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English Essay on “Blind Faith” for School, College Students, Long and Short English for Class 8, 9, 10, 12

Blind Faith

India is generally regarded as the home of superstitions. From the little child to the gray old dame, the people of India, especially the womenfolk, are supposed to be crammed with superstitious beliefs from head to foot. The Indian religions are all held to be based on superstition; our manners and customs are all tainted with superstition; our faith and practice are both actuated and impelled by superstitious motives. This is what people outside India think. This is also what many educated Indians themselves think, strange though this may appear. Not often we hear Indians themselves denouncing this or that custom, and loudly stigmatizing it as base superstition.

Let us proceed to examine the situation with impartial eyes. There is a prevalent belief, for instance, that starting on a journey on the first day of a month is unlucky. Is this belief a superstition ? Well, that depends upon whether it is really a belief or not, upon the question how deeply such a belief penetrates your mind. If you do believe, believe sincerely, that it is wrong to start on a journey on the first day of a month, because our ancestors have forbidden it, or because such and such sacred book prohibits it, such a belief is no longer a superstition, but an article of faith, —a sacred thing which must be respected, which no one has the right to call in question, of which you are not bound to furnish any reason beyond that such is your faith. Genuine faith is “above all fingering,” beyond all criticism, and belongs to the spiritual world, where reason’s own wagging tongue becomes silent with awe.

Almost all our-called superstitions are in reality matters of faith. Had they not been so, people would not have incurred sacrifices for their sake. What nameless hardships our pilgrims cheerfully suffer year after year for the sake of bathing in the Ganges during the Magh Mela! The man of western ideas pours ridicule upon the process of bathing in a stream the waters of which have been made insanitary by enormous crowds of bathers ; but it is not the bathing in water that is the guiding principle : it is the deep and active faith behind it that dictates the bathing, elevates it to the dignity of a religious duty, and sustains the heart of the weary pilgrim through the long series of hardships he undergoes between the commencement and the close of the whole pilgrimage.

To those who know her, India is not a home of superstitions, but a land of faith. It is faith that guides all the manifold activities of the people, whether those activities yield any visible and tangible product, or are only believed to bear fruit in the next world. The most striking fact in proof of this characteristic of people is that there is no word in the whole vocabulary of Indian tongue equivalent to the English word ‘superstition.’ This shows that the people do not regard any belief as unreasonable, provided it is a sincere article of faith, and is acted upon in daily life. Belief unsupported by practice is a despicable thing in all eyes; one name of it is hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is an abominable sin in the eyes of the faithful people of India. The true test of a belief, in the estimation of our people, is whether it constitutes an item of daily practice. And so far the Indians are absolutely right in their judgment, for the test of a thing is always a practical one and it should always be a fair one. To test a belief by applying to it the canons c of reasoning seems to be as unfair as to test steel by rubbing it on the touchstone. If therefore we test the beliefs of our countrymen by the proper criterion, we shall find that it is as wrong to condemn them as superstitions as to depreciate the value of gold because we cannot make rails of that metal.

If some educated Indians feel disposed to rail at their countrymen for their superstitious notions, let them remember that some of their own enlightened views are regarded as worse than superstitions by their ignorant brethren. Superstition is really a relative term : the veriest of verities may be impugned as superstition, and grossest fetishisness venerated as divine faith. Where is the boundary-line to be drawn between worthy and unworthy beliefs ? And who is to be the arbiter in a disputed case ? Each party claims for its own beliefs an equal degree of infallibility, never mind what those beliefs are. It is not the theories of science alone that occupy a place of supremacy in the world of thought : the blind faith of the unlettered multitude is, in their estimation, no less incontestable. And the wonderful thing is that sometimes science itself, antagonistic as it is to unreasoning faith, establishes, by a laborious process of research, a conclusion which had been accepted as true by ages of unthinking men. The water of the river Ganges, for instance, has been regarded as sacred by the Hindu people for thousands of years, and the river has been worshiped as a goddess for the same length of time; and science had haughtily named both the belief and the practice, superstitious. Nevertheless the faith of the people had stood unshaken, and science has now come round to perceive its rashness in condemning something before examining it, and to acknowledge, with a modest confession, that the verdict of unreasoning faith had for once agreed with its own reasoned speculations. Modern Chemistry, after a careful analysis, has discovered that the water of the Ganges is the purest and healthiest draught available in the east; that not only are there no bacteria in that water, but that the water is an effective destroyer of poisonous germs. Superstition in this case had outstripped science.

Who can say that there are not other superstitions that may one day be proved to be full of sound sense in as large a degree as they are now supposed to be devoid of ? The investigations of science are still at their infancy. Compared with the long age that superstition has attained in India, Science is a puny infant. And how does science establish her conclusions ? What is the ultimate test which tries the soundness of a scientific theory ? Time Well, if that be so, our superstitions have been tried for a much longer time than the oldest theories of modern science. And if they had been unsound or pernicious, they would have been discarded long ago. The proper attitude that an educated man ought to take towards the superstitions of his ignorant countrymen, is that of toleration and respect, not condemnation and contempt. Instead of rushing to denounce them, we ought to weigh and consider; we ought to make inquiries into the truth of things; we ought to detect what elements of good many lie hidden in things outwardly evil. Above all, we ought to sympathies with the ignorant for their ignorance, wherever it is a case of honest ignorance; and we ought to reverence the pure innocent soul, the seat of strong faith, the mainspring of acts of piety and goodness, which are oftener done through blind instinct than through logical reasoning.

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Home Blog Understanding Intelligent vs Blind Faith

Understanding Intelligent vs Blind Faith

Category: Buddhist Path

Blind Faith is Discouraged (What We Can Learn from The Buddha?)

Some people have difficulty with the word faith, and understandably so. It’s ok to be cautious of blind faith, which can leave us vulnerable to getting duped or disappointed by people or ideas who may not be worthy of our trust. And yet, faith is an important factor in our meditation practice and considered a foundational virtue of the Buddhist path. So, what’s the difference between faith and blind faith, and how can we protect ourselves by learning to discern between the two?

The Buddha taught about faith on multiple occasions. These teachings are recorded in a number of sutras which use the term saddha in the Pali language, or shraddha in Sanskrit. We often define shraddha as faith, but its meaning also relates to trust, confidence, drive or purpose.

In his teachings on shraddha, the Buddha encourages us not to passively accept what he says, but to actively contemplate the teachings, to incorporate them into our daily practice and closely examine them.

O monks and scholars, As gold is tested by burning, cutting and rubbing, Examine my words thoroughly And accept them only then—not just out of respect for me.

My teaching is not a philosophy. It is the result of direct experience. My teaching is a means of practice, not something to hold onto or worship.

This popular quote from the Gaṇḍavyūha Sutra serves to remind us that faith is not the goal, but an action, a process and part of the path.

Simply listening to teachings on Buddhist meditation , mindfulness and well-being will not change our lives, even if we decide we agree with them. It’s only by putting these teachings into practice that we can experience their transformative power, and thereby truly understand them. And yet, some faith in the teachings is required if we are to begin. Like the age old story of the chicken and the egg, faith motivates us to practice, while practicing grows our faith.

Intelligent Faith is Encouraged

Intelligent faith is evidence-based. This does not refer to evidence that comes from academic papers and research studies (although that can be helpful) but to evidence that arises from our own direct experience. The active, experiential type of faith we come to rely on is a faith that’s imbued with wisdom.

Wisdom, in the Buddhist context, has a particular significance. Wisdom refers to an embodied, experiential awareness of the true nature of reality . One that goes beyond our current logical, conceptual understanding. Thus, in the Kesamutti Sutta , the Buddha asks us not only to thoroughly examine and test his words, but to do the same with our inner experience of them.

“In this case, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical deduction, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’”

Paradoxically, this too, requires faith. We trust that in our current state of mind, it’s possible that we cannot see the whole picture. With our minds clouded by mental afflictions and past conditioning, what appears to us as an intelligent conviction could be mistaken. The invitation therefore, is to move beyond belief or disbelief, agree or disagree, right or wrong, and stay open, curious and mindful. This is a wider notion of spirituality.

What Does Intelligent Faith Believe In?

By remaining open, mindful and aware , we can hold space for both belief and disbelief. Faith and doubt are not at odds with one another, but both important to carry with us as we walk the path.

• Faith in the teachings allows us to trust that an end to our suffering is possible. With this confidence we commit to taking refuge in the 3 jewels.
• Faith in the teacher arises as our experience with the practice confirms what we’ve been taught. We’re encouraged to continue along the path.
• Faith in ourselves as beings who are capable of fully awakening develops from faith in the first two.

Confidence in the practice builds not because of blind faith in the teaching and teacher, but because faith, confidence, and trust in ourselves improves.

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Must Faith in God’s Word Be ‘Blind’?

More By Greg Welty

A seminary student raises his hand in apologetics class. “I appreciate the arguments we’re learning about the textual reliability of the biblical manuscripts, their internal markers of historical authenticity, and so on. Without these arguments, our Christian commitment would be irrational. We’d just have ‘blind faith,’ right?” Is this student correct?

Recently, I picked up the new edition of volume 7 of the works of the 17th-century Puritan John Owen. This volume includes Owen’s treatise The Reason of Faith (1677), in which he argues for a distinctively Reformed view of the relationship between faith and reason.

His position is that our knowledge of the Bible as God’s Word depends neither on “the authority of the church” nor on “a moral persuasion from external arguments and considerations.” Scripture is divine testimony, faith “is an assent upon testimony, and consequently divine faith [or, faith  from  and  in  God] is an assent upon divine testimony.” In other words , the Scriptures reveal God’s own “authority and veracity,” and they provide the “formal reason of our faith.”

I’d just been writing about Alvin Plantinga, and the more I read Owen’s The Reason of Faith (particularly chapter 6), the more I saw that Owen’s view is remarkably like Plantinga’s model of how faith and reason relate.

Ultimately, this isn’t surprising, since Plantinga was deeply affected by the Reformed tradition in his upbringing and early education. His magnum opus on Christian epistemology (the philosophy of how we can know truth), titled Warranted Christian Belief (2000), relies on authors like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and Herman Bavinck, not to mention the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.

Still, the parallels between these two kindred spirits are worth pointing out.

3 Components of a Faculty-Based Approach to Faith and Reason

According to Owen, there are at least three “distinct faculties and powers of our souls” by which “God is pleased to reveal or make known himself, his mind or will.”

These faculties are (1) “the light of reason” by which we may “see” the truth of claims like “The whole is greater than the parts” without making any inferences, (2) “reason in its exercise” by which we discursively reason from premises to conclusion, and (3) “testimony” by which we simply trust the claims of a testifier about matters we neither “see” the truth of personally nor reason to argumentatively.

The Scriptures reveal God’s own authority and veracity, and they provide the formal reason of our faith.

Similarly, Plantinga has a faculty-based approach to faith and reason. Like Owen, he distinguishes between the noninferential and inferential powers of reason. The noninferential powers deliver us beliefs by way of perception, memory, introspection, and rational insight. The inferential powers deliver us beliefs by way of deductive and inductive reasoning. Like Owen, Plantinga takes “testimony” to be an additional source of belief that goes beyond the other two.

7 Ways Faith Relates to Reason

But Owen and Plantinga aren’t only similar because they assert reason is composed of multiple cognitive faculties. Both authors go on to apply this position to the faith-reason relationship in similar ways, giving special attention to our faith in Scripture as God’s Word.

What follows is a series of moves in Owen I found eerily similar to Plantinga’s argument.

1. Faith is trust in divine testimony.

Full stop, no further arguments needed. Like our ordinary, rational trust in human testimony, divinely produced faith needs no supporting argument to be rational or to count as knowledge.

2. Faith and reason are two ways of knowing.

Faith isn’t an intellectually substandard source of belief. Rather, it’s a different way to get knowledge. I can acquire knowledge of how my wife’s day went by simply listening to her, reposing confidence in her testimony. Likewise, I can come to know “the great things of the gospel” (Plantinga’s phrase, taken from Jonathan Edwards), and much else besides, by simply listening to and assenting to divine testimony.

3. We have no reason to think there’s an inherent faith/reason conflict.

Rather, as Owen puts it, “there is a perfect consonancy” between the deliverances of faith and reason—“They never contradict.” Instead, they “harmonize and perfectly agree one with the other.”

4. We can learn some things by faith that we can’t learn by reason.

And vice versa. After all, some rational faculties (perception) can disclose things not disclosed by the others (memory). As Owen puts it, these faculties are not “equally extensive.” Likewise, faith can enable us to know things not knowable by reason. This is perfectly normal—indeed, to be expected.

5. Faith, as a distinct way of knowing, is just as authoritative as reason.

Faith and reason are on an epistemic par. Of course, there may not be any noncircular way to prove divine testimony is reliable. But the same goes for reason. One would have to appeal to sense perception to prove the reliability of sense perception, appeal to memory to prove the reliability of memory, and so on. But this doesn’t reveal anything improper about our reliance on perception and memory. Ditto for divine faith in the Scriptures.

6. The work of the Holy Spirit is necessary for producing faith in divine testimony.

There’s no true faith—what Owen calls “divine faith”—without this supernatural influence upon us. Of course, the Holy Spirit’s work is not the formal reason why we believe. Rather, we believe the Scripture because it’s God speaking to us. But without “the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit” (Plantinga’s phrase, from Calvin), there’s no saving faith in this fallen world.

7. Supernaturally produced faith can be strengthened by rational arguments.

Owen devotes chapter 3 of The Reason of Faith to “Sundry Convincing External Arguments for Divine Revelation,” and Plantinga is well known for his “Two Dozen (Or So) Arguments for the Existence of God.” The point both writers make is that rational arguments aren’t needed for faith, even if they strengthen the faithful.

Rational arguments aren’t needed for faith, even if they strengthen the faithful.

Both Owen and Plantinga tap into a deeply Reformed conception of how to do the “knowledge project” in a way that upholds the rationality and perfect propriety of faith in divine testimony apart from supporting arguments.

In a world that attempts to pit reason against faith in radical ways, the philosopher’s epistemological arguments combined with the Puritan theologian’s careful Scriptural exegesis may be just what we need. No Christian, including the seminary student with whom we began, is left with “blind faith.”

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

Greg Welty (DPhil, Oriel College, University of Oxford) is professor of philosophy at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He’s author of Why Is There Evil in the World (and So Much of It)? (Christian Focus, 2018) and Alvin Plantinga (P&R, 2023) in the Great Thinkers series.

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The Difference Between Faith and Blind Faith

Categories Philosophy

When discussing faith or blind faith, we immediately associate each with God. However, it’s far more complex than that.

Faith is derived from the Latin word  fides  and the Old French word feid. It refers to confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept. In religion, it’s defined as “belief in God or the teachings of religion,” Blind faith means believing in something unquestionably.

People who are religious refer to faith as confidence based on a perceived degree of warrant. In contrast, people skeptical of religion think of faith as a belief without evidence.

The mere difference between faith and blind faith is that faith is having trust in something or someone with a reason, meaning the thing that one has faith in had to have done something to gain one’s faith, while blind faith means, having trust in something or someone without a plausible reason or evidence.

There aren’t many differences between faith and blind faith. However, there are some, and here is a table for that.

Keep reading to know more.

Page Contents

What does blind faith mean?

“blind faith, since reason is the eye of faith, and if that eye is put out, faith is blind indeed. This reason for accepting blind faith condemns itself, does it not? It is a mere hypocritical pretense. Blind faith is here, but another name for no-reason-at-all.”

E. ALBERT COOK, PH.D. Professor of Systematic Theology at Howard University, Washington, D.C.

The term “blind faith” means believing without any evidence or true understanding.

However, is this the faith that God wanted us to have? Even if it was the kind of faith God wanted us to have, people would have many remarks for those who have blind faith in God.

Let’s start by looking at one of the incredible examples of faith. God told Abraham that he would be a father of many nations and his wife Sarah would bear him a child, even though Sarah was 90 and Abraham was around 100. When the time came, and Isaac was finally born to them, God told Abraham to do something which was unexpected and unthinkable, God told Abraham to kill Isaac. Thereafter, Abraham didn’t even question God.

He “blindly” followed the order of his God and traveled to a mountain with the pure and unquestionable intention of killing his son. When the moment came, God stopped Abraham and said, “Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son”.

This shows that God was rewarding and complimenting Abraham for his blind faith, and as Abraham is one of the models given to us to follow, it seems that blind faith is the ideal.

What do you mean by faith?

In the dictionary, faith means having confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept. However, there are several religions with their own definition of faith. Religions like:

Faith in Buddhism means a serene commitment to the practice of the teachings and having trust in highly developed beings like Buddhas.

In Buddhism , a faithful devotee is known as upāsaka  or  upāsika, and no formal declaration is required. Faith was important but just an initial step towards wisdom and enlightenment.

Faith doesn’t imply “blind faith” in Buddhism. However, a degree of trust or faith is required for the spiritual attainment of Gaut ama Buddha. Faith is the center of the understanding that the Buddha is an Awakened being in his superior role as a teacher, in the truth of his Dharma (spiritual teachings), and his Sangha (group of spiritually developed followers). To conclude, faith in Buddhism is summarised as “faith in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

Faith in Buddhism is far more complicated than it seems.

In Islam, a believer’s faith is called  Im an, which means complete submission to the will of God, not unquestionable nor blind belief. In accordance with the Quran, Iman should do righteous deeds to enter paradise.

Muhammad referred to the six axioms of faith in the Hadith: “Iman is that you believe in God and His Angels and His Books and His Messengers and the Hereafter and the good and evil fate [ordained by your God].”

The Quran states that faith will grow with the remembrance of God, and nothing in this world should be dearer to a true believer than faith.

In Sikhism, there isn’t a religious concept of faith, but the five Sikh symbols, known as Kakaars , are often referred to as the  Five Articles of Faith . The articles are  kēs  (uncut hair),  kaṅghā  (small wooden comb),  kaṛā  (circular steel or iron bracelet),  kirpān  (sword/dagger), and  kacchera  (special undergarment).

Sikhs who are baptized must wear those five articles of faith at all times to be saved from bad company and keep close to God.

There are other religions as well where faith is described. However, those are quite straightforward.

Are faith and trust the same?

Faith and trust mean the same and often are used interchangeably. However, faith can be more complex than trust. Trust is merely a demonstration of faith.

Faith is defined as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” ( Hebrews 11:1 ), in simpler words, faith involves trust, trust in something or someone that can’t be proven explicitly. Basically, faith can’t be separated from trust.

To describe the involvement of faith and trust with an example, Faith recognizes that a chair is designed to support the person sitting on it, and trust demonstrates faith by sitting on the chair.

What is the opposite of blind faith?

People who don’t have blind faith are skeptical, and that quality leads them to questions that are impossible to answer. Such unanswerable questions are the very questions that people with blind faith refuse to question.

Basically, the opposite of blind faith is being skeptical and looking for reasons to go against why people have blind faith.

The Opposite of believing in someone or something without a plausible reason or proof is incredulity (being unwilling to believe something), skepticism , or suspicion.

Is it good to have blind faith?

The answer to this is subjective, as in some cases, blind faith can be detrimental.

Blind faith in God is generally seen as a good thing since God is known to be good. However, blind faith in other things, for example, a politician can be seen as bad. This is because a politician, unlike God, can never truly be classified as “purely good”. There will be cases where they will take advantage of your blind faith and end up eventually putting you in harm.

Having blind faith can sometimes cost you something that is dear to you. However, when Abraham, with God’s order, traveled to a mountain to kill his only son, Issac, he had blind faith in God because he knew that He (God) would do whatever was best for him (Abraham).

God ordered him to sacrifice his only son to see if he would follow His orders. From the account, God had the assurance that Abraham feared him and would, at all costs, follow his orders. “Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your only son”.

Blind faith is like a hope for people. Without hope, one will suffer in his mind endlessly.

The man without religion is like a ship without a rudder. – B. C. Forbes.

Here is a video discussing the question: is blind faith better than belief based on evidence?

What makes faith and blind faith different?

The mere difference that makes faith different from blind faith is that when a person has faith, he might have questions about something that he has faith in and even try to find answers, while having blind faith means believing in something or someone without any reasons or questions.

Having blind faith means not knowing the nature of God or the future outcome of some event but still believing without questioning.

Having faith is like living life as if the steering wheel is in your and God’s control, whereas having blind faith means that the steering wheel of one’s life is solely in God’s control.

To Conclude

• Faith and blind faith have distinct meanings and applications.
• Faith is rooted in trust and reason, while blind faith lacks evidence or questioning.
• Different religions view faith differently, with varying definitions and complexities.
• Trust and faith are related, with trust being a demonstration of faith.
• The opposite of blind faith is skepticism or disbelief.
• The goodness of blind faith depends on the positive or negative context.
• Faith is not limited to religion and varies among individuals.
• Faith is a deeply personal and diverse concept crucial to human life.

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What is blind Faith

Faith is accepting what you are taught or told without trying to prove or disprove it, rather than discovering it through experience. Atheism suggests that those who believe in God have blind faith-and they do. It has not been proven that God exists; similarly, it has not been proven that humans are kind, honest, and good by nature. Young Goodman Brown is a character in “Young Goodman Brown,” who leaves his known world in Salem village and travels an unknown road in a dark forest in the middle of the night, a common motif in literature better known as the Hero’s journey, and is faced ithobstacles.

He must decide if he will carry his journey out till the end, or turn back and not learn the truth about himself and other humans. The story “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne traces Young Goodman Brown’s experiences, physical and psychological, paralleling the Hero’s Journey and showing how he discovers that humans are truly evil by nature; therefore, altering his views of other humans and life itself. In the beginning of the story, Goodman Brown is faced with a decision to stay home with his wife another night or to take off on his journey.

This parallels his psychological decision to leave behind all that he knew to be true up until that point and discover the truth no matter how harsh it may be. The call, from the Hero’s journey, is when Goodman Brown decides to go out alone to discover himself. Faith, his wife, is urging him to stay with her instead of leaving that night. She almost convinces Brown to stay, but his desire to discover himself overpowers his desire to stay with Faith.

The struggle going on inside of Goodman Brown’s head is really between remaining innocent and having blind faith in the nature of man or mbarking on the journey to discover his true self, no matter what that may be. The threshold, or jumping off point for Brown, is when he has made his final decision to ignore his wife’s pleas and take his journey. It is ironic when Faith finally lets him go and says, “Then God bless you! and may you find all well when you come back” (pg. 87).

He is only gone one night and nothing substantial changes in Salem village while he is gone, but since he is so dramatically changed emotionally during his excursion, he remains sad and distrustful for the rest of his life, due to knowing the truth about human ature. Young Goodman Brown must leave behind his known world, Salem village, and enter an unknown world, the forest, to face challenges he must be capable of overcoming. Allegorically, he embarks on a psychological and spiritual odyssey. Entering an unknown territory is scary and puts a person at a much higher physical and emotional risk.

There may be a devlish Indian behind every tree” shows how insecure Young Goodman Brown is in the forest because he is exposing himself to danger, which in this case, is evil itself (pg. 88). He must tay strong and overcome his weaknesses to get past his biggest fears and continue his Hero’s journey. Goodman Brown is tempted to turn around and go home, but he sticks it out, and continues onward. Goodman Brown remarks, “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow! ” just before noticing a man, similar in appearance to himself, sitting under a tree (pg. 88).

This man speaks as if he was expecting Brown although Brown is a little shocked to see him. He represents the previously unrecognized evil nature of Young Goodman Brown , possibly the devil himself. Although Goodman Brown is reluctant to continue, this man convinces him to go just a little further. Goodman Brown tries to explain why he wishes to turn back by saying, “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians” (pg. 89). The man replies that he has walked this road with all Brown’s ancestors before, and therefore, convinces Brown to continue the path.

Also, the man must explain that even people who appear dignified and honorable such as the minister, have taken the ath. Young Goodman Brown comes across Goody Cloyce who taught him his catechism in youth, as well as the minister and Deacon Gookin who were his spiritual and moral advisors. Seeing them on the same path was more assuring, but at the same time made him begin to doubt mankind. The abyss in “Young Goodman Brown” is when he sees his wife, Faith. Goodman Brown hears Faith’s voice, and it appears that “both saints and sinners seemed to encourage her onward. ” (Pg. 4) The call of Goodman Brown’s voice is desperately crying out to his Faith.

The cloud of voices sweeps away and Goodman Brown is left in solitude. Now, he realizes that the one person who he truly loves and believes to be pure and good has an evil nature, too. Brown cries “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil, for thee is this world given” (pg. 94) He willingly charges forward down the path from that point on. Once he is with the congregation and is brought forth before everyone, along with Faith, he tries again to save Faith’s soul by telling her to look to the heavens, but does not know if she does or not.

He is then baptized with a red liquid by the hand of evil. Although Young Goodman Brown felt a “loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart” he could not ever return to a state of blind faith upon returning home (pg. 97). Goodman Brown has been enlightened and now understands that human nature is evil. He has discovered what he was looking for and can return back to his known world, Salem village. The gift of truth has been bestowed upon him. Young Goodman Brown returns to his home the next morning as a new man.

Throughout the rest of his ife, Goodman Brown does not see the people he once thought he knew the true nature of the same as he used to. Hawthorne states, “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream” (pg. 100). Even Young Goodman Brown’s “dying hour was gloom” (pg. 100). His life was changed so drastically during that one night that he could never forget it. Through the Hero’s journey, Hawthorne shows the development of Young Goodman Brown as he discovers his true nature as evil.

He comes to terms with the reality that umans are evil creatures, no matter how honorable or innocent they may seem. Transformations, both physical and psychological, took place during Goodman Brown’s expedition, but were these changes necessarily good ones? Which is better: to have grace and innocence, but be happy with life , or to know the truth although it may hurt to know it? There is a clich used to explain a good point of view that says, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you. ” Young Goodman Brown would have led a happier life if he remained innocent, but at least he received something good from his journey, knowledge and truth.

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Blind Faith vs. the Rational Approach Report

Religion and science have been at each other’s throats since the dawn of times, which has given people the opportunity to note the principal difference between the two. While science tended to explain specific phenomena and statements, religion relied on people’s faith.

However, things changed when presuppositional apologetics came into existence; trying to promote Christian beliefs as the explanation point for all the phenomena and events that occur in the world, presuppositional apologetics opened a door to the whole new world of arguments and misconceptions. Despite the fact that presuppositional apologetics still focuses on the idea of faith as the ultimate manifestation of religiousness, it can be considered that presuppositional apologetics lacks reasonability.

However, the novelty of the approach wears off quickly, since the only original idea of the presuppositional apologetics is that Christian religion is the only rational explanation for everything that happens in the world. As Fernandes explains, “This technique for defending the faith teaches that a believer must assume or presuppose the truth claims of Christianity rather than argue for them” [1] .

As it has been mentioned, though Presuppositional apologetics was offered as a new approach towards exploring the specifics of the Christian belief and offering grounds for its existence, it had many problems. One of these problems was that, though defined as a new method, presuppositional apologetics was actually another interpretation of the absolute faith, i.e., believing without questioning the reasonability of the religion.

While the above-mentioned actually is the basic principle of the Christianity, it seems that there was no obvious need for establishing teeth-grindingly old principles as something entirely new. In addition, presuppositional apologetics also aimed at convincing people despite the existing evidence of the completely opposite.

According to Sproul, Gerstner and Lindsley, the problem of presuppositional apologetics is that, trying to make people reach absolute faith, it neglected even the Biblical evidence: “This school of thought has not suffered from a lack of nerve but has boldly rejected the traditional theistic proofs and Christian evidences” [2] .

Therefore, the key problem of presuppositional apologetics is that it not only tries to explain everything from a theistic point of view, but also does not accept any proofs concerning the Christian religion, even if these proofs come from Bible.

To its credit, presuppositional apologetics could also be considered as a step forward for the Christian religion. For example, it offered a new idea of relationships between a believer ad god. To be more exact, it offered a new portrayal of God. As Hindson said, the principles of presuppositional apologetics “correctly guide man’s cognitive faculties to a genuine knowledge of God and the world” [3] .

Therefore, it can be considered that suppositional apologetics is a huge step backwards for the adepts of the Christian religion and a retreat into giving no reasons for Christianity to exist. As it has been mentioned, its problem is that it conveys the idea that faith does not need any proof and belief is the only fundament for religion to exist; therefore, suppositional apologetics somewhat questions the very idea of religion.

However, suppositional apologetics can also be viewed as an attempt to protect the faith from those who question its sanity. With that in mind, it must be admitted that presuppositional apologetics offers a lot of food for thoughts.

The following people are considered or believed that they followed presuppositional apologetics:

• Gordon Clark
• Greg Bahnsen
• Francis Schaeffer. [4]

Reference List

Beilby, James K. Thinking about Christian Apologetics: What It Is and Why We Do It . Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2011.

Fernandes, Phil. Contend Earnestly for the Faith . Baltimore, MD: Publish America, 2009.

Hindson, Ergum C. The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity . Bloomington, MN: Harvest House Publishers, 2008.

Sproul, Robert C., John H. Gerstner and Arthur W. Lindsley. A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics . Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984.

• Phil Fernandes, Contend Earnestly for the Faith (Baltimore, MD: Publish America, 2009), 21.
• Robert C. Sproul, John H. Gerstner and Arthur W. Lindsley. A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), 185.
• Ergum C. Hindson, The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity (Bloomington, MN: Harvest House Publishers, 2008), 226-227.
• James K. Beilby, Thinking about Christian Apologetics: What It Is and Why We Do It (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2011), 100.
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This Quote Means | Bhagat Singh: ‘Mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: It dulls the brain and makes a man reactionary’

In the week of the 92nd anniversary of bhagat singh’s death, we remember a quote by the revolutionary freedom fighter from his essay ‘why i am an atheist’. quotes by famous historical figures form an important part of the syllabus for the upsc cse essay paper..

On March 23, 1931, Indian revolutionaries Rajguru, Sukhdev and Bhagat Singh were hanged for their role in the killing of British police officer John P Saunders. The day has since been marked as Martyr’s Day to remember the national heroes, with leaders across the subcontinent – even those who disagreed with their methods – hailing their bravery and chastising the British for what was termed as a ‘judicial murder’.

Prior to his execution , Bhagat Singh spent nearly two years in prison. However, these were not two years of inaction. During his time in prison, he led a massive hunger strike, demanding better conditions for his fellow inmates, all while reading and writing vociferously. In fact, much of what is known about his ideas come from what he wrote during his time in prison.

One of the most poignant pieces of writing by Singh is his essay titled ‘Why I am an Atheist’. This was originally penned down in October 1930, around the time he was sentenced to death, while Singh was an inmate at the Lahore Central Jail. It was a reply to his more religious friends who felt that he became an atheist out of sheer vanity.

Here, we take a look at an excerpt from this essay. Notably, quotes by famous historical figures form an important part of the syllabus for the UPSC CSE Essay paper. Also, themes around faith, religion, spirituality and wisdom have appeared in various forms in the UPSC examination, especially in the philosophical context. Questions have been asked about spirituality and scientific temper (2003) and ‘new cults and godmen: a threat to traditional religion’ (1996).

The full passage goes like this:

“Any man who stands for progress has to criticise, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosophy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled, and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain and makes a man reactionary.”

In this passage, Bhagat Singh outlines why reason, rather than blind faith, should drive anyone who believes in progress. Singh uses the term ‘faith’ in two different ways in the above passage. First, as a synonym for religious beliefs (‘old faiths’) and second, simply as faith (complete trust or confidence in someone or something) itself.

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Bhagat Singh’s problem is not with faith itself but ‘blind faith’

Singh writes that as long as reason is one’s ‘guiding star’, faith is welcome, even if it may be misplaced. This is because being reasonable presupposes being questioning and open to change one’s views. Our knowledge is fundamentally incomplete – there will always be ‘more to know’ than what is known at present. This means that our ‘faith’ has to reflect this.

For instance, for the longest time, it was believed that the earth was at the centre of the universe. In fact people like Galileo who said otherwise were ridiculed and sometimes, even persecuted. Today, we know without a doubt that our planet is but a tiny, insignificant speck in the vast nothingness of the universe. This change in our ‘belief’ came with advancements in science and humankind’s collective gathering of knowledge. Mere faith in Earth’s uniqueness amidst overwhelming evidence otherwise would be dishonest and nonsensical.

Similarly, ‘mere faith and blind faith’ in any fact, any religious teaching, in any god, is also ‘dangerous’.

Why is blind faith dangerous?

Bhagat Singh’s answer to this reflects his leftward leanings.

Marx famously wrote in his introduction to ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ (1844), “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people (often translated as ‘masses’).” Similarly, Singh says blind faith “dulls the brain”.

While Marx is referring to religion more in its systematised and organised form, criticising religious institutions, Singh refers to it at a more individualistic level. However, for both the writers, religion and blind faith engender a certain kind of passivity in human beings. They make humans not question the injustice that surrounds them and blindly follow authority, even to their own detriment.

It also makes them “reactionary” to criticism and censure. Even a completely reasonable challenge to someone’s beliefs can draw unreasonable, often violent, responses. Take for instance the opposition to recent Seattle anti-caste discrimination laws. While there can undoubtedly be debate regarding the specifics of the law as well as its efficacy, unequivocally calling them ‘anti-Hindu’ is a reactionary response, which does not engage with the very real discrimination faced by Dalits in India as well as abroad. After all, the law was made on the back of multiple instances of caste discrimination that have been recently reported in the United States.

Bhagat Singh’s own example to substantiate this point is also interesting. He says, “Because Mahatamaji (Gandhi) is great, therefore none should criticise him. Because he has risen above, therefore everything he says —may be in the field of Politics or Religion, Economics or Ethics— is right. Whether you are convinced or not you must say: ‘Yes, that’s true’. This mentality does not lead towards progress. It is rather too obviously reactionary”.

The mark of a true revolutionary

“Criticism and independent thinking are the two indispensable qualities of a revolutionary”, Bhagat Singh writes later in the essay. This is the larger point that the quote being discussed makes. By no means is believing in something itself bad. But when it is blind, and unquestioning, this belief can be dangerous. It is imperative for humans to continue to question what is in front of them, whether it be material conditions, seemingly infallible leaders or religion.

In a country where Bhagat Singh remains one of the tallest national icons to date, it will be wise to think about his words and put them into action for once. In the face of the hold that dogma, superstition, and religious fundamentalism continue to have over the people of India, Bhagat Singh offers an alternative vision, one based on rationality and critical thought.

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Friday essay: blind people are often exhausted by daily prejudice – but being blind is ‘inherently creative’

Adjunct Research Fellow, Western Sydney University

Disclosure statement

Amanda Tink does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Western Sydney University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Andrew Leland was in his thirties when he had to stop driving at night – and then stop driving at all. Next, he had to start using a cane in public. As the cycle of decreasing vision became familiar, each absent sliver of vision required more adjustment to how he navigated the world.

He moves through the same steps in the same sequence each time, but each loss is unique, and uniquely stressful. And he can still see the disdain of sighted people, which makes him long to lose all his vision at once:

I thought about my periodic desire for the eye disease to just get it over with, and take the rest of my sight. I wanted to be relieved of seeing the way people look at blindness: the scorn, the condescension, the entitled, almost sexual leer. Skepticism, pity, revulsion, curiosity. I know I’ve looked at blind people this way too […] But I was a different person then: I didn’t really think of myself as blind.

Blindness, creativity and memoir

Responding to the idea that James Joyce’s blindness influenced his writing of Finnegans Wake , his biographer Richard Ellmann asserted:

The theory that Joyce wrote his book for the ear because he could not see is not only an insult to the creative imagination, but an error of fact. Joyce could see; to be for periods half-blind is not at all the same thing as to be permanently blind.

What Ellmann presents as a fact is actually a common myth. 85% of permanently blind people have sight . (I am one of the 15% of blind people who is totally blind, and the even smaller minority born this way.) And the line between blind and sighted is not straightforward. The results of a number of tests, and other factors, are taken into account.

Ellmann sounds like he is uncomfortable with thinking of Joyce as blind, and thinking of blind people as creative.

By contrast, during the writing of Finnegans Wake, Joyce himself was relaxed about the losses and gains of his situation. Responding to a letter from a friend on this topic, he wrote: “What the eyes bring is nothing. I have a hundred worlds to create, I am losing only one of them.”

Review: The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight – Andrew Leland (Penguin Press), Life Unseen: A Story of Blindness – Selina Mills (Bloomsbury Academic)

These tensions of identity and creativity between those who are sighted and those who are blind existed long before Joyce, and are still prevalent a century later. They are explored with candour and thoughtfulness in two recent memoirs, by Selina Mills and Leland .

Like Joyce, their versions of blindness mean they have sight that gradually decreases over decades. And they are writers – both are journalists.

While their memoirs are obviously written from personal vantage points, Mills and Leland detail much more than their own stories. Interwoven with their experiences of becoming blind are the experiences of blind writers, performers, teachers, activists, inventors and so on.

Mills, who is from the UK, researched blind women throughout European history. The few famous blind women she mentions are from outside Europe (which demonstrates the need for her research). One of them is American activist and author Helen Keller (1880-1968). Another is Tilly Aston (1873-1947), also known as “Australia’s blind poet.”

As Mills’ own sight decreased, she felt surrounded by sighted people’s stereotypes of blindness. She was compelled to research the real members of her community, for herself and her readers. As she writes:

so much of our knowledge of blind people has relied on how sighted people have interpreted blindness. […] We fear it, we punish with it, we find it powerful and alluring all at the same moment and have done so for centuries. Principally, we rarely hear the voices of blind people themselves. Why not? Who were these blind people who lived and died, who were not just heroes or burdens of the sighted world?

Similarly Leland, who lives in the US, concentrates on the recent and present US blind community in order to encourage both himself and his audience to develop a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be blind:

I met people who said that their blindness meant nothing to them – that it was a mere attribute, like hair color – and others whose blindness utterly defined and upended their lives. […] I sympathized with all of these positions, even as I wondered which attitudes I would adopt for my own life. I tried to understand how blindness was changing my identity as a reader and a writer, as a husband and a father, as a citizen and an otherwise privileged white guy.

Read more: The amateur’s age of unriddling: Finnegans Wake on stage

What blind people have in common

I was drawn to both books by their exploration of historical and philosophical questions. But as I read, Leland and Mills’ experiences of being blind with some sight also became compelling for how universal they are.

I have talked with many people losing sight as they transition to blindness, and am well aware of the shape of the sight-loss journey. Yet these books emphasised to me the significant number of experiences blind people have in common, regardless of how much sight we have, or where we live, or when we were born.

Mills and Leland have both been losing sight for two decades now. But they began at different levels of sight and the cause was different for each of them.

Leland’s sight loss began as night blindness when he was a teenager. His research on the early internet suggested the cause was retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative condition where night blindness is followed by peripheral vision loss, then central vision loss, sometimes ending in total blindness. After his first year of college, he went to an eye clinic where his self-diagnosis was confirmed.

Read more: Happy birthday, Braille: how writing you can touch is still helping blind people to read and learn

Leland’s interest in understanding blindness as an identity develops another dimension when he learns his retinitis pigmentosa is part of his Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. He discovers that throughout history, blind people and Jewish people were often denigrated in similar ways.

Medieval literature and disability studies researcher Edward Wheatley points out, for example, that both groups were branded as greedy, lazy, and dishonest. And both groups were said to be responsible for their marginalisation by Christian society – Jewish people for refusing to convert, and blind people for sinfulness.

Significantly, both blind people and Jewish people were early and constant victims of the Nazis. And the threat multiplied if you belonged to both groups.

Read more: Disabled people were Holocaust victims, too: they were excluded from German society and murdered by Nazi programs

The borderlands between blind and sighted

Mills’ sight began to decrease in her early thirties. However, she was already accustomed to living in the borderlands between blind and sighted: she was born with no sight in one eye.

Growing up, she attended mainstream schools. Her childhood, though, had many experiences in common with other blind children. Teachers incorrectly assumed that she had learning difficulties when she was six and she got a prosthetic eye when she was ten. She was left to drift rather than being supported throughout her schooling and she finished school without having been taught braille or how to use a cane.

Having only spent time with sighted people, she was used to thinking of herself as similar to them, even though she was often exhausted and they were not.

In her twenties, she became a journalist and travelled throughout Europe. She only sometimes carried a cane, just as a precaution. Mills was in her early thirties when bus numbers and step edges became difficult to see. This prompted her to go to an ophthalmologist, who discovered she had an inoperable cataract.

Other people’s prejudice

Mills and Leland have to manage a range of emotions that accompany losing sight, as well as the reactions of their families and friends. But the most difficult aspect of being blind, they discover, is other people’s prejudice.

Echoing the experiences of the blind people whose lives they explore, they are exhausted by the frequency and variety of prejudice they have to manage in their daily lives.

Sometimes it is overt: being denied education or work, being told to not have sex or have children, being refused entry to a venue if not accompanied by a sighted person. Sometimes it is questions disguised as concern – about whether you can cook, or how you are sure you have performed a work task properly, or whether you actually need to learn braille.

It always contains the message that being sighted is superior to being blind, and blind people should feel envious of sighted people and ashamed of who we are.

I suspect it was this prejudice Joyce was reacting to when he said, “What the eyes bring is nothing.” I don’t think he meant he had no use at all for the tiny amount of sight he had. I think he was exasperated by so many people continuing to insist it must be more difficult for him to write as a blind person. Certainly, he felt sight was not a prerequisite for creativity and that blindness had enhanced his writing.

This prejudice even extends to sighted people believing they have the knowledge to distinguish between blind and sighted strangers within seconds of seeing them. And they believe they are entitled to call out anyone they are convinced is faking it.

This happens to Mills at a train ticket barrier when the guard asks her for her ticket, then for her disabled person’s travel card. Like most blind people, she keeps the card in a specific place in her wallet, ready for these occasions. But the guard associates blindness with slowness and incompetence, so takes her organisation as evidence she is faking blindness:

“How did you get that then?” “Get what?” “Your disability travel card? – I mean, you can see all right, can’t you?” Having learnt to be patient with other non-believers, I was calm. “Oh, I know, but I have only got about 20 per cent vision on a good day. The doctors tested me.” Unconvinced, the guard continued: “You think you can get your card, and just get away with it. I saw you walking down the platform, bright and breezy. You are faking it!” He was quite proud of his little diatribe and seemed unkeen to let me through unless I confessed to my high crimes and misdemeanours.

Fortunately she has an irrefutable piece of evidence – her prosthetic eye, which she removes and presents to the guard:

“ The queue gasped. I was shaking with fury. You really think I had my real eye plucked out and went through the pain of having a false eye made, just to get a discount on my f*king train ticket?

Blind people are harassed in this way regardless of our level of sight. As a totally blind person, I have many similar anecdotes. However, these experiences can have a particularly devastating effect on someone adjusting to blindness.

Both Mills and Leland discuss how incidents like this make them reluctant to use a cane. "Sometimes I left the cane behind, just to have a day off from the reactions, but the falling over and bashing into lampposts is not always worth it,” writes Mills. “The more I need to use my cane to find curbs and doorways, the more patronizing and intrusive (and sometimes hostile) strangers become,” echoes Leland.

Read more: Henry Lawson and Judith Wright were deaf – but they’re rarely acknowledged as disabled writers. Why does that matter?

Blind women from history

Connecting with other blind people helps both Leland and Mills not just accept, but value their blindness. The blind people they encounter show them how to minimise the effect of sighted prejudice on their identity, and to understand that being blind is inherently creative.

Mills connects with blind women from history who deserve to be better known. And it is thrilling to learn about them with her, and to know that details of their lives are finally more publicly accessible.

They include Saint Odile of Alsace (an area now occupied by France and Germany), born in 660 AD, who travelled throughout Europe and founded two monasteries. Therese-Adele Husson , born in 1803, was a French writer of children’s books and romantic fiction. And Maria Theresia von Paradis , born in 1759 in Austria, was a talented pianist from a young age.

As an adult, Maria Theresia’s life was divided between being subjected to one horrific so-called cure after another and performing throughout Europe. She was friends with Haydn, as well as Mozart – who composed a piano concerto for her. She was a composer herself, of more than five operas and more than 30 sonatas, and in Vienna she established one of the first schools for blind musicians.

As Mills points out, “unlike Mozart and Haydn and a few other known women composers, who died penniless or unpublished, she had what few musicians had in the age – a successful profession and an income.”

Developing a blind identity

Leland feels connected to a number of 20th-century blind writers, such as James Joyce, and to many current blind writers, as well as advocates, engineers and artists.

Many blind people devoted years of their lives to argue for the rights of all disabled people to have equal access to public spaces, education, employment and more.

Meanwhile, so much technology in everyday use over the last century has been created or enhanced by blind people, from long-play records to internet chat forums. And every step of the way, many blind people generously shared their knowledge to help others who were still developing their skills.

One of the people who shared their knowledge with Leland was American activist and teacher Barbara Loos. Leland met Loos at a blindness convention. She encouraged him to attend the residential training course that later accelerates Leland’s cane skills and confidence.

She then pinpoints the problems with how he’d been taught to read braille. This sets him on the path to reestablishing and reinvigorating his identity as a reader by learning to read braille correctly and obtaining a braille display – a device that connects to a computer and displays the screen one line at a time.

once I’d finished my last course, I brought it [the braille display] out again, and fell in love. Reading on the braille display was a palliative against my anxiety about going blind. The more facility I gained with it, the more I could imagine a rich life for myself as a blind reader.

Reading these books, and the lives and work they explore, I feel extremely proud of my community.

• James Joyce
• Finnegans Wake
• Disability coverage

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