A Rational Faith

               So then, along with my vlog/uutalk videos, I'm going to try and write something in this blog twice a week.  Usually probably going to be philosophy, but really anything intresting will do for me.  Tuesdays and Thursdays, keep it organized, keep myself focused, give you something intresting to read, that's the point.  For this first post I have a short bit on why people of a faith are not irrational.  Recently, in my philosophy class, we talked about Mackie (a philosopher who wrote about how believing in a traditional God is irrational).  I only want to make clear, or try to make clear, that really any faith is does not have to be irrational.  If you would like to read Mackie's piece I have added in a url to the pdf (a quick Google search should work too), http://www.caragillis.com/Cerritos/EvilandOmnipotence.pdf.  The excerpt is as follows:

               To show that theist is not an irrational person one only has to look over the metaphor I put down as evidence God, or any spiritual knowledge, could exist.  Now, it should be said, I am not saying that atheism is not a legitimate way of looking at the world, and it will always be the way of the world for some atheists and some theists to argue (as it should be, argument is wonderful), but I am only saying that God might exist.  That is, unlike what Mackie says in his piece, Evil and Omnipotence, theism is not an irrational and unreasonable belief.  In fact, with this understanding, the only irrational thing to do would not accept the possibility of doubt.  Any theist or atheist who carries no understanding of the possibility that the other is correct, is thus irrational.  For really, with all the mystery we cannot currently, and I believe, as some do,  never be able to know, we can never find for certain whether or not spirituality of some sort exists.  But enough of the legitimatizes.  It is time to talk of the metaphor.

                Take a world where the sun never shines.  A world which has dark, horrible, clouds covering all corners of its crust.  No one flies in this world, no one has ever seen the sun.  All of children’s, parent’s, grandparent’s, and great’s lives, the sun has not been an entity which has ever been easily logically found.  There is a story I have read with a similar darkness in the world, a series called The Seventh Tower by Garth Nix in which there is a giant dark veil which surrounds the planet.  This, I only mention, to demonstrate that the above situation is imaginable and has been imagined before.  It is, that is to say, not an impossibility in the philosophical sense.  So, in this world, where the sun does not shine, there is a child.  A little girl, curious and light-hearted.  The little girl likes reading fairy tales as little girls tend to do.  She has a particular interest in the magical stories about a world full of green grass, tall wise trees, gleeful butterflies, and the oh so prevalent Sun.  The Sun gives life to all these things, all these butterflies and trees and grass.  It is the creator and watcher, rising each day to look on over its work.  It is a happy being, a loving being, and a protective being.  It chases away the clouds and brings wonderful and warm days wherever it goes.  The little girl loves reading about this Sun.  She imagines it one day chasing the dark wall which exists in her sky, away and bringing the green and warmth back.

                One day this little girl goes up to her mother and asks, “Where is the Sun, Mom?”

                Her mother, being the rational and forward thinking adult she is, replies, “Honey, the Sun is just a fairy tale.  It doesn’t exist.”

                So the little girl leaves her mom.  She does not listen to her mom though, as children tend to do, and keeps on believing that the Sun does exist.  Thus she grows up and finds other believers in the Sun and lives her life always believing in this warmth giving being: the Sun.  Thus religion is formed.  Now, in this metaphor we as the onlookers are aware that there is in fact a sun, beyond the clouds, but for the people in the world there is no real proof that the sun exists.  It is not irrational for the mother to say the sun does not exist, for she has no sun to see, no evidence of the sun.  Yet it is no more irrational for the girl to believe, she sees the tales and believes in the more.  More beyond the clouds.  She is using what she knows and relating it to the world she is aware of to the best of her ability.  Similarly, a Christian and an Atheist, Hindu and a Buddhist, are all just as justified in believing.  Some arguments simply convince some people while not convincing others.  It is not irrational to believe.  There may be a right answer but it is unfair to call a believer, or a disbeliever, unreasonable.  Everyone who cares about their beliefs is going to try to use rationality to come upon them; questioning is not only the way of the atheist.  To say otherwise is ridiculous.