I grew up a staunch atheist in a family where the gods had their own separate room. Ideas and theories bunking the God concept were (still are and always will be) plentily available. I knew plenty of ways to get at you if you were out to prove God’s existence to me. What’s more? I was proud of having thwarted seasoned believers at the game.
Atheism was good training ground for me. It trained my mind in reason and taught me that whether I believe or not, God is something that would haunt my mind always.
But this was not just about God. It was quite some time before I started to see this as being about plain old trust. Believing in myself, my dreams, my vision of life, other people’s opinions and convictions. It was about working in the absence of evidence. About not being trapped by what is considered the very purpose of our existence — knowledge.
The need to know
We work under the assumption that when we are born, we know nothing. That we learn as we grow up and have learnt all there is by the time we are grown-ups. And yet, we conveniently forget that practically all the knowledge we gather in our formative years is based on an act of faith. We are told things and we believe them.
Faith therefore, is a quality we are all born with. It seems to exist in the absence of knowledge. Small wonder then, that we equate faith with ignorance.
Truth is, we never really stop believing. You don’t exactly know how your computer’s keyboard or TV remote functions. But you believe what the techies tell you. You believe advertisements. You believe signboards that tell you “road blocked ahead” and take the suggested alternate routes to your workplace.
Imagine what it would be like if you insisted on knowing everything!
What is the point of knowledge then?
Knowledge is important. But as I said, it has no independent existence. In my eyes, knowledge is an aid to faith. Jumping off a cliff believing you can fly is an act of pure faith (or pure stupidity, depending on your perspective). But if you have flown before, it helps you believe that you can do it again.
Knowledge is good to have. But it is not indispensable. Nor is it opposed to or superior to faith. It complements faith. In fact, you need faith to know. The most reliable encyclopedia will serve you no purpose if you don’t believe what it says.
Knowledge can be incomplete or fragmented (it often is). Faith can only ever be absolute. There is no middle path for the believer. Doubt, fear, and misery don’t walk alongside faith. If you truly believe in something (God for example), then there can be no doubt and hence no fear. If you are in doubt, you obviously don’t believe. Think about it. (I have written about this before)
Faith is a vastly superior quality than knowledge. It does not cripple. It is not a handicap. Those who believe can afford the ultimate freedom — fearlessness.
So we can believe whatever we want?
Yes. You probably already do that. You wouldn’t hear a word against your only son, would you? Even though your neighbours may know of him having broken into a local shop. Similarly, you believe in what your favourite charismatic politician says without giving a tweet about popular opinion.
Sometimes, it so happens that you want to believe something or someone, but simply can’t. With all due respect, it is NOT SO. If you want to believe, you can. You don’t have to learn faith. You were born with it, remember? I like Richard Bach‘s way of putting it in his book Illusions:
“Humbug on faith. Takes zero faith. What it takes is imagination…
Two thousand years ago, five thousand, they didn’t have a word for imagination, and faith was the best they could come up with for a pretty solemn bunch of followers.
Consider this. There are millions of melodies, all made of just seven musical notes. The notes you can know, but you need to imagine the melodies in order to be able to make them.
You may want to check out this civilization that is not founded on faith. Somewhere in south east Asia.
Can u please tell me how does one know that one is movin by faith, or let me put it this way, is there any way to know that u subconciously are scriptin ur own life ….. or is it an absolute (GOD).
Are we termin that which is beyond us as GOD ?? or worse …are we in control – in this particular case we would be lost (jesus said smthin like – wthout me u wd be lost).
So let us assume that the reason for existence is LOVE and try to understand it through our life… then again love is beyond us …= GOD
U know what, here goes faith: Love = GOD = Jesus … Wow thx for the help.
With you all the way Jose. In answer to your question, let me use your own Jesus = Love rationale.
I can never tell you WHAT love feels like. Only you can know if what you feel is love or not. God, like love, is a state of being.
Secondly, beyond and within are measures of distance (so to speak). To explain God using those words would be like trying to smell the colour red or see sweetness. Your sub-conscious and the absolute are not different things. They are part of each other.
“… practically all the knowledge we gather in our formative years is based on an act of faith. We are told things and we believe them.”
“Faith therefore, is a quality we are all born with.” You have not thought over this thoroughly. Kids’ faith in their parents or teachers is CULTIVATED in extremely controlled and protective conditions.
As for tv remotes and keyboards. Trust in them comes from experience. And such trust is very different from faith. As kids we all broke tv remotes and other things despite being told by everyone that it will stop working or that the tv will stop working if we bang it. We don’t accept it easily. We bang things, we break things, we are scolded by parents for doing it (which is conditioning), we cry, we forget, we bang and break more things until we learn. Knowledge can be be crudely said to be beliefs based on experience. So, at least in the case of tv remotes we function based more on knowledge rather than faith. You need to analyze things better my friend.
“The most reliable encyclopedia will serve you no purpose if you don’t believe what it says.”
Lets consider the newspapers or tv news channels. Do you take in all that they say at face value? Initially you might have. But over time you gain experience by observing which news pieces are informative which are not, which are serving the vested interests of a political party or of the news organization.
Lets take Wikipedia itself. It is one of the biggest encyclopedias today. It is reliable in most cases. But in certain issues, specially those dealing with history or politics, wikipedia articles need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Simple faith that wikipedia is reliable or not does not let you distinguish between the articles you can trust and those which you cannot. It comes through experience. In other words knowledge.
“Faith is a vastly superior quality than knowledge.” Flawed arguments lead to flawed conclusions.
“Those who believe can afford the ultimate freedom — fearlessness.” Only those beliefs that significant number of people believe in. If you disagree try believing that you are a cannibal and start eating the people around you. After all you say “If you want to believe, you can.”
“But if you have flown before, it helps you believe that you can do it again.” You seem to mistake experience for faith again and again.
“Faith is a vastly superior quality than knowledge. It does not cripple. It is not a handicap.” In some ways yes. But before I tell you the caveats, I would like to know specifically how you think knowledge is crippling and a handicap.
@P – I just wrote a long reply and deleted it. It is pointless. Your whole strategy against my ideas seems to be based on words. You pick one word to replace one of mine and say “this is right, yours is not”.
You say I have confused faith with experience. I have not. You have experience of yesterday, but you have not experienced tomorrow. You believe tomorrow will be like yesterday. It’s still faith.
As I have said before, people believe what they want to. You are missing the whole point of my posts. It’s okay if you don’t want to believe. I am fine with it. Do what makes you happy. I just think I am wasting my time with you. Good luck!
Buddhism you mean? Of course it is founded on faith. Faith in the teachings of Buddha.