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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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.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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