Doubt

One of my favorite radio shows these days is "Speaking of Faith" on NPR. The other week the theme was Doubt. I love this subject on the subject of spirituality. Especially since we will never be able to empirically prove anything relating to faith. Though there is a scientific argument that says Einstein's Theory of Relativity supports the concept of reincarnation. I haven't read this entire story, but a friend at my meditation class was telling me about it after we had a long talk on a street corner about how we are supposed to distinguish reality from illusion in Buddhism, which led us to the thought that some aspects of Buddhism [for example, karma] only working if you have faith in reincarnation, which led us to how can you prove something like that, at which point Rickie gently pointed out that he'd read that the 3rd Theory of Relativity supports it. Interesting. I love Sundays.

Anyway, Doubt. It has a long history in faith. I mean, what good is untested faith? This is a subject I've been thinking a lot about lately. But the fact that this agnostic poet wrote an entire book about it -- across the board, covering Christianity, Islam, Buddhism (if you can truly call Buddhism faith, another subject that came up on the street corner. It's more like philosophy. Philosophy that takes your spiritual and psychological life into account. Holistic philosophy, if you will.).

Anyway, check out what Jennifer Michael Hecht has to say about the doubters throughout history and in a number of faiths. Truly interesting.

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/doubt/index.shtml