No matter what it is you believe in, some form of faith is at the root

By David McElroy · April 8, 2012

For hundreds of millions of Christians around the world, today is Easter. It’s a day when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, which is central to the Christian faith. For many other people, it’s just a time to feel superior to religious people — on the assumption that religious people live by faith and the atheist world lives by “reality.” I’d like to suggest that faith is at the root of what everyone believes.

Faith means having a belief in something that you can’t prove with certainty. There’s no question that much of religious belief is completely based on faith. But what about the rest of life? What about all the other things that you accept as true, but which you couldn’t prove if your life depended on it?

On a mundane level, you have faith in a lot of things that you can’t prove. Have you been to Moscow? Or to the North Pole? Or to Cairo? Most of us haven’t been to those places, yet we believe in them, because we’ve seen pictures and read stories and heard experiences from other. We believe the evidence is strong that they exist, enough so that we wouldn’t question their existence.

You believe in atoms and various sub-atomic particles, even if you don’t have a clue what they really are. You can’t see them. You don’t really understand them. But you were taught in science class that they were the building blocks of all matter, so you believe. Can you prove it? No, you can’t. You just have faith that the people who should know something about this really do.

You can’t even prove that the world around you exists. You believe you’re reading an article on a computer or phone right now. You believe that there’s a world of billions of other people with their own individual lives. You believe you live on a complex ecosystem called Earth. You believe those things because you see them and hear them. You believe your senses. But how do you know your senses are real? How do you know that anything exists? How do you know that this world isn’t just an illusion created inside your own mind? How do you know that you’re not the only consciousness that exists — and you’ve made up everything else?

In all of these cases, you can’t prove anything other than your own consciousness, but you accept various things I’ve listed here as fact. Why? Because the evidence is strong enough, in your judgement. Or you’ve experienced enough of something for it to seem reasonable to accept your experiences as real. Whether you like it or not, those things you are accepting as true are the things you accept on faith.

We can — and do — disagree about what’s reasonable to have faith in. For example, I don’t find what Muslims believe credible. I don’t find what Hindus believe believable. And I don’t find what Mormons believe to be reasonable. In the same way, those groups don’t accept my faith in the central points of Christian salvation. And those who are atheists or agnostics don’t accept what any of us believe. To them, we’re all crazy to accept any of it.

So we can expect to disagree about what to have faith in. Your faith might be in the supremacy of science or the logic of your particular brand of philosophy. But just because you have an internally consistent system, that doesn’t mean it’s proven. It merely means that you’ve built a logical house on a foundation of assumptions. The assumptions that lie at the root of your system are the things you have faith in.

For me, I’ve experienced what I believe to be God’s presence. I can’t prove it to you. I don’t even have any desire to prove it. The only thing I want to do is to tell you what I believe and what I’ve experienced — in the best way I can communicate it. I can bear witness to what I’ve experienced. I can tell you what I believe in my heart to be true. But I can’t prove it. I believe that only God gives faith. I also believe that if I hadn’t experienced God and hadn’t been given this faith, I’d be right there with you making fun of it.

I don’t really see any reason for atheists and Christians to be in conflict. I don’t see why we can’t agree to disagree. Non-believers haven’t experienced something that I know is real, so it seems very reasonable to me that they don’t believe. I’d like them to experience what I have, but that only happens through faith — and I can’t give that to anyone.

We all have our faith in something. For some, their faith might be in UFOs. For others, their faith is in chemtrails or Bigfoot. For others, their faith is in biochemistry or the writings of Ayn Rand. For me, I know what I have my faith in. The God I know is much more personal and real to me than your philosophy is to you.

We differ radically in what we believe in, but it’s very clear that we all have faith in something.

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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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