I kinda want to talk about faith as part of my Difficult Concepts series (first there was innocence, now faith, and I am assuming the last will be nostalgia). A very interesting podcast got me on the subject and I feel like I want to explore my relationship with the concept.

But I am also halfway through a very excellent documentary about the subject of hell and the whole heaven and hell thing has always fascinated me, so I kind of want to talk about that, too.

Well, I will start off with faith, and see where that goes. Hell can wait.

I have absolutely no connection to the concept of faith, or at the very least, Faith. I was raised without religion of any sort and so I have never been called upon to have or demonstrate faith.

Also, I have a keen and insightful mind and was taught at an early age that I can find the answers myself. And for the most part, I can. My worldview is that of scientific materialism and I find that quite sufficient to answer any question about the world around me and the people in it.

So not was I never introduced to the concept of faith, I have found it entirely unnecessary. I do not have unanswered questions that only faith and religion can answer. Science and my own understanding of human nature suffice.

And from that perspective, religious faith seems like a strange idea indeed. I stand completely outside religion and so the whole thing seems kind of ridiculous to me. I know why people have faith, develop faith, need faith, and so on. I am not going to sit here and claim the whole thing is incomprehensible to me, like I am daring someone to try to explain it.

But to me, the whole kit and kaboodle of faith is equally strange and foreign. Religious conflict seems utterly futile if you see it, as I do, as children arguing about who has the biggest imaginary friend. Or for that matter, fans arguing over whether Han shot first.

Either way, you are talking about made up stories with no real world consequences. Seems to me that everyone could just leave everyone else to believe whatever they like and agree to disagree. Then we could all get along and the world would be a happier and nicer place.

And isn’t that what we all want?

But no, because of the nature of the human mind and its instinct to combine its worldview with the worldview of other human minds, we feel like it is not enough simply to disagree with someone, we must wipe the filthy heresy from their lying minds.

Brother, if you feel your faith is threatened by the mere existence of contradictory thoughts, you have some very deep problems and your faith must be extremely fragile to be so very tender and vulnerable.

So I would have to say that when it comes to religious faith, I feel like I am completely outside it. I have beliefs which I consider spiritual because they have to do with the sort of high ideals for moral and psychological growth and the sort of beliefs about what contributes to well-being and what does not that is normally ascribed to the realm of spirituality.

But I don’t believe in spirits, souls, or any other form of viewing the mind as separate and distinct from the body. I just find that words like spirit, soul, heart, etc are useful metaphors for aspects of the human psyche.

Something exists, and is therefore material (in the loosest sense) and subject to all the laws of the universe, or it does not exist, and therefore is not worth talking about. There is no middle option. The rules of the universe cannot be broken. There is nothing to which some of the rules apply but not the others. Therefore, there is no “supernatural”.

However, this does not mean I dismiss the field of supernatural phenomenon entirely. For one thing, that would be making a rather enormous assumption about one’s knowledge of the universe and I am too strict a logician to allow that.

I can’t claim I know something, such as there is no such thing as ghosts, when I have not examined the question myself. Arguments to so called “common sense” are meaningless. The modern world runs on principles that violated the common sense of the time and seemed like mere fantasies or delusions or wishful thinking.

Furthermore, as a strict materialist, I have to believe that every that happens, including human behaviour, has a material and therefore real cause. To say something is “all in someone’s head” is therefore not to say that it is not real.

Real events cannot have unreal causes.

But for the most part, I view supernatural phenomenon as just that… phenomenon.

For example, all through history, people have thought they had encounters with ghosts. One explanation amongst many as to why this is would be that there really are such a thing as ghosts and that’s what people are encountering. In that world, thinking you have seen a ghost is no weirder than thinking you have seen the sky.

Another view would be that every single person who has ever believed they had encountered a ghost was simpleminded, delusional, or lying, or even all three.

Neither of those answers is sufficient. To me, it is obvious that the truth is somewhere in between. Something, we don’t know what, is causing intelligent, rational, honest people to experience something they can only explain as a ghostly encounter.

What could that possibly be? That’s the question I want answered.

So that takes care of the religious sense of faith. But what about mundane faith? What about faith in people, or institutions, or belief systems, or anything else?

There are a lot of areas which psychologically require faith because it is impossible to ever truly know what is really going on. Does this person truly love me? Will the Army be there for me if I get hurt? Will my faith survive this secular world? Are the decisions I am making now going to fill me with pain and regret later?

When it comes to that kind of faith, I can’t say I have much of that either, much to my detriment. I have never found anything or anyone reliable enough to warrant my faith in them. All my life, I have been on my own, with nobody to rely on when things got bad, and that has denied me the possibility of faith and trust in the world and the people in it.

It is a cold and dangerous life, this faithless world of mine. I wish I had faith. I wish I had trust in things unknown. It would be a great comfort to me to think that I am never truly alone in the world.

But all I have is this sharp-edged mind of mine, and while it can provide me with great insights and enormous understanding, at the end of the day, I am just that lonely boy left alone far too young.

Maybe I have to invent my own faith.

See you tomorrow, folks!