Amen

A good editorial earlier this week in the Los Angeles Times by Hanif Kureishi, author of My Beatiful Launderette. Entitled "Arguing with the Islamic 'truth'," it encapsulates the problem of trying to reason with true believers. If someone believes he has direct contact with the truth, he can be fairly invulnerable to rational argument (though, perhaps, not to emotion appeals, or threats, for that matter).

If you have faith in a higher power, and believe you must submit to it, it can lead to distrust in reason. Or perhaps I should say that logic is to be chained to the limits of your faith--reason is not to be used to question it.

Kureishi quotes a Muslim scholar who puts the problem quite well (though he doesn't think it's a problem): "Allah is the subject of faith and loving obedience, not of rational inquiry or purely discursive thought. Unaided human reason is inferior in status to the gift of faith."

This kind of belief is fine if you're lucky enough to pick the one faith that gives you the full truth. Otherwise, you're stuck in a hole that's hard to climb out of, since the kind of questioning that can help is what you will fight against. How do you know you've got the truth to begin with? Because your teacher told you? Because it "feels" true? Probably not through reasoning, since faith and obedience are more important.

Update: Salman Rushdie speaks out on this issue. I don't think it'll help much, however, for the reasons listed above. True believers tend to feel their faith comes from revelation that transcends time or place.