Faith and Skepticism

Paul Malan recently wrote an article about skepticism and conservative religious views thereof. Let me provide some samples of how it approaches things:

Companies have learned that organic and natural say more about the mind of the consumer than they say about the product, and they sell more potato chips when they use words that make us feel good about ourselves without thinking too hard.

Conservative religions don’t sell potato chips, but they’re familiar with the technique. They use ambiguous labels like faith and belief to make us feel good about what they’re selling, and words like skeptic and cynical to foster self-righteous pity for those who buy another brand.

The post continues by distinguishing faith and belief, and cynicism and skepticism:

A skeptic, on the other hand, is a person who questions everything, including her own conclusions, all the time. She craves knowledge and understanding, so she loves bumping into people and ideas that challenge her assumptions. A skeptic views disagreements as opportunities to refine her knowledge and understand more today than she did last night.

The high point that sums it all up, in my opinion, is the one I offered in the quote above:

Belief and cynicism are closely related, and they’re both easy. Faith and skepticism are practically twins, and they’re both hard. I don’t mean juggling-four-bowling-pins hard. I don’t mean mastering-Mandarin-Chinese hard. Living a life of faith and skepticism, together, is the-single-biggest-challenge-of-your-life hard. It affects everything else we do.

But that isn’t the end. There’s more good stuff like this:

Faith and skepticism are not opposed to each other. Faith requires “moral strength, dedication, and courage,” but so does skepticism. In fact, if we let them, faith and skepticism work together to fill our lives with meaning and purpose, regardless of what we believe about God or religion or spirituality. The only thing harder than living a life of faith, or a life of skepticism, is living a life that leans into both faith and skepticism at the same time.

Click through to read the whole thing.

See also Connor Wood on why reason isn’t going to save the world, and Andrew Shtulman on science vs. intuition.

And finally, Jonathan Robinson shared an incomplete chart of the hierarchy of different kinds of disagreement, which can also be helpful as we seek to improve our thinking and our balance: