Does one need faith to believe in God? Or God in order to have faith? Are the two necessarily tied together, inextricably?
Faith is a process. (What I refer to here is not the kind of FAITH that has a set of requirements in order to claim, visa vis the Moral Majority, etc., but the function of believing in an efficacy of being and action that preceeds proof.) One must simply accept a whole slew of things on faith in order to function. You have to have faith that your heart will keep beating, that the words you use will be understood by other people, that you have a reason to interact with humanity, that there is a purpose in the things you do, that the claims made by others are not inimical to your existence, well-being, etc etc. It is absurd to demand proof of all these prior to discovering them to be true.
Once we discover them to be true, though, faith goes on autopilot and we rely on habit.
In religion, this arrangement is short-circuited by the total lack of evidence in what is being held as true. And, furthermore, the epistemological argument is made that this is the only way it can be–that the faith being exercised would somehow be invalidated should evidence or proof ever be found or given. (In a way, this is the same as claiming that if proof of God’s existence were made, then the faithful would have to assume that they’d been believing in the wrong God. This also has elements of the absurd about it.)
People believe in all sorts of things that get them through the day. They have faith in the basic goodness of their fellow humans (often with ample contrary evidence); they have faith that the air they breathe will not kill them (also, sometimes, despite evidence to the contrary); they have faith in their ability to navigate the maze of human interaction to enrich both themselves and their fellow beings’ lives. All sorts of things. They have faith that when the light turns green, the cross traffic has a red light and will stop.
They have faith that life is worth living.
Obviously this is a generalization. But you take my meaning. What results is a basic set of assumptions that gets modified on a case by case basis. Experience molds the perception, hones it, teaches us how best to deploy our faith.
I have faith in other processes. But by and large, my faith is conditional.
This is what separates the committed theist from the atheist. The theist possesses unconditional faith, which, depending on how that faith is arranged with respect to the universe, can lead the theist into a direct conflict with reality.
The problem is one of inclusiveness. The Faithful asserts–and insists–that everything is a consequence of God, God’s actions, God’s will. When evidence is found to refute the requirement for a deity in a specific area (this is where scientific inquiry comes in) the reaction is first one of presuming the conclusion drawn from evidence is, in fact, inconclusive, and then an attempt to fold that evidence into a suite of presumptions that this, too, is somehow the work of a deity. When it becomes clear that the latter is not the case, attempts to undermine and refute the evidence itself proceed, leading, in the most extreme cases, to the assertion of counter evidence which does not hold up to scrutiny (i.e. Intelligent Design). Along the way, other examples of evidence to support the theistic view are found and thrust into the debate as if they represent a legitimate counterargument valid on the same basis (i.e. the Shroud of Turin). When these, too, are demonstrated to be insupportable, the final argument is based on morality, which, it is asserted, comes from faith in the deity.
Faith, obviously, is transferrable. It does not, as history shows, flow from a deity to humans, but is clearly self-created and embraced. It is not the break point between a view of the universe with a God and one without. But the stakes placed on it by the theist are clearly high and we must ask why.
In an earlier post I pointed out that the debate between the fundamentalists and the evolutionists is central. I refer back to that one for the details, but it boils down to a question of primacy of the species. In all other regards, the theist (as a generalization) is looking for a basis on which to build a suite of behaviors that may be described as moral. The assertion is made that there can be no morality without God. But clearly the identity of that God is less important than the use of it as a symbol by which one may require communal obeissance, and that is where the crux of the issue rests. This is a behavioral issue for many.
At the core of the fundamentalist argument is the belief (based on faith?) that without God we would automatically devolve into mindless brutes. Yet this is an assumption based on a solid history of humans acting as mindless brutes whether they believe in a God or not–the insertion of Faith (capital F) doesn’t seem to make any difference other than to give certain individuals or groups a tool with which to beat up on people identified as “outside” the prefered group. It all comes down to behavior modification from an authority presumably unassailable by ordinary human means–i.e. God. (Can’t put God on the witness stand, can’t indict him, or issue a subpoena–can’t, in fact, put questions directly at all.)
One can ask questions of the universe, and one can get answers back. It’s called science and over time we have, through experience, built up a convincing argument that the universe works This Way, not That Way. True, we take it on faith largely, but it;s the kind of faith that we have always used–faith based on evidence, that, given X, then Y. It’s the kind of faith that allows, furthermore, for the possibility of being wrong. Such faith need never vanish, and it will not, properly applied, be an impediment. Asserting that the Godless have no faith–or that, in fact, they have faith, which they deny is faith, as evidence that (because they have faith) there is a God of some kind instilling it–is a false syllogism, and a red herring. It’s beside the point.
The argument is over whether those fairies opening the flowers are real. We can all, Theist and Atheist, have faith that the flowers will open in the spring.
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