Faith I: Confidence

faith   [feyth]

noun

1.

confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2.

belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

3.

belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.

(dictionary.reference.com)

What is faith? Confidence without certainty. Certainty is what separates faith from knowledge. In many cases, what is considered or assumed to be knowledge may be later shown to be untrue. To assume everything we consider knowledge is true is to have too much faith in it. This is why some knowledge can be expressed through probability, or through an "educated guess". We can know observed details, and use them to come to likely conclusions. Even if the details are true, the conclusions are not always set in stone.

Hence, if someone says "atheists have faith in science," they may be correct that some of us do, but an atheist who has faith in science is making a mistake. We do not trust and assume the inherent veracity and inerrancy of the idea that there was a Big Bang that propelled all universal matter outward or that the age of the earth is 4.54 billion years. We infer these ideas to be the most reasonable situations based on the evidence available.

Some will say that because the estimated age of the earth will fluctuate as we gain new information, the process itself is unreliable. Compare this to solving a coded message:

*** ***** ** *****.

At first, we only solve for t:

T** ***** ** *****.

Our evidence suggests that the first word starts with a "t" sound. However, when we uncover the letter h:

Th* ***** ** *****.

Suddenly, the message is delivered with a "th" sound, which goes against the probable "t" sound originally. Many may state that because the first interpretation was wrong, the second is less trustworthy. But in such a simple example, anyone can see why this is faulty reasoning. We have a better understanding now, not a worse one. It only makes sense that with less information we would have had a less complete estimation. To deny new information because the old wasn't good enough is to shut off the world of possibilities entirely.

Others may have considered the common word "the" all along and predicted this outcome, which is indeed an intelligent guess, but they would have been in the wrong if they had declared this with certainty before the "h" was uncovered. Indeed, we could have selected all possible words which begin with t and contain three letters, and if we were to place a bet on the coded message, "the" is a reasonable choice by many standards. Faith, however, enters the picture when one rejects all other options besides "the" based only on the first one or two letters.

As long as we go forward with honesty, humility and careful consideration, we can uncover great truths:

Th* **r** ** r****.

Th* **r*d ** r***d.

Th* **r*d *s r***d.

Th* *or*d *s ro**d.

Th* *or*d *s rou*d.

The *or*d *s rou*d.

The wor*d *s rou*d.

The wor*d is rou*d.

The wornd is rou*d.

The wornd is rould.

And as long as we can admit when the conclusions don't match our expectations, and change our views to match the facts... our minds will be free. Free to consider the possibility that not everything has a greater meaning or purpose, that a world which may seem bright and personal may be cold and indifferent. Free to all possibilities, bound by none.

Many believe that if they have faith and believe in God, he reveals himself to them and thus they have personal proof that he exists. But what happens if that person stops believing? How can something they knew become unknown unless they didn't really know it? Many Christians look at those people and say "well, they never truly believed". I know, not just because I heard it, and had it explained to me that way, but because I, too, used to think like that about others who stopped believing. Now I'm one of those paradoxical nonbelievers, and I know some people must think the same of me: either I never truly believed, or I'm just mad at God and use a delusional attitude of unbelief to lash out at him. I assure you that neither is true.

I was utterly convinced that God was real and offered myself to him, humbling myself, considering myself base and unworthy, needing of redemption and joyful that I could receive it. I tried to be a new, better person by praying, studying, monitoring my own bad actions and asking for help not to repeat them. Now I don't believe in God, and I find it pretty difficult to be mad at him, in the same way that I can't be mad at the Cat in the Hat for messing up the kids' house. I can still make the logical observation that the Cat, if he were a real guy, is an ass, and call into question why people would hold him up as an example of proper conduct. That's what I do.

I'm not mad at God. If anyone, I'm mad at the people who taught me about God, and at myself for believing it. They don't care about decoding the real questions in life. They want to assume what the message says. They say it's good to assume. They say the real beauty of the message is in trusting a guess. I think that's not only wrong, but it's dangerous, because it trains you to act in ways in which you aren't properly equipped to anticipate the results; not necessarily to make poor decisions, but to make arbitrary ones.

If I use faith to decide whether or not to kill infidels, whether to accept or reject science, or whether to support or deny gay rights, then the conclusions I come to may be anywhere on the map. If I use reason, I can arrive at the conclusion that best supports the ideals, goals and expectations I hold for my life and for the lives around me.

If I use faith for these decisions, I'm stuck with what I've got. To change my mind would be to demean and to nullify the faith I held. Reason, however, is self-correcting, and if I use it to mold my positions, it will improve over time. Where faith told me to close my eyes and pull the trigger, reason tells me to reconsider the value of the lives of others and to weigh the potential consequences for such actions. Where faith told Abraham to put his son on the altar, reason told the schizophrenic to seek help instead of listening to the voices.

Reason is, simply and demonstrably, and in fact by definition, superior to faith for determining truth, and anyone who denies that is my enemy. Mind you, I'm gentle as foes go, and I act in good intention, but don't forget that we're on opposite sides of a very important struggle, so make sure you bring your big guns. If you aren't sure why you're right, don't expect to convince me of it.

This doesn't mean faith is completely useless or inherently evil. But to call faith a good and moral principle is false. I'll explain why next time. For now, you'll just have to believe me that I'm right - or realize that you must use reason to determine whether faith in me is warranted.

ATHEISM

So, I'm sitting there not listening to anything and I hear my mom on the other side of the house through my door:

Mom: I'm surprised Richard didn't notice it.

Oh, now that makes me curious. So I go to warm up my pizza.

Me: What didn't I notice?

Her: What, do you have super hearing? Alright, I'll show you, but don't go on a tirade.

She shows me a piece of paper that says ATHEISM.

Her: It's the lesson for tomorrow.

Me: You're still doing that? (Teaching the youth group.) They sure keep you busy, don't they? Well, you could have a real atheist there to talk, or maybe have a debate?

Her: These are pretty young kids, mostly 7th graders.

Me: Is that the reason why they shouldn't hear it?

Her: ...Yeah.

Me: Oh, well, we'll brainwash them till they're 18, but then they can make up their own minds.

Her: See, I told you no tirades.

Me: Yeah, sorry, you took me to church for 18 years, but of course you can't listen to two sentences from me.

Am I wrong? Because I sure as hell regret that adults didn't respect me enough to allow me to hear an honest discussion or debate. But religion wouldn't survive in the open light. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to debate me yourself. Or ignore me and just target the kids who depend on you to shape their view of reality.

The Things We Worship

Exodus 20:
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
3 Do not have any other gods before me.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not worship anything but God. If you sin by worshiping another god, then YHWH, I Am, will punish even your children for it.

What does worship really mean? To fling yourself at the feet of something? What if it has no feet, no form at all? If it is an idea, how do you worship it?

It is to hold something sacred, not to question it or challenge it. It is to enshrine within the mind the superior virtue of something beyond oneself... to become a vessel for an idea.

Can you worship the god of the Bible while still considering that he may not exist? Can you devote your life to something you doubt?

Why would God punish your children for your actions? Why not hold everyone to their own account? I posit that this is because the children follow the parents. They are taught, instructed and expected to follow and obey. To this day, many of us assume it only natural to take our children to our own church, to indoctrinate them to perform activities before they can even fathom the meaning or nature of these things they do.

If you falter, your children will falter. If you are strong, your children will be strong. What is the nature of this? Why is it that throughout history, so many cultures all across the world have raised their children up, with a strong likelihood that the child will conform to the religious views of the parents and of the community? If God loves all of us, and wants all of us to accept him through his son, why is the overwhelming trend for cultural exposure to determine our fate? Did Jesus really die for 50% of America and 1% of China?

Indeed, it would appear that the sins of the father shape the fate of the son. However, we all can infer the simple explanation for the stratified trends of religion: as you grow up exposed to something, you will inevitably have to accept or reject it. As I deal with Christianity in my American suburb, atheists in India have fought their intellectual and ideological battles with Hinduism.

As for why so many people accept that religion with which they are raised, it is a simple matter of social cohesion. That a child can be raised to embrace anything from grizzly human sacrifice to safeguarding the life of every insect is a testament to the malleability of the psyche in the hands of its native culture. Children are simply inclined to trust adults, to accept stories, to begin to erect the little idea shrines in the backs of their minds.

Look no further than Santa Claus, a rather recent invention with an easily traced history. As far as belief and mysticism go, it is the mental equivalent of a toy - a simple concept for the warmth and amusement it can bring to children. How naturally we are inclined to create such toys, to give them to our children, to think nothing of this odd, unnecessary process - and how little thought we give to the significance demonstrated by their acceptance. Think about it: if it weren't for all the overt clues like frantic holiday shopping, receipts, homes without chimneys, and for an eventual exhaustion with childish indulgences, or perhaps simply a desire for our children to appreciate the money we spend on them - if not for these things, if the myth were something more abstract, perhaps we could string them along and convince them of Santa for their whole lives.

Even if there is some type of "god" in this reality, the fact that children can so easily be made to believe these things still says much. It should tell a member of one religion why so many other religions are able to thrive, but it should also make them question that one religion of theirs. What do you have that a Hindu does not? And what do they have that you do not? Do you know? Do you care? What meaning is there to truth if you accept the first answer to the question, and never question that answer?

If someone handed you a keyring with 100,000 keys on it, what is the moral value of having faith in one key? And what is the intellectual value of that faith? Statistically, it is a terrible choice, and if opening the door is very important, refusing the other 99,999 keys makes you unlikely to help yourself, let alone anyone else.

To hold the key more sacred than the door is to misunderstand the purpose of the key and to throw away your chances for the door. How is this faith anything but a delusion? How is this faith good in any way? I have never seen or heard a good answer for this, but I have seen stubbornness, dogmatism, redoubling of efforts and the digging in of heels to hang onto the key; I have seen fear, desperation, avoidance and pain at the thought of losing the key. People love their key. People have forgotten the door.

This example doesn't even preclude that the key might open the door. It is common wisdom to consider that a key might open a door, but foolish beyond belief to insist that it must.

So what is the point regarding our worship of that which our parents worshiped? What does it say that we conform to the trends of our culture so frequently? I posit that humans worship human culture.

Christians, or those who have been Christian, consider the fear with which you may knowingly perform some sin, or in which you may avoid committing that sin altogether. When you slyly take that object for yourself, or hide the truth from someone, or think an angry thought - do you forget God in that moment? Do you feel free to follow your whim; free now but due to face the weight of guilt later? Truly, how can you ignore this god which you think is self-apparent and resides in your very heart, mind and soul?

Now, think of how a friend or loved one would react to a particular action on your part - even if you think there's no malice or shame in that action. You hesitate, don't you? You think you may never be able to confront your parents about a sticky issue - you'll let them do as they will. You may feel worse about forgetting to take your shoes off in someone's home than you do about lusting or lying. Respect, shame, and a desire to live up to expectations, these are guiding forces in our lives. When you don't know the answer, you'll seek out someone wise - specifically, someone whose standards of social conduct you are trying to conform to.

To accept the religion of your people without a second thought is to idealize your own culture, your own way of life. It is to create the shrine in your mind, not of your own will but of the will of those before you and around you. This is the nature of God as well as the nature of social cohesion. Is this a coincidence?

To accept the divine nature of a book handed to you, of songs sung to you, of a way of life laid out for you, and to not question these things, is to render them sacred, untouchable. It is in essence to worship these things, to worship the worship itself, to worship human culture and to worship one's own state of being human. If it is possible to worship God without worshiping worship, and to have faith in God without first putting faith in faith, I have not seen any evidence, any examples. I don't think it's possible to truly respect and appreciate the idea of God without fully knowing and investigating the history and complexity of the process itself. To do what everyone else has been doing without first carefully piecing together the nature of this process is not to worship God.

Now, what of atheists? I can't exempt my own from scrutiny. What do they worship, if anything? For some, the scientific method is sacred, or reason, or truth or pragmatism. This creates the amusing appearance of paradox: how can you scientifically verify that the scientific method is the best philosophy? The answer is intuitively simple and holds a greater truth: test the scientific method against other methods, and embrace that method which produces the best results. If one cannot accept this method, one is left in the position wherein they cannot say with integrity that one method of anything is better than any other by any means. Even flawed reasoning is still reasoning. The only other choice would be to make completely random choices. For humans, this is impossible, and even if it were, the word 'choice' would be inapplicable.

In this way, reason is self-verifying where spirituality is not. Spirituality may sometimes look and feel right, but without reason, there would be no ability for us to even correlate those appearances with any actual rightness. In this way, reason is not the shrine set aside in our mind, but the shrine's keeper.

This is why I find it unrealistic to consider the existence of a god who would wish for us to use faith over reason. Why we would be given such a fundamentally and universally sacred tool as reason, and use it, without giving it due respect, merely to serve the cause of such a sloppy, circumstantial tool as belief is beyond me. Where reason affirms itself, faith claims to do the same, but this only renders it less believable.

We are principally creatures of reason. Faith is both less useful and less fundamental to us. The only argument in its favor is that it feels or seems right, and even this isn't true of many people. Matters of faith cannot be adequately demonstrated - if they could, they would be matters of reason. Faith itself cannot even be justified without reason: that which we put faith in is simply that which we at some point arrived upon via reason, and no sensible argument for faith can be constructed by anything except reason. In this sense there is literally no argument as I can see it for faith. Faith is losing this fight, and I invite anyone to try to explain to me why that would be a bad thing.