Faith and Human Inventions

A few years back, my buddy Mike was taking a plane to the Philippines, and as I was dropping him off at the airport he asked me to pray for his flight.
I told him, “Dude. You asked me like fifty-million times to do that. Take it easy. You’re going to be alright. Just trust.”
To which Mike replied, “No, no. I trust in God. I just don’t trust in that godforsaken plane! It’s that damn turbulence that makes me crazy. Just please pray for a smooth flight, please!”
He had a smooth flight to and fro. What I noticed was that most people tend to express their distrust in the existence of God but, almost comically, they trust human inventions much less.
No one needs to be taught about death or life. They are ends and beginnings we know very well of. We know that flowers end in withering, and flowers begin by blossoming. Death scares us, so we fight it. We defame it then combat it with medicine, surgery, stem cells, with rapacious disdain. But it overtakes us eventually because humanity is not strong enough to kill death. We aren’t strong enough because death is a firmly fixed law in our realm of existence.
We might, however, be able to defy it every so often as a pilot defies gravity for a time. As a matter of fact, in a matter of time we’ll probably be able to take people, preserve them in their live and pristine states ‘forever’ in machines that will cryogenically ‘freeze’ them. ‘Forever’, assuming there are still humans who will operate such machines for the rest of eternity; because if people are not around to run such machines, then the people inside the machines might as well be dead. If we programmed robots to do such work, we still might as well be dead for we live in dreams only to awaken again into death. And if we insist that all people should live all the time forever, beware that overpopulation, food shortage, lack of precious commodities and so on will undoubtedly lead to murder on a gruesome and prodigious scale. In short, such is the human dilemma. The law of death is such a law that if one was to defy it to give eternal life to all people at once, it would turn us on our heads and kill us all.
Humans possess this mysterious obsession with control. We strive to make our works perfect though we are fraught with imperfection; and deep within we know fully that humanity will never achieve it in our realm. As impossible as it is for every stone to turn itself into a perfect sphere forever, so it is impossible for us all to be perfect at once eternally (by our own power or science).
Therefore, science brings just as little closure for us as it claims religion does. Atheists claim that their empirical truths are light to the ‘superstitious’, but when we consider hypothetical situations such as the aforementioned defying of death, it is clear that atheism pulls itself into the same impasse it plans to decry religion with. After all, it is itself a religion.
If this is true – that traditional religion and atheism are both in direct conflict about truth – then we must ask a new question. The question I posit is what is the main difference that is also the main commonality between atheism and theism (particularly monotheism)? I believe knowing the answer to this question will bring our debates where they should be. But before we answer, let’s talk about the exponents of skepticism.
Christopher Hitchens, the author of the best-selling book, God is not Great, talks about faith with Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and states that it (faith) is the most overrated virtue, immediately expressing his desire for people to no longer respect imagination. His rationale, in the interview, for his stance on faith is basically that religious people live disgustingly staid and austere lives. He alludes to wine and food as would some gluttonous, wino sloth – vices which are not only frowned upon by all religions but also by all people groups in the traditional world. Hitchens also sees religion as an evil that is the cause of war and oppression in the world.
Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, in a debate with Alister McGrath (a Christian who was once an atheist), states that he isn’t concerned with how good real Christians are. He is concerned about truth. He says that it is ridiculous for people to trust in things they cannot prove empirically or test.
Soren Kierkegaard, the first existentialist, in his celebrated book, Fear and Trembling tackles the nature that is first, debated and second, shared between both theists and atheists: faith. To Kierkegaard, faith is “rationally unintelligible” – it is not something we can rationally understand. In regard to Abraham the ‘father of faith’ he writes, “Abraham was greater than all, great by reason of his power whose strength is impotence, great by reason of his wisdom whose secret is foolishness, great by reason of the love which is hatred of oneself.” He calls Abraham’s faith “divine madness” because it is a virtue nobody truly understands. It is something so contradictory to the rational being but so necessary in all we seek to be. This is what I mean when I suggested that even atheists need faith. In fact, they need a great amount of trust in the things they do because at the end of the day they’re still unsure.
In short, the mystery of faith is not exclusive to religions that believe in God but is ubiquitous, permeating every cranny of our imperfect world.
Jesus Christ reveals some things of the mystery of faith in the New Testament: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you" (Mt 17:20).
The good quality of faith has been tested and proven throughout Jewish history: “I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies” (Heb 11:32-34).
If Hitchens and Dawkins think that atheism and science will have better answers for the world’s troubles than will theistic religion, then they are speaking only on behalf of a small minority who have innovated new and unnatural ways in which to implement community, justice, and love.
My experience is that most innovators and proprietors of ‘truth’, in their pursuit of finding a counter-balance to faith, tend to take an issue to its opposite extreme. And at that end they then move to take a newly dogmatic stance to state their point to ‘educate’ kids, and definitely, whenever possible, to make a profit.