aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Faith & courage

A religious moderate who practices no religion at all, I have been looking for an answer to Sam Harris’s potent argument as expressed in synopsis in this Future of Ideas session at Pop!Tech 2005.

In discussing the Papal Address at University of Regensburg Andrew Sullivan gave me some of what I’ve been looking for:

I just finished reading "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris, and found much in it that stimulated and engaged and even inspired. On the dangers of an anti-rational fundamentalism in religion, I recommend the book heartily. But it is, I’m afraid, too glibly dismissive of "the whole" to be persuasive, too deaf to the myriad ways in which faith can interact and be strengthened by what the Pope calls "logos", the word, reason itself. This reasoned faith, in order to exist, must include doubt and skepticism and the earnest search for truth, which, in turn, must necessarily never conflict with God. Doubt is not an obstacle to faith; it is necessary for faith to exist at all.

And here Sullivan persuades me that the Pope’s message is an inflammatory but courageous one.