Parasites can’t exist without the host organisms they prey on. Doubt is such a parasite that can’t live without faith. 

Consider, for example, doubts about the existence of any ultimate reality such as God. Yet the non-existence of God is not decisively provable by logic or evidence alone — atheism is ultimately an ideology chosen based on faith. 

Further, we all need to live for something — and doubt usually leads us to live for the opposite of the spiritual: the sensual (Bhagavad-gita 16.08). While sensual pleasure is inevitably a part of life for all living beings, we human beings have an intelligence that seeks something more: a life of meaning. In fact, it is only because of this intelligence that we can doubt when certain belief systems don’t make sense or seem meaningful. 

Unfortunately, we sometimes let doubt monopolize our intelligence: we think that doubt alone is the sign of intelligence and that faith is always a sign of gullibility. By thus rejecting faith, we sentence ourselves to a life bankrupt of any ultimate meaning. Yet the notion that life is ultimately meaningless is not rigorously unprovable — it requires faith. 

Doubt overtly claims to be freeing us from faith when taking us away from spirituality. But while taking us toward atheism and materialism, doubt covertly asks us to have faith in its claims. 

Rather than naively believing our doubts, we can expertly use both faith and doubt: faith that there’s more to life than what titillates the senses; ,and doubt about various claims about the nature of trans-material reality, evaluating them on merit. By such intelligent integration of faith and doubt, we can make our human search for understanding supremely fruitful. 

One-sentence summary: 

Doubt claims to reject faith while asking for faith in itself — reject the monopoly of doubt by rejecting its rejection of faith. 

Think it over:

  • How does doubt ultimately require faith?
  • What happens when we believe our doubts?
  • How can we use both faith and doubt in our human search for understanding?

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16.08: They say that this world is unreal, with no foundation, no God in control. They say it is produced of sex desire and has no cause other than lust.

 

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