The doubt essential to faith
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0:00 - 0:06Writing biography is a strange thing to do.
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0:06 - 0:09It's a journey into the foreign territory
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0:09 - 0:12of somebody else's life,
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0:12 - 0:15a journey, an exploration that can take you places
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0:15 - 0:17you never dreamed of going
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0:17 - 0:19and still can't quite believe you've been,
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0:19 - 0:23especially if, like me, you're an agnostic Jew
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0:23 - 0:25and the life you've been exploring
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0:25 - 0:30is that of Muhammad.
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0:30 - 0:32Five years ago, for instance,
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0:32 - 0:35I found myself waking each morning in misty Seattle
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0:35 - 0:39to what I knew was an impossible question:
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0:39 - 0:42What actually happened
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0:42 - 0:43one desert night,
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0:43 - 0:47half the world and almost half of history away?
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0:47 - 0:49What happened, that is,
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0:49 - 0:51on the night in the year 610
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0:51 - 0:55when Muhammad received the first revelation of the Koran
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0:55 - 0:59on a mountain just outside Mecca?
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0:59 - 1:04This is the core mystical moment of Islam,
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1:04 - 1:05and as such, of course,
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1:05 - 1:08it defies empirical analysis.
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1:08 - 1:12Yet the question wouldn't let go of me.
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1:12 - 1:15I was fully aware that for someone as secular as I am,
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1:15 - 1:17just asking it could be seen
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1:17 - 1:21as pure chutzpah.
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1:21 - 1:23(Laughter)
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1:23 - 1:26And I plead guilty as charged,
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1:26 - 1:30because all exploration, physical or intellectual,
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1:30 - 1:34is inevitably in some sense an act of transgression,
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1:34 - 1:37of crossing boundaries.
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1:37 - 1:43Still, some boundaries are larger than others.
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1:43 - 1:46So a human encountering the divine,
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1:46 - 1:49as Muslims believe Muhammad did,
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1:49 - 1:52to the rationalist, this is a matter not of fact
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1:52 - 1:54but of wishful fiction,
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1:54 - 1:58and like all of us, I like to think of myself as rational.
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1:58 - 2:01Which might be why when I looked at the earliest accounts
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2:01 - 2:02we have of that night,
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2:02 - 2:05what struck me even more than what happened
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2:05 - 2:11was what did not happen.
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2:11 - 2:14Muhammad did not come floating off the mountain
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2:14 - 2:17as though walking on air.
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2:17 - 2:19He did not run down shouting, "Hallelujah!"
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2:19 - 2:22and "Bless the Lord!"
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2:22 - 2:25He did not radiate light and joy.
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2:25 - 2:27There were no choirs of angels,
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2:27 - 2:30no music of the spheres, no elation, no ecstasy,
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2:30 - 2:34no golden aura surrounding him,
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2:34 - 2:38no sense of an absolute, fore-ordained role
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2:38 - 2:41as the messenger of God.
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2:41 - 2:44That is, he did none of the things
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2:44 - 2:47that might make it easy to cry foul,
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2:47 - 2:52to put down the whole story as a pious fable.
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2:52 - 2:55Quite the contrary.
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2:55 - 2:59In his own reported words,
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2:59 - 3:01he was convinced at first
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3:01 - 3:06that what had happened couldn't have been real.
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3:06 - 3:09At best, he thought, it had to have been a hallucination --
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3:09 - 3:11a trick of the eye or the ear, perhaps,
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3:11 - 3:13or his own mind working against him.
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3:13 - 3:15At worst, possession --
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3:15 - 3:17that he'd been seized by an evil jinn,
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3:17 - 3:19a spirit out to deceive him,
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3:19 - 3:22even to crush the life out of him.
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3:22 - 3:25In fact, he was so sure that he could only be majnun,
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3:25 - 3:27possessed by a jinn,
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3:27 - 3:29that when he found himself still alive,
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3:29 - 3:34his first impulse was to finish the job himself,
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3:34 - 3:36to leap off the highest cliff
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3:36 - 3:40and escape the terror of what he'd experienced
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3:40 - 3:47by putting an end to all experience.
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3:47 - 3:50So the man who fled down the mountain that night
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3:50 - 3:53trembled not with joy
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3:53 - 3:57but with a stark, primordial fear.
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3:57 - 4:03He was overwhelmed not with conviction, but by doubt.
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4:03 - 4:06And that panicked disorientation,
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4:06 - 4:09that sundering of everything familiar,
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4:09 - 4:13that daunting awareness of something
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4:13 - 4:16beyond human comprehension,
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4:16 - 4:22can only be called a terrible awe.
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4:22 - 4:25This might be somewhat difficult to grasp
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4:25 - 4:28now that we use the word "awesome"
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4:28 - 4:32to describe a new app or a viral video.
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4:32 - 4:35With the exception perhaps of a massive earthquake,
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4:35 - 4:38we're protected from real awe.
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4:38 - 4:40We close the doors and hunker down,
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4:40 - 4:42convinced that we're in control,
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4:42 - 4:45or, at least, hoping for control.
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4:45 - 4:47We do our best to ignore the fact that
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4:47 - 4:49we don't always have it,
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4:49 - 4:52and that not everything can be explained.
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4:52 - 4:56Yet whether you're a rationalist or a mystic,
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4:56 - 4:59whether you think the words Muhammad heard that night
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4:59 - 5:03came from inside himself or from outside,
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5:03 - 5:08what's clear is that he did experience them,
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5:08 - 5:10and that he did so with a force that would shatter
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5:10 - 5:13his sense of himself and his world
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5:13 - 5:16and transform this otherwise modest man
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5:16 - 5:22into a radical advocate for social and economic justice.
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5:22 - 5:28Fear was the only sane response,
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5:28 - 5:33the only human response.
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5:33 - 5:35Too human for some,
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5:35 - 5:38like conservative Muslim theologians who maintain that
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5:38 - 5:40the account of his wanting to kill himself
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5:40 - 5:42shouldn't even be mentioned, despite the fact
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5:42 - 5:47that it's in the earliest Islamic biographies.
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5:47 - 5:50They insist that he never doubted
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5:50 - 5:56for even a single moment, let alone despaired.
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5:56 - 6:00Demanding perfection, they refuse to tolerate
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6:00 - 6:05human imperfection.
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6:05 - 6:12Yet what, exactly, is imperfect about doubt?
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6:12 - 6:15As I read those early accounts, I realized it was
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6:15 - 6:19precisely Muhammad's doubt that brought him alive for me,
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6:19 - 6:21that allowed me to begin to see him in full,
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6:21 - 6:25to accord him the integrity of reality.
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6:25 - 6:27And the more I thought about it,
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6:27 - 6:30the more it made sense that he doubted,
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6:30 - 6:36because doubt is essential to faith.
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6:36 - 6:39If this seems a startling idea at first,
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6:39 - 6:43consider that doubt, as Graham Greene once put it,
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6:43 - 6:47is the heart of the matter.
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6:47 - 6:51Abolish all doubt, and what's left is not faith,
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6:51 - 6:56but absolute, heartless conviction.
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6:56 - 7:00You're certain that you possess the Truth --
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7:00 - 7:05inevitably offered with an implied uppercase T --
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7:05 - 7:07and this certainty quickly devolves
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7:07 - 7:11into dogmatism and righteousness,
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7:11 - 7:15by which I mean a demonstrative, overweening pride
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7:15 - 7:19in being so very right,
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7:19 - 7:26in short, the arrogance of fundamentalism.
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7:26 - 7:31It has to be one of the multiple ironies of history
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7:31 - 7:34that a favorite expletive of Muslim fundamentalists
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7:34 - 7:37is the same one once used by the Christian fundamentalists
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7:37 - 7:40known as Crusaders:
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7:40 - 7:45"infidel," from the Latin for "faithless."
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7:45 - 7:50Doubly ironic, in this case, because their absolutism
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7:50 - 7:54is in fact the opposite of faith.
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7:54 - 8:00In effect, they are the infidels.
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8:00 - 8:03Like fundamentalists of all religious stripes,
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8:03 - 8:07they have no questions, only answers.
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8:07 - 8:09They found the perfect antidote to thought
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8:09 - 8:13and the ideal refuge of the hard demands of real faith.
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8:13 - 8:15They don't have to struggle for it like Jacob
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8:15 - 8:17wrestling through the night with the angel,
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8:17 - 8:20or like Jesus in his 40 days and nights in the wilderness,
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8:20 - 8:24or like Muhammad, not only that night on the mountain,
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8:24 - 8:26but throughout his years as a prophet,
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8:26 - 8:30with the Koran constantly urging him not to despair,
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8:30 - 8:34and condemning those who most loudly proclaim
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8:34 - 8:37that they know everything there is to know
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8:37 - 8:44and that they and they alone are right.
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8:44 - 8:52And yet we, the vast and still far too silent majority,
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8:52 - 8:57have ceded the public arena to this extremist minority.
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8:57 - 9:00We've allowed Judaism to be claimed
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9:00 - 9:04by violently messianic West Bank settlers,
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9:04 - 9:07Christianity by homophobic hypocrites
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9:07 - 9:09and misogynistic bigots,
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9:09 - 9:14Islam by suicide bombers.
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9:14 - 9:17And we've allowed ourselves to be blinded to the fact that
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9:17 - 9:19no matter whether they claim to be Christians,
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9:19 - 9:21Jews or Muslims,
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9:21 - 9:26militant extremists are none of the above.
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9:26 - 9:32They're a cult all their own, blood brothers
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9:32 - 9:38steeped in other people's blood.
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9:38 - 9:40This isn't faith.
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9:40 - 9:45It's fanaticism, and we have to stop confusing the two.
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9:45 - 9:50We have to recognize that real faith has no easy answers.
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9:50 - 9:54It's difficult and stubborn.
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9:54 - 9:56It involves an ongoing struggle,
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9:56 - 9:59a continual questioning of what we think we know,
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9:59 - 10:02a wrestling with issues and ideas.
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10:02 - 10:05It goes hand in hand with doubt,
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10:05 - 10:08in a never-ending conversation with it,
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10:08 - 10:15and sometimes in conscious defiance of it.
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10:15 - 10:20And this conscious defiance is why I, as an agnostic,
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10:20 - 10:24can still have faith.
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10:24 - 10:27I have faith, for instance, that peace in the Middle East
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10:27 - 10:31is possible despite the ever-accumulating mass of evidence
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10:31 - 10:34to the contrary.
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10:34 - 10:37I'm not convinced of this.
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10:37 - 10:39I can hardly say I believe it.
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10:39 - 10:41I can only have faith in it,
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10:41 - 10:45commit myself, that is, to the idea of it,
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10:45 - 10:48and I do this precisely because of the temptation
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10:48 - 10:50to throw up my hands in resignation
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10:50 - 10:53and retreat into silence.
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10:53 - 10:58Because despair is self-fulfilling.
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10:58 - 11:00If we call something impossible,
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11:00 - 11:04we act in such a way that we make it so.
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11:04 - 11:10And I, for one, refuse to live that way.
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11:10 - 11:12In fact, most of us do,
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11:12 - 11:16whether we're atheist or theist
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11:16 - 11:20or anywhere in between or beyond, for that matter,
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11:20 - 11:24what drives us is that, despite our doubts
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11:24 - 11:26and even because of our doubts,
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11:26 - 11:31we reject the nihilism of despair.
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11:31 - 11:34We insist on faith in the future
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11:34 - 11:39and in each other.
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11:39 - 11:42Call this naive if you like.
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11:42 - 11:45Call it impossibly idealistic if you must.
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11:45 - 11:48But one thing is sure:
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11:48 - 11:51Call it human.
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11:51 - 11:54Could Muhammad have so radically changed his world
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11:54 - 11:57without such faith, without the refusal
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11:57 - 12:02to cede to the arrogance of closed-minded certainty?
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12:02 - 12:05I think not.
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12:05 - 12:07After keeping company with him as a writer
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12:07 - 12:11for the past five years, I can't see
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12:11 - 12:16that he'd be anything but utterly outraged
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12:16 - 12:19at the militant fundamentalists who claim to speak
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12:19 - 12:24and act in his name in the Middle East and elsewhere today.
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12:24 - 12:29He'd be appalled at the repression of half the population
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12:29 - 12:32because of their gender.
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12:32 - 12:40He'd be torn apart by the bitter divisiveness of sectarianism.
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12:40 - 12:42He'd call out terrorism for what it is,
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12:42 - 12:47not only criminal but an obscene travesty
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12:47 - 12:52of everything he believed in and struggled for.
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12:52 - 12:57He'd say what the Koran says: Anyone who takes a life
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12:57 - 13:00takes the life of all humanity.
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13:00 - 13:08Anyone who saves a life, saves the life of all humanity.
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13:08 - 13:11And he'd commit himself fully
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13:11 - 13:18to the hard and thorny process of making peace.
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13:18 - 13:19Thank you.
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13:19 - 13:24(Applause)
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13:24 - 13:28Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- The doubt essential to faith
- Speaker:
- Lesley Hazleton
- Description:
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When Lesley Hazleton was writing a biography of Muhammad, she was struck by something: The night he received the revelation of the Koran, according to early accounts, his first reaction was doubt, awe, even fear. And yet this experience became the bedrock of his belief. Hazleton calls for a new appreciation of doubt and questioning as the foundation of faith -- and an end to fundamentalism of all kinds.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 13:45
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for The doubt essential to faith | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for The doubt essential to faith | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for The doubt essential to faith | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for The doubt essential to faith | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for The doubt essential to faith | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |