I've been reading the Dune series and I'm a 1/3 through Children of Dune and I must say I'm starting to understand faith, religion and political power via faith. Now I know what faith means academically but looking back I also know I've never had faith (faith: belief not grounded in any reason or justification). Even when I was younger and a Christian/Diest/theist I didn't have faith i had belief that my elders knew more than me ergo I believed what they did. This didn't last long after puberty though especially growing up with very intelligent friends who challenged me. Also, I am a hyper-rational person and not prone to emotional (false)-reasoning making it very hard for me to ever take a leap of faith since my mind quickly kills the cognitive dissidence and I'm left reasonable/faithless. So having never really had faith I never understood its power! Not to mention the intricacies of how you can weave it into a religion giving birth to serious political power.
Through the rise and fall of the Muad'dib I can understand how the people around him modify their beliefs to what their faith, owning idea but granting the power. An example is how a modern preacher starts a church and turns it into a mega-church and congregation. They do so by tailoring the message to the existing faith of an audience, given them a place to put their beliefs in exchange for (varying degrees) their reason. Having substituted their reason for a justification for their faith allows the preacher to mold them anyway they desire, i.e. giving him true power (people to command)!
The hitch is people have the faith first but this seems to be a rather common human attribute, to which I am the exception not the rule. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's simply the "heard looking for an alpha" gone amok, there are perfect parallels between the two. What I do know is the important implication: you cannot restore reason by rational arguments against the religion since it was sold to a willing buyer and so is not the source of the irrationality. For myself, this explain most of the discussions on the subject I've had, how you can win the debate over and over and change nothing.
A good (atheist) friend remark how sad it was that I needed a sci-fi book(s) to understand faith and religion so completely, but its like trying to get a dog to be interested in abstinence teaching, very unnatural. I probably would have got the idea from Life of Brian but it was just too funny (
Biggus Dickus...lol). My brain seems to lack the faith module. Part o it must be because those who have impressed me intellectually have all used rational arguments and since you can't rational argument faith I'm never even had a tingle of interest. But then I've never experienced being shot so I'm fine with leaving some things in life untried.
Labels: personal, Religionish
