CHAPTER THREE
FAITH
To
be afraid, and expect favour, is human. No matter how strong and proud one may
be, there comes a point when strength turns into weakness and pride into
humility. This change is brought about by the activation of fear or favour. A
proud person may bow before his superior for fear of dismissal or in hope of
favour, such as promotion. Whether a person is a suzerain or servant, he is
subject to the influence of fear and favour.
Care, concern and consideration for
other people's rights and liberty is usually in inverse ratio to the intensity
of the dominance-urge, that is the more dominant a person, the less caring,
concerned and considerate he is, and vice versa. Therefore, a higher position in
the dominance-hierarchy denotes the comparatively intense self-mania of the
dominant though exception happens to be a rule of nature.
Dominance, Fear and Society
Liberty is man's natural religion.
Therefore, he hates servitude, but dominance-urge prospers on usurpation of
liberties the same way as vultures thrive on carrion. This polarity of purpose
tempts the dominant to activate people's mechanism of fear and favour. Members
of the gubernatioral class under the patronage of their chief get together to
form an impregnable coterie to subjugate the masses through a subtle code of
fear based on a seemingly rational and humane system of law and justice. This
leads to the moral degradation of the society: poverty becomes prevalent;
fairness, justice and tolerance nearly disappear; trickery, torture and
tantalization assume the status of decorum, discipline and dedication; hypocrisy
replaces sincerity; sophistication puts on the hat of etiquette; good manners
are ridiculed; guile is praised; triviality rides the truth; the silly flout the
sagacious and vice derides virtue.
This social debasement transcends
national frontiers. Nations find philosophical reasons for basing their cultural
values on absolute competition, for breaking international agreements and for
making deception and perfidy the cornerstone of political attitudes. Nationalism
is raised to the status of Godhead and racism is adored openly. Every nation is
made aware of self-importance and superiority, and is incited to plunder and
exterminate foreign people for usurping their wealth and liberty.
As a consequence, the world begins
to appear harsh, facinorous and murderous; sweet tastes sour and bright looks
bleak. Not only the social but also the physical environment begins to fling,
frighten and frustrate; life becomes an unbearable burden and everyone looks for
a messiah with miraculous powers to cure their sorrows and lead them to a
paradise where abundance, mirth and serenity eternally prevail.
Social disorder and Messiah
History testifies to the fact that
the worse the social conditions, the greater the likelihood for the emergence of
a god or guru, a messenger or messiah. It is because helplessness makes the
human mind more receptive to superstition; it instigates people to spurn
reality, which is usually harsh and inclement, and embrace the unreality of
make-believe teeming with wishful thinking based on self-evasion.
Value of make-believe
Facing up to reality requires moral
probity, courage and the ability to resist or accomplish, but in the short run,
it may not bring peace and happiness to the ruffled mind. Ignoring the harsh
reality is not a laudable act but indulgence in wishful thinking does provide
relief by depicting the bleak as bright and black as white. It even gives hope
and may keep the dreamer in a fair mood until the worst happens. In fact, what
make-believe or wishful thinking is to humans, dormancy or hibernation is to
animals.
Dormancy and Survival
Dormancy, i.e. the reduced state of
metabolism, is a form of adaptation for certain animals. Stressful environment
forces them to live at a much lower level which requires minimal chemical
processes for staying alive. During a dry period when ponds, rivers and lakes
dry up, only those aquatic organisms can survive which have the ability to
become dormant until such time that their habitats are refilled with water.
Similarly, bacteria survive scorching weather by becoming dormant. Perennial
plants, which look dead during a hostile winter, come back to life year after
year through a process of dormancy. To survive inclemency of the environment,
even seeds become dormant and will not germinate during a certain period: seeds
of the Danish Spergula Arvensis sprouted after a dormancy of 1,700 years and
seeds of the Manchurian Lotus are known to have sprung to life after 1,000
years.
Arctic Squirrel
The Arctic ground squirrel is a
typical mammal for during its hibernation it makes an underground nest of hair,
grass or other suitable materials; its temperature drops to that of its
surroundings and it appears to be dead; even its bones and teeth suffer
deterioration, but when the stressful conditions have passed, it may resume
normal life.
Reality of Dormancy
Since dormancy is a method of
surviving at a much reduced level, it is a regressive living. During the period
of hibernation, a mammal may lose as much as 50°70 of its weight and 90% of its
total heat production. In fact, it is a precarious method of survival because
the animal does not always return from its torpor.
Hibernation or dormancy as a method
of survival by evading the challenge of reality which is stressful, harsh and
inclement, leaves a profound mark on the behavioural response of the animal. In
simple language, it induces into an animal the habit of evasion when the
original causes requiring evasion or dormancy, no longer exist.
Dormancy and Faith
What dormancy is to seeds and
animals, make-believe or wishful thinking is to mankind. It enables us to evade
stresses and anxieties of life by pretending that the truth is not as it is but
as we believe it to be. Another name for make-believe is Faith. This is the
reason that Faith has been called opium, heroin, hashish and tranquilliser.
The main function of the drugs
known as psychopharmacological agents is to distort the psychological processes
such as perception, thinking and feeling, to give the sensed objects entirely
different appearances; an illusion refers to the distortion of what is sensed,
but an hallucination is the sensation of something which is not there.
Role of Faith
Faith, as distinct from dormancy,
acts mainly on a person's faculties of understanding, and not the entire body,
though effects of the mind on the body cannot be denied. It weakens the rational
part and strengthens credulity, i.e. the disposition to believe without
sufficient evidence. Thus a person who is highly critical and circumspect in
ordinary life, and cannot be persuaded or dissuaded without a reasonable proof,
as a believer becomes repugnant to evidence and reason in his religious capacity
as a Jew, Christian or Moslem. It is because he believes or is made to believe,
usually from the cradle, in certain wishful values which give him satisfaction
and thus protect him from the inclemencies of reality; his faith acts as an
opaque barrier between him and the stressful reality, he does not want to remove
it because the act of removal may reveal to him what he does not like.
Therefore, ignorance begins to look as a source of bliss which he habitually
enjoys at the expense of the truth.
Nature of Faith
Pre-eminently, faith as generally
understood and practiced, is a form of mythology for lacking rational cohesion.
Yet it is a lush oasis in the desert of life; it serves as the pivot of sanity
by acting as a shield against the hostility of foes and hypocrisy of friends; it
provides hope against despair and enhances the chances of survival. Without it,
man is like a shieldless soldier in the battlefield or a heatless sailor in deep
waters.
Therefore, man must have a faith,
but of a different nature. It must be rational, i.e. it ought to be largely
based on evidence and reason, and must stimulate him to face reality with
confidence, courage and concinnity. However, one should remember that absolute
evidence is rare and every argument has a counter argument, which limits the
effectiveness of reason. Therefore, rational faith is the one that is based on
investigation but may carry an element of trust when reason becomes counter
productive. However, the element of trust must be closer to fact than fiction.
Mythology and Faith
Unfortunately, such periods are
rare in history when man might have practiced rational faith. In fact, there is
hardly any difference between mythology and folk religion because they both are
based on specific accounts of gods, demi-gods, gurus, messiahs, prophets, their
supernatural deeds, divine gossip and extraordinary experiences Again, they both
communicate in symbols rather than words. This is the reason that most believers
are idolaters despite their avowed rejection of idol-worship.
A myth, by its advocates, is given
decisive authority as the Word. For example, the Bible claims that the Word was
in the beginning and the Word was God (St.John 1:1). Similarly, the Koran claims
to be the Kalaam Ullah - the Word of God. Since validity of such statements is
independent of veracity, it makes the revealed religion an extension of
mythology.
Myths and Fear
Myths arose from fear of natural
forces such as the sun, moon, wind, clouds, thunder, lightning, heat, rain,
drought, life, death and, above all, uncertainty. Man ascribed a deity to almost
every phenomenon; he started worshipping supernatural powers out of fear and
with a view to appeasing them for gaining their favours. All major religions are
sophisticated continuations of the old mythological traditions and have been
given a more baffling interpretation by their founders, under the influence of
dominance-urge, to be worshipped as gods.
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