Words, words, words
by Gadgie, 17 October 2007
I always used to wake up in the morning to the Today Programme on Radio 4. Thought for the Day was the spur that got me out of bed and heading for the bathroom. I have kicked the habit now and so I missed a contribution that may have postponed my shower. It was Madeleine Bunting, pure Maddy at her inspiring best, defending faith.
To place faith and reason in opposition is false … faith is vital: whenever we get in a car, a train or an airplane, we are expressing our faith in the responsibility and expertise of other people … Any difficult decision - having a baby, making a long term commitment to a partner - is about faith …
Inevitably, she brought in a familiar theme,
Other cultures understand how human beings need faith and how to strengthen it, but our culture I believe, having lost much of its religious faith, has lost its insight into the nature of faith altogether…
and so on, and on …
She concluded:
We need, I think, to re-examine our prejudices and resurrect the idea of faithfulness. There are important values embedded in this word: ‘a faithful account’ is accurate and true; ‘in good faith’ is about a promise; ‘to keep faith’ is to keep that promise. These principles of constancy, integrity and commitment are how we build the faith of others- our children, partners, colleagues, friends - in ourselves just as, in turn, they build our faith in them. Faith is how we accept what is beyond our control, and recognise each other’s freedom. How we relate to each other must be full of faithfulness if we are to create communities, a society. Faithfulness is about living with trust and confidence instead of anxiety, fearfulness, suspicion and cynicism.
There is a slight problem with all this guff - language. The same word can have different meanings and Bunting managed to use the word ‘faith’ in every sense except ‘belief’, its religious form. She was talking about trust, loyalty and truth. Are we really prejudiced against trust, loyalty and truth? Do they require resurrection? If so where did they go? Is Christopher Hitchens writing books about the need for distrust, untruth, and disloyalty?
In these senses, faith and reason are certainly not opposed, they are contingent on each other, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with belief. Trust, loyalty and truth are based on analysis, judgement, affection and experience. However, when, for example, the religious ask us to have faith, they mean us to suspend judgement and embrace belief. It is not the same thing at all. Sorry Maddy, but you have to do better than the use of slippery euphemisms to shake my faith - in a liberal, secular society.
Hat tip Will
Wednesday 17 October 2007 at 21:17
“faith is vital: whenever we get in a car, a train or an airplane, we are expressing our faith in the responsibility and expertise of other people ”
And that “faith” is based solely upon rational, man-made criteria. Entirely built upon such things as the Highway Code, English Common Law, and the Driving Test. That isn’t faith, that is customer confidence. With an entirely rational substrate.
Faith, is when you get into a car with a drunk driver who claims to be god, and you don’t bother fastening your seatbelt.
“Faithfulness is about living with trust and confidence instead of anxiety, fearfulness, suspicion and cynicism.”
Good luck with that then….
Wednesday 17 October 2007 at 21:57
I am reminded of a quote from The Old Man:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm
Wednesday 17 October 2007 at 22:49
A couple of years in the DSTPFW re-education facility in Merthyr should sort her out — cheap beer, friendly locals, low bullshit threshhold.
Wednesday 17 October 2007 at 23:50
“Faithfulness is about living with trust and confidence instead of anxiety, fearfulness, suspicion and cynicism.”
Faith is thinking happy thoughts and having great self belief and hair with real body & shine.
Thursday 18 October 2007 at 0:29
Trots1 said: “Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism.”
Replacements have been tried and found wanting.
A belief in a unknowable, unprovable, all pervasive god/spiritual world is most helpful. All the shit I do not know may indeed have a perfectly understandable known reason doing for what it does, but stuffed if I can be arsed finding out what it is - so I “believe” it is done instead of bothering to look. With luck or chance, there ain’t a reasonable substitute for “belief” when predicting them.
Friday 19 October 2007 at 15:24
Gadgie, you are lucky you do not listen to crap like this. One can easily drown in one’s bath after a listen.
Hakmao, I am afraid your hopes for re-education are baseless in this case.
Sunday 21 October 2007 at 10:30
Is Maddy worth wasting any more breath on? Nice to have Monty’s line though.