Opening the book…
Opening the book…
Explore how different traditions approach the same question, from the oldest texts to the screen and the present day. Connections suggest similarities in meaning, not proven influence. Dates describe broad periods of a tradition, rather than the age of each passage.
“What do you believe in that you cannot prove? How did you come to it, and what does it ask of you?”
Belief, doubt, and what helps us live with uncertainty.
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, the Sermon on the Mount, and the parables. Foundational to Western moral language.
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.”
Job's declaration of defiant faith even as he believes God may destroy him.
“And remember Job: When he cried to his Lord, "Truly evil hath touched me: but thou art the most merciful of those who shew mercy." So we heard him, and lightened the burden of his woe.”
“Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”
Job's response upon receiving news that he has lost all his children and wealth in a single day.
“And remember Job: When he cried to his Lord, "Truly evil hath touched me: but thou art the most merciful of those who shew mercy." So we heard him, and lightened the burden of his woe.”
Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads — dialogues on duty, action, and self.
“And, Prince! by faith Which wanders not, there is a way to come Thither.”
Krishna states that unwavering, undistracted faith is the specific vehicle by which a person may reach the highest, imperishable reality.
“'The way is long; it is, as it were, walking on the sharp edge of a razor, yet despair not. Awake, arise, and stop not until the goal is reached,' say the Vedas.”
Swami Vivekananda, Jnâna Yoga, The Absolute and Its Manifestations, 1907 ↗
“But whereso any doeth all his deeds Renouncing self for Me, full of Me, fixed To serve only the Highest, night and day Musing on Me--him will I swiftly lift Forth from life's ocean of distress and death, Whose soul clings fast to Me.”
Krishna explains how total devotion and self-renunciation lifts a person out of suffering.
“Never say: 'O Lord, I am a miserable sinner.' Who shall help you? You are the help of the universe. What in this universe can help you? Never help came from anywhere but from yourself.”
Swami Vivekananda, Jnâna Yoga, The Absolute and Its Manifestations, 1907 ↗
Tao Te Ching, attributed to Laozi — terse, paradoxical aphorisms on living with the grain of things.
“In the Way of Heaven, there is no partiality of love; it is always on the side of the good man.”
Laozi concludes a passage about resolving disputes and keeping one's word with this principle about cosmic justice.
“He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray.”
“Bad men it guards, and doth their ill efface. (Its) admirable words can purchase honour; (its) admirable deeds can raise their performer above others. Even men who are not good are not abandoned by it.”
On the universal reach of the Tao — it does not withhold itself even from those who have done wrong.
“He whose evil deeds are covered by good deeds, brightens up this world, like the moon when freed from clouds.”
Dhammapada and selected sutras — terse, principle-rich verses on suffering, attachment, and right action.
“"One is the road that leads to wealth, another the road that leads to Nirvana;" if the Bhikshu, the disciple of Buddha, has learnt this, he will not yearn for honour, he will strive after separation from the world.”
A Bhikshu is a Buddhist monk; Nirvana here means liberation from suffering and desire.
“He who, though dressed in fine apparel, exercises tranquillity, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find fault with all other beings, he indeed is a Brahmana, an ascetic (sramana), a friar (bhikshu).”
The Buddha teaches that true spiritual standing comes from inner conduct, not outward appearance or rank.
“It is true, Simha, that I denounce activities, but only the activities that lead to the evil in words, thoughts, or deeds. It is true, Simha, that I preach extinction, but only the extinction of pride, lust, evil thought…”
Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana: The Realisation of Life, II, 1913 ↗
Analects of Confucius — sayings on conduct, governance, and moral cultivation.
“He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray.”
Confucius responds to a question about which powers are worth cultivating favor with, asserting that Heaven is the ultimate authority.
“"You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the…”
“If Heaven had wished to let this cause of truth perish, then I, a future mortal, should not have got such a relation to that cause. While Heaven does not let the cause of truth perish, what can the people of K'wang do to me?”
Confucius speaks to his disciples while surrounded by hostile people in the town of K'wang, expressing calm confidence in his mission.
“"You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the…”
Greco-Roman school of practical philosophy on virtue, agency, and acceptance. Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca.
“Either there is a God, and then all is well; or if all things go by chance and fortune, yet mayest thou use thine own providence in those things that concern thee properly; and then art thou well.”
“By the wise contrivance of the Author of nature, virtue is upon all ordinary occasions, even with regard to this life, real wisdom, and the surest and readiest means of obtaining both safety and advantage.”
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Ch. II (critique of Epicurus), 1759 ↗
“One prayeth that he may compass his desire, to lie with such or such a one, pray thou that thou mayst not lust to lie with her. Another how he may be rid of such a one; pray thou that thou mayst so patiently bear with him, as that thou have no such need to be rid of him. Another, that he may not lose his child. Pray th…”
Aurelius argues that prayer should seek the transformation of one's desires and fears, not the obtaining or avoiding of external things.
“And who say, 'O our Lord! give us in our wives and offspring the joy of our eyes, and make us examples to those who fear thee.'”
Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) — concise principles for living, distilled from the early rabbinic period.
“When you pray, do not make your prayer something automatic, but a plea for compassion before God.”
Rabbi Yose teaches that sincere intention is what gives prayer its meaning.
“That the transaction of opening ourselves, otherwise called prayer, is a perfectly definite one for certain persons, appears abundantly in the preceding lectures.”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, note 358, 1902 ↗
“Everything is foreseen yet freedom of choice is granted, And the world is judged with goodness; And everything is in accordance with the preponderance of works.”
Rabbi Akiva's paradoxical statement holding together divine foreknowledge and human moral responsibility.
“We see because things do fall out, but things do not fall out because we see: events cause knowledge, but knowledge does not cause events.”
Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Chapter XXIX, tr. Charles Cotton, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1877 ↗
Central scripture of Islam. Ethical teachings, parables, and prophetic narratives.
“We created man: and we know what his soul whispereth to him, and we are closer to him than his neck-vein.”
God speaks of the intimate divine knowledge of each human being.
“This is what ye have been promised: to every one who hath turned in penitence to God and kept his laws; Who hath feared the God of Mercy in secret, and come to him with a contrite heart: Enter it in peace: this is the day of Eternity.”
The qualities that earn entry into Paradise are named: penitence, obedience, private reverence, and a humble heart.
Montaigne and Bacon turning the essay into a way of thinking in public — sceptical, personal, unwilling to settle a question it has not tested.
“It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together…”
Bacon argues that superficial inquiry breeds doubt, but thorough investigation of nature leads back to belief in God.
“The spontaneous intellect of man always defines the divine which it feels in ways that harmonize with its temporary intellectual prepossessions. Philosophy can by comparison eliminate the local and the accidental from th…”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture (fourth section), 1902 ↗
“so man, when he resteth and assureth himself, upon divine protection and favor, gathered a force and faith, which human nature in itself could not obtain. Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself, above human frailty.”
Bacon concludes that faith in divine support gives human beings a courage and strength they cannot generate on their own.
“Who knows whether the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs may not actually help God in turn to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks?”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Concluding Lecture, 1902 ↗
Hume, Smith, Kant and Wollstonecraft asking what we owe each other once reason, rather than revelation, is asked to supply the answer.
“freedom is a mere idea, the objective reality of which can in no wise be shown according to laws of nature, and consequently not in any possible experience; and for this reason it can never be comprehended or understood, because we cannot support it by any sort of example or analogy. It holds good only as a necessary h…”
Kant explains why freedom, as the basis of morality, cannot be proved empirically but must be assumed by any rational being who acts.
“It is high time to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI possible?" by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments necessary?"--in effect, it is high time that we should understand th…”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 11, tr. Helen Zimmern, 1907 ↗
“Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man's fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member o…”
Hume argues that virtues grounded in utility and sociability are natural, while ascetic 'monkish virtues' fail this test.
“There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the…”
Emerson, Thoreau and Douglass in New England and beyond — self-reliance, conscience against the state, and the moral weight of a life lived deliberately.
“from my earliest recollections of serious matters, I date the entertainment of something like an ineffaceable conviction, that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and this conviction, like a word of living faith, strengthened me through the darkest trials of my lot.”
Douglass reflects on the inner sense of future freedom that sustained him through the worst of his enslavement.
“Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, someti…”
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Of the Sorrow Songs, 1903 ↗
“The highest evidence the slaveholder can give the slave of his acceptance with God, is the emancipation of his slaves. This is proof that he is willing to give up all to God, and for the sake of God.”
Douglass states the standard by which enslaved people judged the sincerity of a slaveholder's religious conversion.
“Free! The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time, amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of mothers and maidens, and the fall of an empire,—the most piteous thing amid all this was th…”
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Of the Black Belt, 1903 ↗
Mill, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, each pressing on what an individual owes to the crowd, to suffering, and to their own honesty.
“The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.”
Nietzsche is characterizing early Christian faith as requiring total self-abnegation, distinguishing it from Protestant sincerity.
“The higher nature in man always seeks for something which transcends itself and yet is its deepest truth; which claims all its sacrifice, yet makes this sacrifice its own recompense. This is man's dharma, man's religion,…”
Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana: The Realisation of Life, Chapter 4 (The Problem of Self), 1913 ↗
“Though the religious instinct is in vigorous growth,--it rejects the theistic satisfaction with profound distrust.”
Nietzsche's diagnosis of modern atheism: people have not lost the religious impulse, only faith in the specific God of theism.
“Nothing is more striking than the secular alteration that goes on in the moral and religious tone of men, as their insight into nature and their social arrangements progressively develop. After an interval of a few gener…”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures XIV–XV, 1902 ↗
James, Du Bois, Vivekananda and Tagore — psychology, pragmatism and the first modern accounts of living inside more than one world at once.
“Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whiche…”
Du Bois reflects on the spiritual meaning embedded in the enslaved people's musical tradition.
“Within us we have a hope which always walks in front of our present narrow experience; it is the undying faith in the infinite in us; it will never accept any of our disabilities as a permanent fact; it sets no limit to its own scope; it dares to assert that man has oneness with God; and its wild dreams become true eve…”
The century in which the question was most often put to a wide audience by film. Each line belongs to a larger story, and is quoted with its character, film, and writing credits where available.
“People will come, Ray.”
An argument for acting on something you cannot justify, made to a man about to lose his farm for having done it.
Written by Phil Alden Robinson.
“I had an experience. I can't prove it. I can't even explain it.”
A scientist is asked to deny an experience because she cannot prove it, and discovers the language of faith in her answer.
Written by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg.
“I have doubts. I have such doubts.”
A woman who has been certain for the length of the film says the last line of it, and undoes herself.
Written by John Patrick Shanley.
“Unless you love, your life will flash by.”
A mother who has told her sons there are two ways through life, nature and grace, names the only way she knows to be happy.
Written by Terrence Malick.
“And so it goes with God.”
Having told two versions of his survival, Pi leaves the choice of which to believe with the listener, and says what the choice amounts to.
Written by David Magee.
“I suffered beside you. I was never silent.”
A priest asked to trample an image to save others' lives finds his answer is not the one his training prepared.
Written by Jay Cocks and Martin Scorsese.
The same question, answered by people who are still working it out.
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