trust. Without trust society would disintegrate. A religion is more than a collection of doctrines, it is a community and the community is held together by a shared trust. This is why religions are so impervious to the criticism of sceptics. The criticism merely drives the community closer together, like a herd of caribou in a snow storm. Critics of "unreasoning belief" ignore the affective, emotional side of human nature.
