This post is NOT about religious faith.
What is faith?
Some suggestions: Complete trust and or confidence in something or someone or/and a strong belief in a "higher power"/GOD/the unknowable/etc. and/or belief based on an inner "assurance" more so than what is commonly termed "proof" or facts.
A person may have faith in a football team, his/her abilities, the future, technology, God, progress, Science, and so on.
Often we use the term believe; I believe in love, I believe in the law, I believe in equality, et cetera which leads me to wonder if faith is possible without belief, or belief without faith.
Belief, trust, faith, and hope often seem to mingle, one substituting for the other.
To have faith in something can have religious underpinnings but not necessarily so, and this post is not about religious faith, rather faith in general.....as a choice, as an attitude, as an outlook on life.
When I looked up a number of definitions of the word "faith", I came across variants of : "belief not based on proof"
Is there faith/belief based on proof?
Isn't that just plain ol' knowing?
Is not having faith in something, or believing in something, the very antonym of knowing? Like "seeing" something as actual although there is no physical/factual evidence for it?
Let me ask you; what is your motto?: Believing is seeing, or I believe it when I see it?
Now here's an interesting aspect of faith and believing; it seems to be about the future, not so much the past or the present.
For some of us faith is an enemy of reason, the absence of reason, something for the feeble and weak-minded, something a rational and reasonable person excludes in favour of a scientific approach, put bluntly: faith is just imagination, a crutch.
Another approach.
Reasonable expectation? We expect. We expect the sun and the moon, gravity and the rotation of earth to behave according to our calculations.
We have used logic and reason to make an uncertain and mysterious universe into an assortment of algorithms and predictable mathematical equations. As our knowledge of "everything" expands, mystery shrinks. Nothing mysterious about love; it's just a brain-thing, nothing mysterious about the brain, its just a neurology-thing, nothing mysterious about
death, its just an end-thing. Nothing mysterious about faith, its just an imagination-thing.
In general, a number of us take a lot on "face-value"; we expect certain predictable outcomes. In the olden days, we may have said a few prayers to the Sun God or some such to reassure ourselves of a good crop, today we study weather maps. In the olden days we may have looked at the heavens in awe, today we study astronomical charts.
So, in today's world, does anybody really need faith?
Will there be a time when we "know" everything, and if so, will faith be superfluous?
People buy lottery tickets. The statistics for winning the lottery is minimal, yet knowing this, we still buy tickets.
So what if its 1/6.000.000? Although the possibility of winning is very slim, there is a sliver of possibility and that possibility, offers faith.(Why else buy a ticket?)
We have children although knowing of all the possibilities for things going wrong, we fall in love although statistics are appalling in the sense of having happy and long lasting relationships. We buy stocks and shares, although the prices fluctuate constantly, we drive cars although there are thousands of fatalities in traffic daily across the globe, some of us go to church, synagogue, temple, etc. although Nietzsche and many others have told us that God is dead,.......Actually, come to think of it.........we do a lot of things that require certain amounts of faith.
Or is that "reasonable expectations"?
If you invite someone over for a meal, do you expect him/her to show up, or do you have faith that he/she will?
If someone you love tells you he/she loves you, do you expect him/her to be telling the truth, or do you have faith that he/she is?
Expectation, reasonable or not, in my opinion seem to have a certain "ownership" quality to it, like there is a hidden "therefore" in the word. ( "This is the data and therefore I expect this outcome". On the other hand, when we buy a lottery ticket, we don't expect to win, but we hope we will.)
Is it possible that the core of faith is hope?
And rather than "therefore" hidden in the word "expect", the word hidden in faith is "hoped-for"?
"I expect you to..." or "I have faith in you" ring very different bells.
Do we really need faith?
Let me answer with another question; can mankind survive without it?
Although "knowing" offers a sense of safety, security, and predictability, is it conducive to innovation, inspiration, exploration, investigation, imagination, creation, cooperation, admiration, observation?
Faith, is seeing the possibility of walking on the moon while standing firmly on earth.
"Faith is not something to grasp, it is something to grow into". (Gandhi)
"Faith is taking the first steps although you don't see the whole staircase".
(Martin Luther King Jr.)
"Faith is reason grown courageous." (Sherwood Eddy)
"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."
(St. Thomas Aquinas)
"Faith is believing that the outcome will be what it should be, no matter what it is." (Colette Baron-Reid)
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