Is Faith Oppressive?

I will get back to the last installment of my expert knowledge series soon, once I figure out what I'm actually going to write for it - I had planned what is there already, and I want to see where it all leads as much as anyone else (assuming that others are interested). But first, a brief tangent that I was thinking about: is faith in a given revelation oppressive?

Now, of course, such a question cannot be answered for all cases of faith, nor perhaps can a definitive answer be given in any case. I merely want to raise some issues. It seems to me that Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism (and I've seen similar Buddhist statements) make a virtue out of faith and a vice out of doubt. One should believe authority by default; the Bible says it, the church says it, the Qur'an, the Vedas, enlightened beings, etc., and so you ought to believe what you have been told. A skeptical, critical attitude has often been regarded as not simply a misfortune keeping one from the truth (perhaps you merely have a bad luck to not be able to rationally accept an important belief, even though you have virtuous mental habits), but something evil in itself: it is a vice, and it is blameworthy.

Two things have made me think about the oppressive character of this attitude. First, I went to a conference on a text by the medieval Jewish thinker Judah Ha-Levi. The text was about a king who was searching for the right way to lead his country, and who asked a philosopher, a Christian, and Muslim, and a Jew about what he should do. The text went beyond typical religious polemics and actually gave a thoughtful response and some interesting empirical investigations into what should mark a true religion. One can still quibble with the naive trust of scriptures given, but overall Ha-Levi gave a better response than I've seen from anyone else in the Middle Ages, and probably a better response than I've seen in most contemporary apologetics. Is part of this due to the fact that the Jews were marginalized, and had to actually work through their beliefs, while Christians and Muslims have been able to mandate belief from a position of power? How could any believer hold to the obviousness of her faith without at least a history of power backing it up? Even conservative members who feel themselves under attack from the surrounding culture can only feel under attack because they used to hold the more dominant view.

Second, my master's thesis was on concerns about certain interpretations of Zen Buddhism. Some of these concerns were about the social and ethical ramifications of Zen belief: one throws away rational critique (supposedly) and therefore loses the ability to analyze one's society. This lack of critique has led to Zen involvement in WWII, and sexual abuses by roshis in American Zen centers (to put it simply; of course, there are ways in which Zen can save itself, I think). But (to make a claim which I don't have space here to elaborate), it did not seem like the problematic Zen attitudes were any different from expressions of faith in, say, an Abrahamic tradition, in which one puts some authority beyond rational critique in order to have peace (whether internal or communal). But this has led to social problems whenever it has occurred: groups become marginalized and oppressed, because the the group members are considered malformed and cannot accept the revelation that all truly virtuous people accept.

The Jews should obviously accept the New Testament because they already have the prophecies concerning Christ; the Buddhists are obviously wrong because their practices don't have the sattvic characteristics of the Vedantins; the Qur'an is obviously the work of God and anyone who says otherwise is obscuring her original nature as a Muslim; polytheists are obviously wrong because, well, they're just plain stupid, because no one has ever sat down to think through the pagan worldview. And because of this obviousness, we are justified in putting the authority beyond criticism and expecting others to do the same. For anyone who says otherwise, that this is not how the virtue of faith has worked, point me to a single work of apologetics that does not grant a special status to a view which cannot rationally support itself and that deals honestly and faithfully with other positions. Heck, simply get me one that can take simply the general skeptic's position seriously.

Now, of course these aren't the only expressions of these traditions, and not everything is wrong with some sort of faith (although in my more cynical moments I do tend to think that all acts of religious faith whatsoever are problematic in this way). I mean, I do consider it worthwhile to dedicate my life to studying religious thought, after all! But there does seem to be some problem here, and I hear enough assertions by various believers to this effect (that they know best and everyone who disagrees simply doesn't see things appropriately) that something needs to be done. We live in an age of multiple, competing authorities. We can't just wish them away, and each one calls all of the others into question. We now have a better vantage point to see how oppressed groups have been treated in the past, and we have an ethical imperative to act conscientiously.

(To point out a couple of problems with the above broad sweeps, in interest of fairness: early Christianity does seem to have the emphasis on faith even without much power, and one can see a positive role for skepticism in C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength. And some Islamic views concerning our original nature as Muslims are content with any affirmation of the unity of the source of being. But I think that the problems I've raised are real enough, even if the narrative is incomplete.)