Skeptics often deride all faith as blind faith – they hold that only by skepticism can one avoid being misled by false belief systems.

Yes, skepticism has its value, but if accepted uncritically, it can itself become a blind belief system not much different from the blind belief systems it derides.

Blind faith essentially means accepting something without considering its limitations or flaws. When skeptics champion skepticism, they don’t realize its fatal flaw: Skepticism can only show what is wrong – it can never reveal what is right.

While skeptics deride all faith as blind, they don’t realize that they themselves have blind faith in skepticism. They can’t guarantee that skepticism will reveal the truth. To the contrary, even if they encounter the truth in full daylight, skepticism will make them doubt that encounter. Yet they keep believing in skepticism – that’s blind faith par excellence.

The Bhagavad-gita (04.40) cautions that doubters find happiness neither in this world nor the next. Skeptics are the quintessential doubters. By their inveterate skepticism, they doubt every source of meaning. Thus, they sentence themselves to a life of meaninglessness, bereft of any fulfilling pleasure. And because they lead lives that are skeptical, nihilistic and atheistic, they sentence themselves to unfortunate post-mortem destinations.

If instead of blindly rejecting all faith as blind faith, they opened themselves to Gita wisdom, they would realize how the Gita calls for not blind faith but reasonable faith. It (18.63) asks us to deliberate on its message and then act, thus appealing to our intelligence. And it (09.02) asserts that its knowledge can be realized through inner experience, thus setting itself up for the verifiability test.

By becoming skeptical about skepticism and choosing to invest our faith in Gita wisdom, we can get the greatest fulfillment, both in this world and the next.

To know more about this verse, please click on the image

Explanation of article:

Podcast:


Download by “right-click and save content”