Thoughts on Faith

Faith. It's a word that's trumpeted by almost all religions. They say, "you just have to have faith". Do I? Why?

Here's something I don't get about faith. I think, most of the time, the word faith is used interchangeably with hope or desire. "I have faith that my cancer will be cured" translates to "I hope my cancer will be cured". "I have faith that so and so will do the right thing" translates to "I hope so and so will do the right thing". Most of us though, at least those of us who want what we're having faith in/hoping for to happen, don't just have faith; we do something about it! Most of those of us who are unfortunate enough to have cancer don't just have faith it will go away, we go to the doctor. Most of those of us who have a child that is turning to drugs don't just have faith that the addiction will go away, we intervene to try and get them to clean up their life. Some people might say that they have faith that the doctor will be able to cure their cancer or they have faith that intervening in their child's drug addiction will save them. But at this point, it's really not faith. You're taking an action that you know will statistically result in a better outcome. When your faith or hope becomes action, I think it ceases to be faith anymore and becomes playing the odds. I'm sorry, but pure faith just doesn't work. Ask any parent that's lost a child to a curable illness because they decided to have faith that God would heal them instead of taking them to the doctor and saving their life (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8180116.stm). Relying on faith alone, in God or anything else, without action is a worthless gesture. To get the results that you want, you need to play the odds and perform actions that give you the best statistical advantage. This to me is just common sense.

Another thing I don't get about faith is that requiring followers of a religion to have faith without any objective evidence puts all religions on an equal playing field. Think about it. All religions are trying to get people to follow them with no objective evidence. If all you have to go on is faith, then how is one religion any more convincing than the other? Yet, this doesn't stop any follower of a religion from claiming that they've found the one true religion. It's also strange that religion is one of the only things in the world people are just willing to have faith on. You wouldn't just have faith that the suspicious person claiming to be a police officer to get into your house is a police officer, you would ask for identification or verify with the police station that that person is, indeed who they say they are. We wouldn't let this suspicious stranger into our house without verification, yet everyday billions of people let religion into their homes on pure faith, with no object evidence at all. And while the suspicious "police man" may only rob you or kill you, the effects of not verifying and believing religious claims can be far more damaging including mass genocide and the poisoning of the minds of endless generations.

I think people need to question supposed truths more and rely more on action than faith.