Spring Break
OP-ED: Faith is the basis for our humanity
by Joel Todoroff
Op-Ed | 2/5/08
Posted online at 1:59 AM EST on 2/5/08
Let's assume one had two religious friends who claimed to be in love. One could ask how they knew they were in love, how they could prove it. One could even argue that if love were to exist, it couldn't be what they were experiencing, because the concept of love is most often manifest in the physical interaction not undertaken by these two individuals. All of those would be somewhat asinine arguments that few, if any, would make.
Yet faith in God and a sense of spirituality seem to be quite similar to love. They are things that people claim to know in a manner deeper than reason, things that fulfill an emotional need and things around that people order their lives. Granted, they hold no physical qualities that can be measured in scientific units, no real quantitative units and, some would argue, very little reasoning.
I have always been a bit surprised by those who try to talk people out of faith; it seems like trying to talk people out of love. However, I am just as surprised by those who say faith is somehow bad. First, I am not sure that people can claim any concept of good or bad without there being some starting axiom, an axiom those people take on faith.
If the world has no deity or higher power, where did the concept of good or bad come from? The simple answer is usually biology, which seems problematic. One must accept on faith not only the truth of this position, but more importantly of its being a proscriptive rather than descriptive claim. So what if evolution led to social mores against killing? How does that tell me what I ought to do?
The argument that faith has been disastrous to humanity seems dubious to me. Looking through the annals of human history, there is no doubt that faith has been an excuse for many bad actions, but there is no alternative history of humanity without faith. A community living in a valley may complain about the aesthetics of an ugly dam, but removing that dam isn't necessarily the solution to the community's problems-in fact, removal may compound problems rather than alleviate them.
Yet faith in God and a sense of spirituality seem to be quite similar to love. They are things that people claim to know in a manner deeper than reason, things that fulfill an emotional need and things around that people order their lives. Granted, they hold no physical qualities that can be measured in scientific units, no real quantitative units and, some would argue, very little reasoning.
I have always been a bit surprised by those who try to talk people out of faith; it seems like trying to talk people out of love. However, I am just as surprised by those who say faith is somehow bad. First, I am not sure that people can claim any concept of good or bad without there being some starting axiom, an axiom those people take on faith.
If the world has no deity or higher power, where did the concept of good or bad come from? The simple answer is usually biology, which seems problematic. One must accept on faith not only the truth of this position, but more importantly of its being a proscriptive rather than descriptive claim. So what if evolution led to social mores against killing? How does that tell me what I ought to do?
The argument that faith has been disastrous to humanity seems dubious to me. Looking through the annals of human history, there is no doubt that faith has been an excuse for many bad actions, but there is no alternative history of humanity without faith. A community living in a valley may complain about the aesthetics of an ugly dam, but removing that dam isn't necessarily the solution to the community's problems-in fact, removal may compound problems rather than alleviate them.
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