The Reason of Faith, or, EAT IT, SAM HARRIS!

Not too long ago, there emerged a sect of the whole religious sha-bang which, in a previous blog I wrote, I called Evangelical Atheism. I've been thinking a lot about this concept lately, and feel the need to deposit a few thoughts on the matter. I should note here that I don't mean to further entrench the ongoing battle between religious and non-religious people, but all I can say is this: they fired the first shot. All will be explained.

I was surprised recently to learn that the Hebrew language, in which the Holy Bible was originally written in its scattered form, has no word for faith, unlike Greek, from which most modern Bibles are derived. The Greek faith is the one we're familiar with today - as the most cynical critics may put it, this faith is the belief in something that defies reason and which has no basis but in superstition. This particular faith is the one that the Evangelical Atheist Sam Harris was writing in his book The End of Faith and the "is anybody still paying attention to me?" paper-thin Letter to a Christian Nation. See, Sam Harris took the default "Science Guy" position of railing against faith based on his belief that science is the only way to know anything about the world - that if something can't be produced in a laboratory, it's superstition. So, in his logic (however full of holes it may be) something is not worth believing in unless it can be proven empirically (more on this later.)

Anyway, so the Hebrew language has no word for faith - and the closest terminology we have for the word we used in the Bible is actually faithfulness. It's funny how much difference a few letters make, isn't it? Suddenly, we have a great shift in vocabulary. We no longer have faith in God, we are faithful to Him. When you really study the difference here, it becomes terribly evident (however inconvenient to critics) that the Christian faith is not one of blind acceptance of superstition and assumed belief in God, but a penetrating belief in God and an assumed faithfulness to Him.

Evangelicals like Sam Harris like to toss around the "science" word as if it meant anything - but what does this word mean, this new holy process by which all things can be made known? Why do we treat it with such reverence? Why, when someone says "I believe in science" are we never allowed to criticize, to use our reason, to challenge such a view? I believe very strongly in science - that is, I know it exists. I have read many studies, reviewed many findings by great men of science. So, I know it exists, but how does one "believe in" it? The answer is so very linked to Christianity, it's making me giddy just thinking about it.

You see, it's terribly difficult to disprove that Jesus Christ existed - there are records as far back as 1 A.D. from historians, both Jewish and Roman, about this man who called himself the Christ. We can trace His footsteps, His homeland, we can see where He did the things the Bible says He did. The problem is that you can't prove the meaning of his life - that is, you know he was crucified by reading the writings of the Romans, but you can't know why He was killed. This is why we have our faithfulness in Him - to take Him at His word and remain faithful to His gift of Grace.

I'm afraid the same standard applies to science - we know, with a certain degree of certainty, that the word exists. We know the things it is made up of. We know that this world must have come from somewhere, by some process, and we must work backwards (when dealing with scientific inquiry) to determine how this came to be. So, science has developed a few theories (creation stories) by which to explain our world:

1) The Argument from Design: Science tells us of a time when there was no time, space, energy, or matter. When this was is irrelevant because there was no time to tell us what time it was or a calendar, since these are made of matter, which also didn't exist. Then, something happened - time started. Why time started or how it was kicked into being is irrelevant - all we know is that at some moment (the first moment, actually) everything came into being. However, everything didn't look like it did today - it was all chaos and jumbled together in one heap of everythingness and time-crunched. Then, time, space, energy, and matter exploded, sending the whole of existence flying into space - and someday, all of these things will return to a crumpled ball of everything. This totally explains things.

2) The Argument from Elegance: People like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris will argue that Darwinism and the theories of natural evolution provide an elegant, simple explanation for why creation exists, and that if you view things from a totally Darwinist point of view, there is no need for a Creator. The funny thing is, if you view things from a Creation point of view, there's no need for a Darwin! Sometimes the door of logic swings both ways and hits you in the ass on the way out. The simple fact is that if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like nails - and if all you have is evolution, everything starts to look like apes.

3) The Argument from Argument: The last Canon of Atheism is a rational, ethical argument against Christianity because they believe that Christianity is ethically wrong, and that our God is a mean, vindictive God that likes to burn down cities, murder children, and punish lots of people for the first two people discovering what's between their legs. This is the most basic argument, which undoubtedly will include references to the Crusades, Inquisitions, and Third Day's music.

There are solid arguments against all of these Canon points, but I won't waste my time debating them right now - mostly because you, dear reader, are either on one side or the other. You are either a Christian, in which case this gave you a laugh, you are an Atheist, in which case you probably huffed and puffed your way through it and at one point actually pointed at the monitor and said, "that's totally wrong!", or you are an Agnostic, in which case you said "what does it matter?" then went off to smoke pot and murder babies. Just kidding.

The point is that what we are engaged in is not a battle of reason vs. faith - indeed, it is clear that reason and faith (fullness) are both parts of the Christian world-view and one without the other is useless and pointless. The Christian faith is a deep, full experience which requires critical thinking, reason, logic, and ethics, but also requires that we remain faithful to God in all things. Now, insert the word "atheistic" and "science" where I have used "Christian" and "God" and you will see my point: Sam Harris is not the voice of reason calling people to the truth of Atheism, he is an apologist for his religion who knows very little about that which he is fighting against.