We are told to "have a little faith" and to believe that the universe really cares about us, and that an entity called "God" will, if not cushion our fall, at least mark it -- as in the fall of every sparrow. I have often wondered why such a god would not prevent the fall of the sparrow in the first place, but never mind.
The word "faith" leaks out of the Christian scriptures in a most unfortunate way. Its common English translation is seriously deficient. "Faith" is not a resource meant to make one's life easier or more efficient or, for that matter, happier. "Faith" is really a verb. I won't trouble you with the Greek origin of the word, but it goes to the concept of "trust" -- but in the sense that Ronald Reagan (of all people used it): Trust but verify.
Above all, "faith" does not mean believing anything. "Faith" entails nothing more or less than doing something, having come to trust the data that supports the doing of that thing.
A person who runs into a burning building to save a child is not believing that, because he is doing the heroic thing, God will somehow bring him out unscathed. He runs into the burning building trusting that doing so is the right thing to do -- at least the right thing for him to do, putting no onus on anyone else. He may be seriously injured or even die in the act, and he knows that going in. He has, in a sense, "faith-ed," that is acted on a moral demand he put upon himself. If he emerges unscathed with the child whole and healthy, the only thing it proves is that he did it. It says nothing about how good any God may be.
Our hero, if he believed anything, believed in himself -- that is, trusted that he had the chops to do what he felt he had to do. That's what "faith" is. It is not believing a set of doctrines or the lines of a catechism. The one who describes himself as "losing his or her faith" is saying that he (or she) no longer believes in himself, no longer believes that he can do what he senses the moral or intellectual imperative to do. It does not mean that he has ceased to believe a doctrine spelled out in the catechism of his youth.
What about the "trust but verify" thing? That's where reason is the ruling force. The powers of observation and analysis of what is discerned in the hearing and seeing process of such observations constitute "reason." From the Latin ratio, this word encompasses a great many concepts, among the most important of which are reckoning, accounting, reasoning, judgment and consideration.
The process of reason begins with observation, continues with reckoning the possible importance of what has been discerned, accounting for its relationship to what else has been observed and accounted for. It continues with a judgment -- however appropriately tentative -- about its overall importance in the greater scheme of things and finally the consideration of how the observation should be treated and allowed to change the significance of established knowledge.
Such observation must be of data that is objectively encountered and thus can be observed by others. This rules out any a priori statements based on nothing but what someone claims to be true merely on the basis of its declaration. Accepting such a priori statements as bases upon which to make decisions becomes a treacherous road down which to travel.
Example: Too many men and women who have been elected to state legislatures and Congress, often aided by a flood of dollars used to tell favorable lies about them and unfavorable ones about their opponents, tend to speak in a priori terms. Those paid to oppose laws that would further cleaner air and water by cutting fossil fuels emissions have been filled by the Religious Right with unsupportable certitudes and will be glad to tell you that we have nothing to worry about because God is good and gave human beings dominion over the Earth, so we can't be doing anything that's really wrong.
Now there's an a priori statement based on no observable or testable data. And I don't need to tell you how dangerous swallowing such a dose as that can be. By such paid politicians, we are being sold down the river to enrich the oil and gas interests because ... you just got to have a little faith. Really?
Probably the most unfairly maligned personage in the New Testament is a fellow known as "Thomas" but nowhere in the text as "doubting" Thomas. His besetting sin was said to have been skepticism.
The story is, of course, apocryphal, but Thomas is portrayed as refusing to believe that Jesus was alive after having died. In one of the more offensive biblical texts, the gospel writer bore down hard on Thomas for his refusal and was not hesitant to embarrass and debase him. That was intended to teach a lesson to those who decline to believe without facts and their clear explanation at hand. Whoever Thomas was imagined to have been, he would have fit in well with Francis Bacon or Galileo or Charles Darwin, each of whom, when confronted with the data that turned up in their inquiries and observations, ended up doubting so-called "common wisdom."
The late philosopher Richard Rorty developed the theory of what he called "contingency," which requires a permanent hesitation about declaring what any word or phrase or clause means in any absolute way. Those things we write and say and publish and use as determining factors in decision-making are all "contingent," Rorty said, upon what more may be found out and figured out as time goes by.
Therefore, never underestimate the true believer. He is given to exclusion and pre-emption in his missionary determination to impose his credo uninvited. Those who muster the courage to doubt tend to stay with the question rather than bolt for the answer. Society's safety valve is the willingness to doubt. Answers that emerge from what is called faith and are acted upon in belief unalloyed by the rational considerations of contingency are inherently dangerous.
It's all in the history books -- those tomes that hold up a mirror to the face of humanity too often, however, in vain.
