Faith in what?

Should one meet that dogged naturalist,
who claims also to be a factualist,
take heed to what they saith,
and note how they have faith,
in things to which the truth is partial,
and to how with all their strength they marshal,
conclusions in which they have no room,
restricted by the things they assume.

Note how even the simplest of thinkers,
will presume (in philosophy he tinkers),
in things beyond his full understanding,
the grounds in which he has no landing.
Even so that enigmatic specialist,
who claims never to have merely missed,
that point of dissenting view,
or accept that he never knew,
that belief is what drives us to discover more,
and that facts alone can never reveal the core,
of who we are and why we're here and what we have to do
and how our very hearts and minds belong to you know who.

It doesn't matter who you are, or what your upbringing or environment is, there seems to me to be an almost universal truth that has applied to virtually everyone I have met. That is, that the power of a person's belief will usually overpower an argument that is contrary to it. Very few people are completely and utterly impartial in their understanding an conclusions in this world.

Let me give you an example. My wife works with some people that demonstrate a classic case in this respect. One of the dogmatically held beliefs, held mostly by the overweight people at her work, is that some people are just lucky with their weight, and if you are unlucky then there is nothing you can do about it. Perhaps it has something to do with metabolism or thyroid they might argue, but nonetheless some people are lucky and others aren't. Apparently my wife falls into the former category. The fact that she has maintained a good figure in their eyes is because she is lucky, or she finds weight control easy or any number of emotional reasons. They are always surprised at how little she eats at work and say that no-one could survive on that little amount of food, and that she must be eating on the sly.

Perhaps they think she eats healthy meals for show! Then they complain about how lucky she is that she has a good figure. They say she is "small-boned", which she isn't. They say that she has hereditary or genetic advantage, which she doesn't. In fact almost all of her relatives are overweight to some degree, some excessively so. They say she mustn't get hungry, but she does. Any number of weird an irrational argument will spout forth from their lips in spite of the evidence because they already believe that a persons weight has to do with the luck of the draw in life.

I think that one of the most frustrating and counter-productive characteristics that a person could have is to be closed-minded with regard to what they believe, especially when they hold such strong beliefs about topics they only partially understand, or even have no knowledge about.

The truth is that people believe what they do, in most circumstances, because they want to believe it. For the overweight people, it is more comforting to believe that there is some divine injustice in the world that makes some people overweight and others to have a healthy body. The more difficult to accept truth is that they are responsible for their own weight control. Complaining about a persons lucky disposition to be thin while eating a hamburger, two donuts, a meat pie and drinking a litre of Coke is a clear case of belief overpowering the logical truth.

People don't believe in God because they don't want to. Who wants to believe in a God who has ultimate power over our eternal destiny and will judge us according to our actions? Who wants to believe in a God who places expectations on our lives that are hard to live up to and will require us to give up some things that we would like to keep? Who wants to believe in a God who wants us to submit to His rule in our lives and lays out a path of ridicule and persecution before us?

But that is not the most important question. The prime query of importance is not whether God is a desirable concept but whether or not it is true that God exists.
People will go to extraordinary lengths to rationalise away the need for God because His existence threatens our autonomy. They will earnestly seek the evidence to support what they already believe, and desperately try to turn around the facts that don't.

Every person has faith. It is the object of the faith that varies. To some it is science, or the ability of man to persevere and overcome. To others it is an omnipotent being who has a master plan. To yet others it is the self or perhaps the pantheistic all. To those who don't believe in faith, you simply just need to examine your daily life. By getting up when your alarm sounds you are exercising faith in the alarm clock (or the designers and builders of it) that it is working correctly. You get in your car as you leave for work and you have faith in the engineers and manufacturers and automotive governing bodies that your vehicle is safe (perhaps also your mechanic). Even the act of sitting on a chair is an act of faith because you are trusting in the ability of the designer and manufacturer of that chair that it will hold your weight. Now people may say that it is a proven thing rather than faith. For instance, we look at a chair and we see that it looks very similar to many other chairs that we have sat on before and they all held our weight, so logically this chair should conform to this idea and also support us. However, this particular chair may look similar but be different that others so there is still a degree of faith, however small, that is needed. In fact, without faith, we would not be able to get anything done in life. We simply cannot understand the complex theories behind everything that we use in life so we have to trust in those who have the expertise. Imagine not accepting a doctors diagnosis until you could prove it from first principles. The 6 years of study involved (assuming you have the academic ability) just to verify the diagnosis is absurd. The untreated illness may have killed us by that time. No, we have to trust in people directly and indirectly, and things or concepts in the abstract sense at least.

Science was born out of faith. Without faith that the universe has some sort of order to it, we would never have discovered it. Many people don't realise that the great fathers of modern science all discovered amazing things because they believed it was there to be discovered, and they had a world view that accommodated the vast possibilities. A universe that was designed by a Creator, must have a logical design. That structure and order must be evident in the things of the world and it must be possible to discover them. Edison didn't give up after a few tries when attempting to make a light bulb. He continued with thousands of different materials because he believed that he would eventually find the right one. Faith in a solution was his ally. It was possible of course that he would be wrong, in which case his time would have been completely wasted and we would not have the incandescent light bulb today. The point of most importance is choosing an object of your faith that is to the best of your knowledge trustworthy and reliable and have your beliefs flow out of that. Then having the flexibilty to modify those beliefs when proven otherwise.

Big bang theorists and macro evolutionist have struggled through experiment after experiment, and setback after setback, to try and prove conclusively their theories, and every step of the way they come up with weirder and more implausible explanations because they hold dogmatically to their belief, despite other evidence. Very few people are true authentic scientists, and when I discover them I have a great deal of respect for them. Professor Paul Davies is one of them, and he also criticises other pseudo-scientists who popularise unproven theories as though they were ultimate and proven truth. He is by no means a theist, but he is wise enough to recognise that our theories about origins are just that: theories. They are not laws and they are definitely not infallible. In fact there are an abundance of flaws in most of the current popular theories. He recognises that there has to be some deeper underpinning to the universe. A power or inevitability that is simply not explained through materialistic philosophy.

Ultimately we need to accept that as human beings we simply do not act as purely rational and logical creatures. We believe what we decide to believe for what ever reason that might be, and then we try to squeeze the facts in to support our belief while brushing aside those facts that contradict our views.

Only when we recognise this, will we be able to break through our psychological and emotional limitations, and then begin to see real truth for what it is and accept the consequences and logical outworkings of it without prejudice.