Lately, I’ve been thinking about atheism and faith. There seems to be a common sentiment that atheists don’t have faith, that they lack the ability to take something on faith.<\/p>\n
Speaking only for myself, this is not true. I do have faith. I have a great deal of faith. It’s just that my faith is not in a higher power or some deity or another.<\/p>\n
I have faith in the scientific method. I believe in a way of looking at the world that takes into account observable results and updates hypothesis and theories to accommodate them.<\/p>\n
I have faith in the repeatability of experiments, and the learning that happens when one team of researchers attempts to replicate the results of another.<\/p>\n
I have faith in a process that is willing to overturn centuries of accepted dogma when evidence is revealed that contradicts it.<\/p>\n
I have faith in people of considerable intelligence, education and\/or experience, and their ability to delve deeply into very complex topics and reveal underlying patterns and behaviors that can be tested, used and expanded upon by others.<\/p>\n
I have<\/B> to have faith in these things! The universe is too large and too complex for me (or any person) to question, test and validate first-hand every theory that has been proposed. Every time I step on an airplane, I show faith in the scientists and engineers who have contributed to its design and maintenance. Every time I take a medicine I’m exercising faith in the doctor who investigate diseases and the unknowns of the human body, and the teams that develop treatments for them.<\/p>\n
It’s not a blind faith. I know there are scientists who knowingly submit flawed data. I know there are researchers who will let personal prejudices override cold, hard facts. But I have faith that those are the exception rather than the rule, and that over time such problems are identified and corrected.<\/p>\n
I also accept that there are an extraordinary number of things about our existence that we don’t understand yet, don’t even have a theory about. I’m even willing to consider that there may be things that humans will never know. But I don’t have any need to ascribe supernatural explanations to the unknown. I’m content simply to say “We don’t know yet. Maybe we will someday.” I have faith that scientists, from the tinkerers in a garage to the folks in white lab coats, will continue to provide new answers and even newer questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lately, I’ve been thinking about atheism and faith. There seems to be a common sentiment that atheists don’t have faith, that they lack the ability to take something on faith…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,1],"tags":[5,25,34],"class_list":["post-1800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathtutoring","category-tech","category-uncategorized","tag-about-me","tag-geek","tag-math"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}