SHATTERING OF FAITH IN THE VIEW OF PHILOSOPHERS & PSYCHOLOGISTS
According the British philosopher, F.R. Tennant (1866-1957), “Faith
or trust is an outcome of the inborn propensity to self-conservation and
self-betterment which is a part of human nature, and is no more a miraculously
superadded endowment than is sensation or understanding.” He suggests that
“much of the belief which underlies knowledge … is the outcome of faith
which ventures beyond the apprehension and treatment of data to supposition,
imagination and creation of ideal objects, and justifies its audacity and
irrationality (in accounting them to be also real) by practical actualization. Faith
of this kind may be religious, or it may be religious without being theistic,
of course, as in classical Buddhism. But there may also be non-religious faith:
in particular, ‘scientific’ atheists may be making a faith-venture when they
take there to be no more to reality than is in principle discoverable by the
natural sciences. The suggestion that atheism rests on a faith-venture will,
however, be strongly resisted by those who maintain ‘the presumption of atheism.’
An atheist’s faith-venture may, however, seem oddly so described because it
provides no basis for practical hope or trust.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy).
Dr. Eric Fromm (1900-1980), a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher in his book
“The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil,” in 2nd chapter mentions
four malignant forms of destructiveness, Playful Violence, Reactive Violence,
Revengeful Violence and SHATTERING OF FAITH. He describes on page 28:
“Closely related to revengeful violence is a source of destructiveness
which is due to “Shattering of Faith” which often occurs in the life
of a child. What is meant here by the “shattering of faith?” A child
starts life with faith in goodness, love, justice. The infant has faith in his
mother’s breasts, in her readiness to cover him when he is cold, to comfort him
when he is sick. This faith can be faith in father, mother, in a grandparent,
or in any other person close to him; it can be expressed as faith in God. In
many individual this faith is shattered at an early age. The child hears father
lying in an important matter; he sees his cowardly fright of mother, ready to
betray him (the child) in order to appease her; he witnesses the parent’s
sexual intercourse, and may experience father as a brutal beast; he is unhappy
or frightened, and neither one of the parents, who are allegedly so concerned
for him, notices it, or even if he tells them, pays any attention. There are
any number of times when original faith in love, truthfulness, justice of the
parents is shattered. Sometimes, in children who are brought up religiously,
the loss of faith refers directly to God. A child experiences the death of a
little bird he loves, or a friend, or of a sister, and his faith in God as
being good and just is shattered. But it does not make much difference whether
it is faith in a person or in God which is shattered. It is always the faith in
life, in the possibility of trusting it, of having confidence in it, which is
broken. It is of course true that every child goes through a number of
disillusionments; but what matters is the sharpness and severity of a
particular disappointment. Often this first and crucial experience of
shattering of faith takes place at an early age: at four, five, six, or even
much earlier, at a period of life about which there is little memory. Often the
final shattering of faith takes place at a much later age. Being betrayed by a
friend, by a sweat-heart, by a teacher, by a religious or political leader in
whom one had trust. Seldom it is one single occurrence, but rather a number of
small experiences which cumulatively shatter a person’s faith. . . . In my
clinical experience these deep-seated experiences of loss of faith are
frequent, and often constitute the most significant leitmotiv [recurring theme]
in the life of a person.”
Since every child is born with a blank slate, and it is his parents who make him a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, or a Hindu, etc., it is also the parents who are responsible for
shattering the faith of the child. The child, when grown up and is free from
parental or social pressure, and now revengeful to childhood perceptions
retained in his subconscious, loses his faith on God, on religion, on parents,
on humanity, and any other institutions like a school, a madrassa or a mosque/church, or business concern. Shattering of faith on humanity is a most dangerous form as it can produce Hitlers and Stalins.
Mirza Ashraf
It is rather unclear where the references from philosophers and psychologists end and where Mirza Sahib’s point of view begins but I’ll take the last paragraph’s conclusion and disagree with it; “It is also the parents who are responsible for the shattering of faith of the child” – absolutely wrong conclusion! Are parents suppose to keep their offspring in a bubble forever? Every child finally starts to experience the real world, no one lives like Buddha’s childhood, in isolation. What shatters the faith is when one finds the truth that is contrary to one’s brain washing. Finding truth, logic and rationality is not one’s parents failure. Yes, if at all parent is to be blamed, the blame should be failure of keeping the child ignorant and isolated (like the Amish for example) and not for shattering of faith.
Also the comparison between religious faith and faith in science is a lame attempt by Tennant, if to justify religious faith. Totally different “faiths”, one is unquestioned and blind and other based on reason and open to correction.
Firstly, it is very clear that parents are to be blamed for stuffing religious dogma, fictional and mythical information into the raw mind of a child.
Secondly, it is very clear that as soon as a person becomes a materialist and thinks that he is now awakened, he loses faith on his parent–since the information imparted by them seemed false and baseless to him. At the same time he loses faith on humanity. An atheist has no culture, no tradition and no social manifesto. Interestingly, he still has to be carried to the graveyard and buried or cremated with all the religious rites and rituals. I have seen many atheists in my life who never believed in any religion and God, but when the time comes, i.e. marriages of their children, they call a Mullah and I can count on hundreds of other rituals which they perform. For sure, all this is because religions have traditions, cultures, and a civilization. Atheists are individuals, just by themselves even within their family.
Thirdly, if some one does not believe in Darwin, and is still an atheist–my father’s barber who used to visit weekly to shape his beard, was an illiterate atheist. According to Eric Fromm such atheists are those who had witnessed their parents lying or practicing against what they were teaching to their children. Fromm was an expert of clinical psychology and whatever he has written is the result of his years of research of psychoanalysis on hundreds of patients and volunteers.
Fourthly, Darwin’s theory is well taken in spite of many missing links. Human being’s intellectual and social development is based on three factors, their knowledge of the past, present, and future that is they are the only species who are aware that death is their future. Since Darwin did not believe in human psyche, so psychology, the most important subject of man’s intellectual make up and development, is no where in his theory of evolution. Great psychologists, like Freud, Jung, Eric Fromm and many more are critical of Darwin whose theory is focused on man’s biological and physiological development only.
Mirza Ashraf
“Faith is in the mind of beholder.”
Which can not be shattered by interlopers