Only a Passing Glance

What is Faith? Faith is believing in something. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, concept or idea. It is the mental acceptance of the truth or actuality of something. In its positive aspect, it is a belief in the favorable outcome of anything undertaken.

There are two kinds of faith. The first is a faith that is predicated on truth, and can be proven by experiment. The experiment that proves this truth is one that produces the same result every time. As an example, one might say two plus two makes five, but that does not make it true. In fact, upon hearing this, one might become convinced and even convince others that this is correct, and still this would not make it true.

The only possible way to get the correct answer to a mathematical problem is to conform to the established laws of mathematics, which are based upon truth. Therefore, in applying this law, you get the correct answer: two plus two equals four, at any time, at any place, and under any conditions. Truth.

The second is based upon ignorance, conjecture or supposition. This is a faith that has not been fully determined by tested experiment. No matter the fervor in its tenets, this professed faith is still in a state of doubt and uncertainty until empirical experiment can prove that it is either true, or reveal that it is false.

As an example, for five thousand years people believed implicitly that the world was flat. They had the utmost faith in their belief. Columbus came along, and, by experiment, proved that the world was round. Their earlier faith was based on ignorance, and an experiment proved that it was false. People had an untrue faith, exacerbated by the church, that the sun revolved around the earth, until Copernicus discovered the truth.

Over time, many other beliefs were held to be true as well, until they were proven to be false, and the debunking of conjecture and supposition continues to this day. Flawed and outmoded thought consensus, perpetuated by our fear and indolence, a trait of our human nature, causes us to steadfastly hold on to the security blanket of established orthodoxy. We let go only grudgingly when confronted with irrefutable scientific proof.

Faith may be bolstered by knowledge but that knowledge too may be true or false. After all, knowledge is the state of being aware of something, or the possession of information. It is very easy to be aware of something untrue, or to possess information that may prove to be false. Therefore, the old saying that