Can you really believe something if you don't question it?

Question

In Buddhism, for example, it is taught that one should not believe something because someone tells you it's true or to believe it, or that it make logical sense, that you must experience it and realize it is true and valid on your own merit and experience (the idea of three type of wisdom in the Right Wisdom part of the Eightfold Noble Path.)

Anyways, for those of any faith:

Can you truly follow a religion or beliefs system if you don't challenge the ideas and ask many questions and experience it's truth or lack-of for yourself?

Answer 1

For me, the nature of faith is to question and second guess to no end, and still find merit in your beliefs.

Believing without questioning is possible, but it is not faith, it is ignorance.

Answer 2

Sometimes you have to but sometimes you don’t have to. Your hairs do not need to be questioned; however, to know what they really are, you have to go to a lab. Many things around you are just like that.

Sometimes, you don't have to question - you have to use your intuition and decide. Certainly you need intuition. For example, when you see poison, you must certainly know you can die if you swallow it. But certainly you have to know the poisons.

Sometimes, it’s best not to question but do what need to be done. The Buddha gave an example once – you’re injured as somebody shot at you an arrow. First you have to do is to get cured or die. You don’t have time to question about who the shooter was.

Sometimes you cannot question because nobody knows properly. God is believed for many thousand years by the believers who never saw Him. But they believe. You can believe that they do believe. If you question, how He looks like or how old he be, you won’t get unifying answers because nobody has ever seen Him. God might be visible in your imagination but you don’t have to question if your imagination is fact.

If you ask how the Buddha was, you can get some answer based on history and archeological findings. But you can certainly see Him in His teachings.

You know your parents so you know there must be your ancestors lived as real human beings.

Sometimes, you waste your efforts by questioning; for the same reason that nobody knows. Such as how the earth started. How time started. You can only get imagination or mathematical guesses. Scientific answers can take you back several billion light years back but they can’t give you these answers.

Still you don’t need to question: if the world or the bodies and minds are suffering. You can see it with your own eyes. You can feel it with your own body and mind.

But you might wonder why the world is suffering, how this can be stopped and what the techniques are. Many religions give the answers.

What you have to question is which religion gives the right answers.

Answer 3

There are two categories of believers:
1) Those whose believes result from faith in another's teaching,
2) Those whose believes result from direct apprehension of the doctrine.

The former would believe without questioning. The latter would not.

Answer 4

I don't know about others but I have challenged my own beliefs and faith and found a deeper relationship with Christ. So for me...it has been necessary to question and to find answers.

Answer 5

I think you can only make a wise decision by studying as many faiths as you can before you decide which one is best for you(or not for you).

I believe it to be a mistake to blindly accept anything in life, spiritual or otherwise.

Blessings~Namaste

Answer 6

They seem to have a false sense of "questioning it" and the issue I have with their questioning is that they already have a given answer in the back of their head (God is real and he loves you for example). The questioning is biased and so it just completely spoils the point.

Answer 7

interesting

islam agrees with you on that

And do not follow (blindly) any information of which you have no (direct) knowledge. (Using your faculties of perception and conception, you must verify it for yourself. (In the Court of your Lord,) you will be held accountable for your hearing, sight, and the faculty of reasoning."[Quran 17:36]

Answer 8

I think that beliefs are the answer to questions and challenges ............so as a christian I say keep on questioning

Answer 9

Abram, the father of the faith believed God and it was imputed to him as righteousness...then immediately asked this....

"And he said, Lord GOD, 'whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?'"

(Genesis 15)

Any questions?

agapefromnc

Answer 10

The questions are always there but often repressed.