The Difference between Disbelief and Choice of Faith…

To my blog yesterday, talking about the role of the concept of God, I received a few comments. One of them was particularly interesting and pointed me to the controversy that surrounds those that simple undertake a choice of determination of faith. The comment is re-quoted below.

“There is good definition of Atheism… The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs.”

If that is what Atheism really means, then I am no atheist. In my heart I believe that there is a general construct of laws and rules that drive the shape of the future. Many people call it fate and destiny while others, like economists and speculators, try and seek the shape of the future in numbers. And there are those of us who choose to believe that there are outcomes and ways of science and mathematics that we do not understand – while our understanding may be skewed towards ignorance given the size of the cosmos, it does not mean that everything that is beyond our grasp amounts to magic and divine intervention.

A friend of mine once quoted a gentleman called Erich Von Daniken to explain how faith and belief take shape – I will try and capture the gist of it. Imagine a cluster of people who have lived in complete seclusion for generations, since before the industrial revolution took off, in Africa. They had children and their children had children and all they learnt and practiced was basic sustainability – hunt, cook, build roofs, etc. while staying completely secluded from the rest of the world that was advancing so fast. Imagine their consternation, one find day, when two men and a woman with clothes they had never seen before, complexion unlike their own and accessories that made no practical sense, landed a helicopter and got off it with guns firing. How difficult would it be to convince the aborigines that the new entrants of their lives with fire weapons and strange ways had superpowers and were higher beings?
 

Sadly in the reality that has been documented, this is the general path to slavery and exploitation. My point however is this - the origin for faith and belief is not founded in rationality. It is essentially an emotional reaction to ambient circumstances and outcomes. Very often we come across outcomes that we cannot control – be it in the form of plagues and hurricanes to the pre-historic man or a flying chariot with rotating blades to the African aborigine or be it in form of death of a loved one in spite of the best medical care money can buy. As I mentioned in my previous blog, humans are slave to their need to rationalize outcomes to conform to what makes them comfortable and helps them cope with the reality.
 

The matter of not believing that the universe, and all in it, is being driven by a single or a group of super-powerful individuals with power to make or remake as they choose fit is not so much an active disbelief. It is a matter of choice. As an individual there are multiple ways of dealing with any given manifestation of reality that cannot be explained with existing information and knowledge at hand. A large majority think that there is a divine plan that has been written and will play itself out as time progresses. Some believe that it is coincidence. There are others who believe that everything is driven by cause-and-effect. Every outcome is caused by an input. And if we believe that time is infinite going forward, we must also believe that it is infinite behind us too – thereby choosing to not believe in a specific origin of all things. Cause and effect have been playing out forever and will continue playing out forever. That perspective does not necessarily mean an active disbelief in an alternate answer to the problems of life and other parts of the grand picture.
 

Much like religion and God, it is a matter of choice. What do I choose to have faith in? Physics? Or a divine power? I choose to put my faith in mathematical precision of physics. There is a lot that I don’t understand about it and a whole lot that no one understands about it. That does not make me and more right or more wrong until we can have comprehensive proof of everything that is anything – one way or the other. Till then, I believe, that I should have the right and freedom to choose any way that suits my appetite for faith.