IF WE HAD ALL THE ANSWERS WOULD THERE BE ROOM FOR FAITH?

Religion is fond of telling us to celebrate the great mystery of life and God.

The interesting thing about that doctrine is that it admits the agnostic doctrine, that uncertainty is to be rejoiced in, is true.

Uncertainty opens the door to you getting a sense of wonder.

It keeps you trying to find truth and encourages you to try and enjoy the journey.

It stops you getting too big for your boots.

It is said that the bad side of uncertainty is that it can lead you to do harm unwittingly. For example, if you are not sure if a newborn baby should be counted as a person or not you might not feel too keen on protecting the baby from infanticide. But in fact uncertainty does not lead to this at all. It urges you to protect the child in case she is a person.

Uncertainty does not mean you should say, "nothing is certain", even in the face of evidence or proof that some things indeed are certain.

Religion says that there would be no religious faith if we had all the answers.

That is nonsense for it would imply that a religious faith that has an answer for everything is not a faith or cannot be.

It is facts that eliminate faith not answers.

Religion seems to be suggesting that God hides most of the answers just so that we can have faith.

Not having answers to many things, is just down to the human condition. We cannot know how many rocks there are on the moon. But somebody deliberately hiding the answers on us in the name of faith is different. It would be exalting faith above education and truth. Faith then in that light would be evil no matter how good it feels. The boast that faith is great and better than having the answers is really a ploy to get people interested in religious nonsense and accepting religious myth and fiction as fact. It is an attempt to manipulate people into a religion that gives poor answers and to make that exploitation look good.

If faith matters more than having the answers, then what can you say to a person who decides to refuse cancer treatment and go to healers instead? Nothing.

Healers usually advise their clients not to stop conventional medical treatment. But the reality is that if God heals, he uses medicine to help heal so it has no value apart from him. So medicine is useless in the eyes of the faithful. It is God that heals with it and not medicine that heals. There is only a short step to discarding the medicine altogether. You have nothing to say to the fanatic who decides to stop getting medical treatment for her child. You cannot discourage her because you and she have one thing in common: the belief that medicine is useless. The only difference is that you see it as useless for it is only a tool for God to do miracles through (so in itself it is useless) while she just simply sees it as useless.

Also, if we need to put enough value on the life we have so that we might have a reasonable chance to be happy, it follows that faith should safeguard that value. It should also nurture it. This would not be an argument for religious faith but simply for faith. Atheists and Satanists can have faith too! Religious faith would be unnecessary. It would be wrong and manipulative to make it necessary. It would be cruel to give people anything else but secular ordinary faith for what if the religion you base your faith on turns out to be wrong or a con and you find out?

You need to have the right attitudes in order to let faith appear in your heart and mind. For example, look around you and you can see there more to enjoy in life than to complain about. Marry faith and fact together.

Faith is faith but it is a fact that we need enough faith. The main question in life is if faith is good or bad or neither. The answer is that faith is good.

Those who say that faith is good for it is uncertain that it is good are talking nonsense. It does not make sense to say that faith is better than having all the answers when faith is the answer. Faith itself is the answer but the content of faith can be uncertain and they will be referred to as matters of faith.

Faith is good. Religious faith is unnecessary.