There is a gulf between those who wish to examine and test ideas against the physics of our natural world, and those who are content to believe something not so examined, but instead proclaimed by someone or thing they accept as authority. I have heard faith defined as the excuse people give for believing in something for which they have no evidence. I think this is at times accurate, but uncharitable to some others.
But we do have plenty of examples where our assumptions about the unknown were shown to be incorrect when the tools and methods for examining them were developed and applied. When it comes to the unknown, we may make hypotheses about it, and if able we can test these. Often over the millennia we have found answers – always natural and never supernatural. And where we have not yet found answers we find this divide between those who must put an answer to the question, and those who are content to leave it as unknown.
Of these the first group is the largest. More people in the world are more comfortable assigning speculative cause to the unknown than those who do not. I think this is largely because of the finite nature of human life; It is hard to grasp infinity, and hard to accept lack of knowledge. We ourselves may not have an answer, but the idea that there is no answer at all is unacceptable to many.
But the latter group, of which I am a part, is not content to accept a claim that has no evidence. When any claim begins with an unfalsifiable assumption, such as gods, afterlife, reincarnation, or anything supernatural, it is a non-starter. We (I) recognize that there are those who do share this approach. We can’t make people think critically.
We also can’t accept any explanation where the initial claim has to be believed without evidence. Or believed by default of tradition. Or accepted for lack of a provable contrary answer. In logic we say this last is an argument from ignorance. A logical fallacy that never defeats a reasoned argument. This is something I have seen in many fields, and not merely that of religion. The temptation of some is to pick a possible conclusion, and work backwards to see if a path to that conclusion is evident. Doing so, these people will believe they are following the scientific method, and then accept the answer as proven. When they speak to a skeptic, they become frustrated that we won’t accept their conclusion. They don’t understand their error, both in methodology, and the fallacies in the arguments they make.
The wish for purpose is understandable. We spend our mortal lives driven by purpose. To feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves are purposes for sustaining life. It is normal to come to question why we are doing this if we just die. And why the whole effort of combined life that we have found, and the vastness of the cosmos? Ultimately the biggest question on these lines is: Why is there something rather than nothing? And here again is the rub. If you are so inclined to accept that we don’t know but are still willing to ask and wonder, then you are like me; while if you cannot accept not knowing as an answer, then you may well assign cause and accept that belief on faith.
Here I might offer a definition of faith as, believing in something without reasonable evidence because you are unwilling or unable to accept the possibility of a permanent unknown.
While it is reasonable inquiry to wonder why we are here, or why anything is here; it seems to me to be hubris to assign the cause to a deity which holds humanity as special and select, and to believe that such a deity created the cosmos on our behalf. It rises to the level of absurdity to then offer that the entirety of existence is little more than a field for testing our faith in that deity; a deity for which we must accept based on the claims of ancient books or current interpreters. A field where we must prove our devotion, loyalty, and trepidation to and of that deity, so that we may inherit the invisible paradise which lies behind the curtain (which is also invisible.)
And further, that our failure to accept these anonymous claims that such a deity exists and demands such fidelity of us, we shall not earn that paradise but instead be assigned a permanent and eternal torture of a netherworld. One which, as you may have already guessed, is similarly invisible and undetectable to us.
All the while we exist (whether evolved or created) with the ability to reason and examine all around us to discern truth from fiction. A human characteristic which directly opposes the commands we are to believe we have been given. (By the invisible and undetectable deity we have been told exists.)
Alone and without further examination it is clear that belief in such a deity is foolish and superstitious. And that adjusting our lives to accommodate this claim robs us of time to do that which benefits ourselves and others. A duty which, for lack of proof for or against, seems to be the best use of our limited lives.
But if we do examine the claims of deities, and more so those who make these claims, it becomes clear that all of the behaviors we are called upon to do in order to curry favor with this deity benefit chiefly those who make the claims in the first place. For it is the claimants of these deities who gain most from our adherence to the claims. Simply by asserting the existence of deity and claiming the right to speak for and on behalf of this deity, these agents gain fortune. And by spreading the word to others, we are doing little more than recruiting more victims of this confidence game, and more revenue for the charlatans who operate it.
It is profitable, whether in money or power, to perpetuate faith over reason.
We may use reason to build a better world, and make the lives of ourselves and our fellows better. We may even find a way to prolong the existence of humanity, or even the evolution of the mind by the application of critical thinking and reason.
Adherence to faith, on the other hand, can do none of these things, but will instead support those who perpetuate the denial of reason and critical thought. Faith is an antagonist of reason, and harmful to progress. And those that promote it operate from the worst of motivators. They are motivated to benefit themselves only, and over the needs of the masses. (Even though many believe the masses would be better holding such beliefs.) Where reason naturally leads to promoting the broadest possible effect of our actions – that which promotes the interest of all will bring more future minds to that same task, whereas faith leads to restricting benefits to those who accept the tenets demanded.
In the year 312 (CE) The Roman Emperor Constantine converted his empire to Christianity, though he himself did not convert until on his deathbed 25 years later. (And here we have only his priests to attest to this claim.) And you needn’t be an expert of that man to recognize that anyone who achieves such power as he had, is skilled at political manipulation. It seems more probable than not that Constantine saw this national conversion as beneficial to his aims. Perhaps there was sincerity behind it. I don’t know.
The earlier Roman Senator Lucius Annaeus Seneca once said: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” A reasonable and skeptical mind might well conclude that such thinking was evident to Constantine as well. It is probable that he had read Seneca’s words himself. (Or similar words and ideas.)
A glance throughout history, from ancient Egypt to times present in many places, we can see the role religions play in holding power. And we can see that once held, that power isn’t used to benefit the whole of humanity or the whole of even their own people; but instead is used chiefly to retain power for that group which holds it. And it then promotes antagonism towards those of other countries and religions to the harm of their own people.
It takes little reason to see that working together as a whole people for the betterment of the planet and prolonging our place on it is a good thing, and by pressing our resources towards weapons of war and conflict with our fellows we waste those resources, both material and intellectual. The conflicts we create through the acceptance of faith in religion, or faith in leaders who claim divine right to act, or by nationalistic prejudice against others; are all robbing us of precious potential for good. And it is all done for the preservation of power to the few.
Starting from scratch, with no claims or indoctrination from elders or parents, we are left with no clear answer to many basic questions about existence. We simply cannot know for certain how the existence we perceive to have come about; or for that matter, if it had a beginning at all. The idea that something must have always been for existence to start, is answered by accepting that existence always has been. It needn’t be an intelligent creator at all. Why introduce an eternal agent to create existence, when existence could be eternal?
But since that question cannot be answered to any reasonable level of certainty in our day and age, and with the availability of tools at our disposal; it stands to reason that it could not have been answered by our ancestors any better.
Today there is little doubt that belief in a creator is largely driven by claims made throughout history, and it is childhood indoctrination and familial history that supports the belief. I say this because we can not demonstrate to any real degree the existence of such a being, without first accepting that existence by default.
And we have many people who apply reason and examination of claims, who are then well convinced there is no good reason to think such a being exists, even though they were raised with beliefs in such beings. If those raised without any belief cannot (correctly) reason themselves into belief in deity, and those who were raised with those beliefs can (correctly) reason themselves into abandoning those beliefs; then it supports the idea that the origins of god claims were not the product of sound reasoning, but of absence or abandonment of reason in favor of imagined answers to unknowable concepts.
This leaves us to consider that ancient humans came to their belief in deity by one of two means: Either they arrived at belief the way one might today, as an assertion to fit a hole of knowledge, or that such a deity presented itself to them, and they began the tradition of relating this truth to future generations.
It is not a preposterous idea that people who are unable to explain the nature of existence would imagine some divine power to fit that hole in their knowledge.
But how unlikely does it seem that an all powerful and timeless creator could present itself to early human civilizations in a clear and convincing way, but yet cannot do this today? And if this being did present itself to people early on, why did it present itself in so many different and varied manifestations? Why did and do some cultures have numerous deities while others have one? And still others have none?
If one or more deities were able to expose themselves to people in an undeniable way, it would surely stand that they could do so now.
And we have written history of peoples who assigned to these deities the effects of nature that we now know for certain are not caused by supernatural interference. There was no god in the mountain shaking the earth, or god in the heavens throwing lightning bolts. The annual eclipses are not, and were not, the anger of the gods.
It is clear to see that such beliefs were founded on ignorance, and that they all but vanished as we came to understand the workings of nature. Though predominant in the past, gods like Zeus and Ra, Thor and Vulcan are no longer held as real on this planet.
No, it seems much more likely that belief came from a wish to fill a hole of ignorance with an explanation, and absent a real one and assertion was used.
We are finite creatures. All creatures are finite. We can see a life begin with the birth of a child, and we can see life end with a death. And we all understand that this corporeal existence is limited for each of us without exception. And we can see that everything that lives was once not a thing and will one day be nothing again. This is strong evidence for everything having a beginning.
And yet, every living thing has a seed, and that seed was already a thing before the planting. Whether a tree or a human.
And while the seeds that made us had beginnings, the seeds that made them came before.
So each thing we see and know has a beginning and an end. So we must think that life itself had a beginning. Why? The Big Bang, the scientific theory that describes the initial expansion of the universe from a singularity, does not prohibit the existence of something else before that. The universe did not “pop” into existence out of nothing, anymore than an oak tree popped into existence. But everything that is an oak began as an acorn. The lone acorn holds all the necessary elements for a giant oak. We may marvel at this, and some will attribute this to their imagined deity, but our examination and study tells us the natural process that it follows to go from one to the other.
The acorn didn’t pop into existence either.
Those who study these things have demonstrated how all of the plants and animals have (or could have) evolved from variants that existed before. And the driving force of this is random mutations that affect the ability for that organism to thrive and survive in changing conditions. The process is long and slow, and not at all linear, though it is easier to imagine it so. But we can say for certain that such a process exists, and can theorize that some model of that is responsible for the variation of life as we know it today. And the Big Bang Theory is the best explanation we have for how the universe expanded from a singularity to what it is now. To oversimplify the complex field, you might imagine the explanation for how the germination of an acorn is the beginning of the expansion into an oak tree.
But how the acorn got here can be explained, whereas the singularity from which the Big Bang expanded is not so known.
What then are we to do?
We have two choices, as always: We can accept that we don’t yet know and may not ever know; or we can assign that cause to an imaginary timeless being, for which we have no explanation or evidence.
The first choice is humble and open to new knowledge. The second choice is arrogant and closes the door to learning.
Colloquially speaking, “faith” is sometimes used when “confidence” is the better word. The Earth rotates on its axis once each day, revealing a morning sun to our east. Allowing for slight changes over the seasons and random cloudiness, we can have “faith” that we shall see a sun in the east the following morning.
Our confidence is not a belief without evidence, but rather earned by repeated observations and understanding of planetary motion. Similarly, an employee may have “faith” that his paycheck will be deposited in his bank account every second Friday. But this is using faith to replace confidence, or trust based on past actions.
But faith, in the sense of supernatural belief. Faith, as in belief in some unevidenced claim, has no such history of reliability.
This latter use of the word is what I speak of here. And what I feel is of no positive value to us in the immediate moment, or to the individual, or in a longer or broader reach. In fact, I see it as harmful in the extreme. It ends inquiry. It subjugates the mind to the imagined notions of others. It creates rifts between us and our fellows. It weakens our ability to come to agreement with each other on how best to answer the hard questions that face us.
I read years ago the concept of wanting to believe as many true things, and as few false things, as possible. Not believing everything or nothing.
To achieve this one needs to have some method of determining truth from falsehood. What is clear to me is that faith is a poor tool to use in this matter. One might use faith to believe a falsehood as readily as a truth.
Skepticism is withholding belief until sufficient evidence is provided to warrant accepting the claim.
Reason is the best method for examining that evidence to see if it comports to reality.
In this I have faith.