Problem with faith, in a nutshell

So, here's my problem with faith, in a nutshell. There is absolutely no means for validating a supernatural (hence why we call it faith). All we have access to is material. From all that we can determine, our feelings, choices, and beliefs all have a natural, material basis.

If we presume a supernatural exists that acts on our natural world, then this supernatural power must act on nature through some sort of natural<->supernatural communication channel. The problem with such a communication channel is that there is absolutely no way to validate the authenticity and proper translation of the messages/events. Again, this is a call to faith because the identities, actions, interpretations, and motives of the supernatural powers cannot be known. That is, there is no way to determine if the natural message to the supernatural has been properly delivered and interpreted, nor can we have any validation of if, when, why, or what supernatural-to-natural messages there are. Therefore, miracles (supernatural acts on the natural) either don't happen or if they do, we have no possible way of making sense of the event.

Therefore, since all we have access to is the material, then a belief in God will only raise more questions than it can ever possibly answer. Furthermore, such superstition will only serve to cloud ultimate, truthful discovery.

Accepting faith: A theory on why many believe in Jesus (and not in Leprechauns)

I've taken the definition of faith from Wiktionary as "Mental acceptance of and confidence in a claim as truth without proof supporting the claim." Faith should therefore come with a lot of cognitive dissonance. However, in the lives of believers, this faith is what they hold onto when the pieces don't fit. It's completely counterintuitive and frustratingly irrational to non-believers.

Our vocal atheist commentor, Psiloiordinary, keeps begging the theists to explain what on earth is wrong with Leprechaunism. If you believe in Leprechauns and spot one, just keep your eye on him and let him lead you to his pot of gold. Easy peasy. Why not have faith in Leprechauns?

Psiloiordinary, like most atheists, including myself with examples such as my Fire-breathing gods post, have attempted to use the rational argument for other gods to challenge the theists. The Richard Dawkins quote, "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." (From the essay, "The Great Convergence" p. 150, of the book "The Devil's Chaplain") whimsically tries to do the same thing. However, to the Christian, we're talking apples and oranges with these other religions.

Here's what Christianity says, "You are alive and I am the God of Life (Jeremiah 1:5). I made the world (Genesis 1:1). All that you see is an expression of Me. I Am (Exodus 3:13-15). Believe this and have eternal life, but expect to be persecuted for your beliefs (Matthew 5). Ah, but don't worry, those that persecute you will get theirs in the end (Deuteronomy 30:1-10, Matthew 25:46, etc.). Keep believing and you'll get the prize (Revelation 22:12-14)."

What do we all want? We want to live. We want love. We want justice. We want to know why things are the way they are. Leprechaunism potentially gets you a nice pot o' gold, but you know that even if you spot that little green dwarf, he's going to try and dupe you.

On the other hand, Christianity purports explanations for the origin of life, a purpose for one's life, and even an eternal life. It says God is love and proclaims that we can love more purely as believers. It says justice will be served. It says that behind life's wonderful, mundane, random, and terrible things, there is a God who will reveal all things in time. The only catch is that we have to have faith, but with all of these proclamations, and with the threats if we don't have faith, is believing really that hard?

Christianity has enough answers embedded in it while promising what we want to hear. Am I alive? Check. Is the world too big for my head to deal with so I can deduce that there is a God? Check. Do I feel love? Check. Did that non-Christian (I know by the Darwin Fish on his car) just cut me off? Check. Such continual affirmations provide proof of God's existence and validate the chosen path. What's more, Christianity acknowledges that faith is difficult. It's like HDL fat. It may sound like a bad thing, but really you want to have it! Not only when we are told that faith is par for the course can cognitive dissonance dissipate, but there is also the prediction that one can be persecuted for these beliefs. By generally keeping things prophetic, Christianity outlines expectations so that believers can look for "signs" and find them. In this way, faith not only eliminates cognitive dissonance, but when believers imagine a life without faith, then that, ironically, provides them cognitive dissonance!

Flight of the bumble bee

In my younger days, I remember hearing a sermon about the miracle of the flight of the bumble bee. The story went that according to science, the bumble bee should not be able to fly. It's body weight, flapping frequency, and wing span did not add up to an aerodynamic critter. It was physically impossible. Googling around, it sounds like this is still being preached. Obviously the bumble bee flies. Does God propel this bulbous bug from flower to flower so that gardens grow? How cute God operates to create His aesthetic!

If you look at the video, you'll see that it's the way that the bumble bee flaps its wings that it's able to generate vortex swirls to give it lift. These details were first presented in 1972 by Torkel Weis-Fogh in the paper Energetics of Hovering Flight in Hummingbirds and in Drosophila, and the implication was that several flying insects employ this flutter. Why bumble bee flight still persists as an urban legend is hard to tell, but some people like my childhood pastor seem to relish the idea of scientists not being able to solve everything.

When science cannot provide the answers, especially when scientists are baffled by what everyone can plainly see, the implication is that man's devices are puny in the grand scheme. Therefore, there must be a God behind the observation. It empowers believers to romanticize their stories and beliefs...for a moment.

But what happens when the scientist provides a natural explanation? The hand of God is no longer hand-carrying these bees from flower to flower. They're just doing what bees do to survive, unknowingly pollinating more food for themselves. As I said in my Faith in... post, you have to be prepared for the fallout if you are someday proved wrong.

Looking at our physiology, there are still thousands of basic questions scientists cannot answer. What induces a child to start breathing the second it is born? How do neurons in the embryo navigate the spaghetti of other neurons to find the appropriate target cells to form synapses with? If we're just a bunch of molecules that make up cells, what leads to these molecules feeling pleasure or pain? Science can't explain these miracles...yet.

My faith was built on the romantic notion that the complexities of life were too complicated to have evolved and required a creator. Science proved that notion wrong.

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Now, for another "Flight of the Bumble Bee" that defies science....

Why does faith = redemption?

If I am correctly interpreting my Christian commentors, their faith is a trust in God that is separate from theology. By that I mean "theology" is what someone knows about God (which is obviously subjective). On the other hand, faith is a trust that God is in control, has a plan, is living through the person, and will reveal all things (throughout eternity), when really parts of the theology appear incongruent, incompatible, or haven't yet been pieced together.

By its nature, then, faith should be uncomfortable. This cognitive dissonance pushes the theologian to question, challenge, and find out more about God. Ironically, the more the theologian pushes and seeks, the more complex the deity must become to take into account the newfound complexities of the natural world, including animal behavior. (This is not unlike the recursion of most scientific discoveries that only provoke more questions). It seems the dutiful natural scientist-theist, while making an ever-more complex image of God will perpetually require more and more faith.

For me, a young earth creationist-turned evolutionist, evolution was just too incongruent with any theology I could imagine so it broke my faith. (Perhaps baby steps could have worked, but how you do baby steps on evolution with a YEC, I don't know). Nevertheless, I have to ask, "Why faith?"

In my previous post, it was (somewhat) established that God was not necessary for morality and then my question "What good is God?" was answered as "for redemption."

Why is it that humans, the only rational animals on the planet, the ones that took of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the ones created in the omniscient God's image, what was it about that rationality that separated us from God and why is irrationality the only way to redeem that relationship?

Ecclesiastes book review

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. (Eccl 9:11 ESV)

Ecclesiastes is a difficult book. I found this sermon by Brian Morgan interesting. Here is a quote from it.

By stating that all of life is hebel (meaningless), Qohelet (the author) is not suggesting that all life is “meaningless or insignificant, but that everything is beyond human apprehension and comprehension.” Every time a tragedy occurs, our immediate reaction is to attach “meaning” to the event, as if we know how this finite moment in time will work out in the grand scheme of things. We have a very terrible time living in the tension of “unknowing.” We want rock bottom clarity. And when the event is extremely complex and baffling, we just babble on and on, hoping to land on some thought bordering on significance. But Qohelet explains that when we insist on multiplying our words to bring definition to what we do not know, all we succeed in doing is creating more “smoke” (hebel - “vanity,” “a puff of wind”), adding more contradiction and confusion. “The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?” (6:11 NIV).

In summary, Ecclesiastes seems to state that fortuitous things and shit just happen. We are supposed to plug on, sowing seeds and reaping at appropriate times, but in the end, earthly endeavors don't amount to much. What is important is to simply obey God's commandments and trust that all will be revealed someday.

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Eccl 12:13-14 ESV)

In the end, Ecclesiastes poetically implores us to have blind faith admitting that on the surface of it, life seems pretty random but if we continue to have faith, we will eventually attain reward of an eternal life with meaning. It pushes fear of God's judgment should we not have blind faith. The beautiful writing of Ecclesiastes sugar coats this bitter pill.

Instead, I'll accept the Darwinian view that yes, life is random. Rewards (offspring) do not always go to the swiftest because being swift might come at other expenses (like not being charming or stupid -- either way, the result is not getting the babes). But bad things also happen to good people. It's called dumb luck, and that happens too. I don't have to trust that all will be revealed someday when my little human mind has had a few million years of hand-held tutoring by the Creator to finally be capable of understanding the answer to my question "What the fuck?"

Missing links

As I drive down the road, I have faith that the driver in the opposite lane will hold his course and pose me no threat. That's faith. I have no previous experience with him on the road. I'm just simply assuming that he knows the rules of the road, respects his life, and respects mine.

It takes faith to believe in creation or evolution. The ramifications of either decision are discussed in a previous post. The previous discussion of faith posed it as irrational. Assumptions are not necessarily irrational. While I might have faith that the driver in the other car will not do anything stupid, and while I might have faith in my car and my driving abilities to avoid disaster, it is perhaps more accurate to say that I "assume". I make such an assumption through knowledge and experience. I assume that the other driver wants to live, has passed a driver's test, has a modicum of experience on the road, and no ill will against me. With these assumptions, I forge ahead.

This is how humans live. We continually draw on our memories and assumptions, sometimes pleasantly surprised when we are not correct, and sometimes unpleasantly surprised. In either case, we alter our future assumptions and carve future responses.

So let's substitute "faith in God" or "faith in science" with "assumptions about God" and "assumptions about science".

When we talk about "assumptions about God" we can say generic things like "He has my best interest at heart" and "He has a master plan." If we talk about "assumptions about science", we have to admit scientists are not evil. They are not out to prove God does not exist. Perform this exercise. Go to Pubmed and type "[dp] 2007" for the search term. This selects biomedical articles for the year 2007. Look at the first item. Mine was "Vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) provide co-stimulation in positive selection along with survival of selected thymocytes." Look through the list and you'll get a sense about what scientists do. They deal with minutia, and they do it in a very systematic, empirical way.

Do scientists have faith? No, but they have assumptions. They assume previous results were accurate or inaccurate and they formulate hypotheses to test assumptions. That's what science is. It's not so much the acquisition of knowledge, but the challenge of assumptions.

Challenging an assumption does not have to be confrontational. The hypothesis can be set up as "Assuming X was true, then Y should follow. In this paper, we test Y...." If Y is true, then X is supported implicitly. If it is not, then X may be unsupported implicitly. The ramifications of the results are discussed in the "Discussion" section of most papers. Future research must then explain findings in terms of X and Y. This is science. Call it knowledge, but really it's the quest for a cohesive story. Certainly opinions come into play, but it is data and our interpretations of the data that really constitute the resulting knowledgebase and it is a work in progress.

The beauty about science is that it is testable. A finding can be debunked or supported as more advanced techniques to acquire and analyze data arise. Similarly, theories can be expanded or pigeon-holed. Some competing theories may coexist for some time before evidence either proves one right or can explain how they can be bridged by describing how both are correct under certain conditions.

Evolution is often criticized for its missing links, the lack of transient forms in the fossil record. (See this Scientific American article for common critiques and sensible responses).

What is uncomfortable for the Creationist is the notion that evolutionists can be comfortable without knowing everything. Indeed, there are many "holes" in evolution. We don't know how it all works. Sure there are genetic changes, but how many do you need for a system to be co-opted and take on a new function? What about epigenetic changes? "Fittest" really is ill-defined in "survival of the fittest".

Yet, time and time again, when biology assumes evolution, the pieces fit. In fact, you cannot find one study that refutes it. You can try and throw the complexity argument at it, and I'll hand it right back to you -- many genes that regulate cell division in my body are the same as those in plants. Pop quiz: How many cervical vertebrae does a giraffe have? Seven -- the same as all mammals including whales, pigs, and us primates. You want to know where a lot of our understanding about our own biology comes from? A number of other critters, especially mice. We can create drugs and cures for cancer because we share a same biology (i.e. common ancestor).

Creationists cite that this similarity illustrates a single creator. I especially like this link's mention that if we were dissimilar biochemically, then we couldn't eat our fellow creatures. Was that part of God's original plan?

When you start looking at evolution and see natural progressions, life starts making sense. If you assume a supernatural, you build assumptions riddled with holes because they are fleeting and untestable. What might be real and good for you might be killing somebody else. Don't talk to me about the splinters in evolution until you get the log out of religion.

Want to talk about the lack of finding a missing link? The biggest missing link is God. He's not there!

Faith in...

One definition needs to be made clear. Faith. Wiktionary defines it as "Mental acceptance of and confidence in a claim as truth without proof supporting the claim."

It is often perceived that faith is a good thing. Why? And should I build an ideology around it?

The danger of building anything on faith is that you gotta be prepared for the fallout if you are proved false. Given such proof, you need to accept it and change, live a lie, or have such pronounced faith that the proof, as plausible as it may be, you take as still wrong.

Put into the evolution/creation debate, these are the three options for the believer:javascript:void(0)
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1. Accept the proofs of evolution which mean either modifying your view of God, His plan, and the creation story.
2. Choose to ignore these proofs, keeping your head in the sand, and going about your business.
3. Believe that these evolutionary "proofs" are hogwash and going about your business.

Option number 1 is problematic. It means changing your religion at least partially and this may mean a complete ideological or cultural change including atheism. Option 1 requires the most work for the individual. It is the option I chose and its fallout are the subject of this blog.

Option 2 is the easiest and probably the path most people put themselves on. Joe Public is not so concerned about where we came from. He's probably not too concerned about God's master plan for him either. He's just meandering. If he hears something that makes sense, but it is out of line with what's for dinner, he's just going to go about his business. Simply said, he doesn't really care. If it was a priority, he would not live the lie. He couldn't.

Option 3 is the path most chosen by fundamentalists. Evolution is a challenge to their faith. If they defy it, they increase and validate their faith. This is especially true when they can show these "proofs" are not so "sound". (I put both of these words in quotes to indicate that 'proof' really is a bit squishy, but so are the anti-evolution arguments that indicate that they are not so 'sound').

But how do we interpret these options for the evolutionist? Doesn't it take faith to believe in evolution? If so, aren't the risks greater? If the risks are greater, should I just live the lie? Of course not. Atheists and pastors alike will tell you, "Don't live a lie". Atheists will tell you this simply because living a lie is stupid. Pastors would cite that the Laodecian who does not care and lives the lie will still be damned (Revelation 3:13-15).

So, you should choose Option 1 or 3 because option 2 is chickenshit and we all know it. Now, which option should we choose?

Let's summarize this into a little more binary terms of Best/Worst case scenario for the Creationist/Evolutionist. Worst means the creationist/evolutionist was wrong. Best means the creationist/evolutionist was right.

Worst case scenario-Evolutionist/Atheist: Finds he is wrong and burns in hell forever.
Best case scenario-Evolutionist/Atheist: Not living a lie, but life is random (and meaningless?)

Worst case scenario-Creationist: So what if evolution was right and there is no God. My convictions still helped me enjoy life, love my neighbor, yadda yadda....
Best case scenario-Creationist: You, my son, will have eternal happiness, love, and joy. (Obviously through acceptance of Christ's salvation....)

Hmmm....

This still does not paint a pretty picture for atheism. Let's compound the issue with some tough questions for evolution. "What good is half a wing?" "Where does original thought come from?" "Where does emotion come from?"

I will say that my atheism is largely built around this one thing -- evolution. If evolution does not have answers to these questions, why not let it go, or at very least come up with some balance of God and evolution?

Simple answer: I can't balance them and I'm not going to live a lie.

My world view built around evolution is sound. It's not always pretty, but it makes sense. The world built around a belief in God is inconsistent.