Suppose you were born blind. You had the other 4 senses
but have never been able to grasp the concept of sight. You’ve reached the age
of adulthood and throughout your young life, those around you have tried to
explain what it’s like to be able to “see” the world. Yet the idea of sight is
just not something you can imagine because your world has been limited to
sound, touch, taste and smell. The question arises; if you’ve never experienced
something, can you ever believe it exists? That’s the question asked by those people
who don’t believe in the existence of a divine being, or a “God.” Many people
who are blessed with all 5 senses have difficulty with another type of sense.
Let’s call it the sense of faith.
We often hear about people who have a sixth sense,
often referred to as extra sensory perception, or ESP. Generally called
“psychic ability,” ESP supposedly gives the possessor the ability to foretell
the future and/or “see” past occurrences. Well, in a sense (no pun intended),
those who have faith in a hereafter may be using a form of ESP to predict the
future of mortal life when it ends. Maybe true believers have reached a level
of mental competence that allows them to clearly envision that which their counterparts
have not yet reached. Is it possible that faith is a higher level of cerebral
acuity?
If you speak to a non-believer, he might tell you he
doesn’t believe in things he cannot see. When I hear that argument, I’ll ask if
he’s ever seen gravity. When he answers in the negative, I’ll ask if he wants
to test its existence by stepping off a cliff. If he says he doesn’t believe
that there’s power in something invisible, I’ll counter with; can you see the
wind? I’ll ask if he’s ever seen the awesome power of gusts traveling at 60 or
70 MPH. Although the doubter will often claim the science behind those
invisible forces, he simply cannot dispute that science doesn’t have all the
answers to the universe. We don’t even have the answers to ESP, and we
certainly have no answers for what happens to us after we shed this mortal
coil.
Therefore, using the premise that a sightless person
finds it difficult to believe there are forces around him that he can’t fathom;
a faithless person may be grappling with the same quandary. The blind man
listens to the words of the sighted and has serious doubts about whether there
are emanations outside the darkness of his limited existence. The faithless man
may be undergoing a similar inability to dig his way out of the darkness of
spiritual skepticism. Personally, I’ve always questioned the authenticity of an
omnipotent and omniscient entity that has created what we call the “universe.”
My question has always been “If God created the universe, who created God?” In
philosophy that’s what’s known as a “first cause” question. If a chicken is
hatched out of an egg; who laid the egg that gave birth to the chicken?
In my opinion, that’s a serious question if we are to
use our innate intelligence. It’s undeniable that life is complex and fraught
with mystery. If you believe in evolution, it’s likely that our brains are
still evolving, adding more understanding of the world we were born into.
According to evolutionary theory we didn’t have 5 senses in the beginning but
accumulated them over the course of tens of thousands of years as organisms
changed and acquired the necessary components to sustain life. How long has the
concept of faith been around?
Let’s say it began a few thousand years before the
birth of Jesus Christ. I use Jesus because Christians, with 2.3 billion
adherents, form the largest religious group in the world. Next come Muslims
with 1.8 billion; Hindus with 1.1 billion and Buddhists with .5 billion.
Religious faith, being a spiritual, rather than a
physical entity, isn’t thought of as part of evolutionary theory. Nevertheless,
since it didn’t always exist, isn’t it possible that it became part of our
cumulative and necessary components needed to continue the species? Where would
we be in the hierarchy of human history if we didn’t have the structured
discipline of religion? Wasn’t the faith in a higher power the result of the
perils that existed in a barbaric society?
The Bible is filled with references to infidels who
paid the price for their faithlessness. In the Old Testament, God demanded
allegiance to his word and those who denied him suffered grievously. Although
replete with parables, the Scriptures appear to be a roadmap to carve a civilization out of a savage
wilderness. It’s easy to say that we’re not a perfect world today, but, when
you realize the way life used to be, you should be extremely grateful that
religion was born, giving us a set of values that kept us from devouring each
other.
Moreover, in case you think religion belongs in the
past because we live in a new age of “reason,” the fact is that 84% of the
planet’s population identifies with a religious group. Furthermore, members of
that demographic are generally younger and produce more children than those who
have no religious affiliation. Hence, the world is getting more religious, not
less. Accordingly, that “sense of faith” may become the ESP of the future.