Humility

Recently I've been experiencing what could be described as a crisis of doubt. I was listening to Duncan Trussell, and was reminded of some things long forgotten. I was less calcified once. 

My position on religion, on faith generally, is well-codified by now. I have the talking points down. It is a solid platform. There are footnotes and addenda. It is perfectly defensible. Is it true? Well, that’s something else altogether.

It’s no secret that I’m angry. Beneath the cake-up make-up I’m seething from the moment God is mentioned. I go to church on Christmas because it means so much to Mom, but I spend the whole time vacillating between boredom, smugness, and disgust. I sneak glances at one of my exes as she chats with parishioners and shushes her kids. I think about how she’s holding up rather well, all things considered. I wonder if her perversions have abated or evolved. I try to text discreetly.

I otherwise avoid the matter entirely. But when that hate flares it’s ugly. I know it. I’m not proud. You may well have seen me three or four drinks in and nipping at my own lips spitting bitter shit. Religion is the bastion of the stupid, the base, the fat and bleating boors. A cudgel used to disfigure children and spread horror. The root of wars and the death of thought and the great barrier to social advancement. Throw them to the lions. It’s that real rage that only comes from disappointment. Losing Jesus was like finding out about Santa Claus and the wound bleeds still. Even when dormant it’s a sign of tectonic activity.

In calmer moments this is presented as a matter of humility – that religion in any sense is an unimaginable act of arrogance. That any human could dare claim to know the secrets of the Universe, we who know so little and the little we know so hard won. It is an act of childish fancy that deserves no more than a pat on the head.

Even more troubling than arrogance is the ingratitude. That a person could consider the vast panoply of splendors that is experience in all its forms, that he or she could take in all the colors and all the words and all the dawns and all the gasps of new life and acts of sacrifice and songs of devotion and the array of quanta and the waltzing of the cosmos and conclude:

"This is not enough. I need something more."

It’s quite an argument. But there is something to be said for scientific humility, as well. There are two types of scientists, those who labor in the trenches and those who dig them. The men and women who conduct the daily business of experiment and inquiry need not worry overly much about upsetting the apple cart. They conduct themselves within a framework that has been provided for them by their forebears. Sound familiar? Certainly they may question this or that, and may publish some very serious paper about some very serious matter and so eke out some further thrust of territory and enlarge the field.

But what of those who redefine fields entirely? The paradigm breakers who are willing to face ridicule to pursue a seemingly mad venture? Often they fail. Usually. But those who succeed are renowned as great, and does not that greatness require faith? It's imaginative work. It's construction. It's fantasy. And when that separation from the flock is met with rebuke what else but faith can sustain that fantasy?  

Is the absence of faith a weakness or a strength?