Faith

Faith is something one believes in, in spite of the fact there may no direct evidence to support it.

I was brought up in the ‘30’s in a small town and everyone I knew was a Christian. I went to church with my family Sunday mornings. I really couldn’t make much sense of some of it, but I tried and I remember how comforting it was to have ‘Faith’ that there was an all-knowing all-powerful heavenly father who watched over me and to whom I could turn for support. Along with a Faith in God, the church answered basic questions like how we humans came to be here on Earth, and what our purpose is. It also gave us a moral code to live by.

In my teens, as I began to learn scientific explanations and how they had been reached, I saw that to accept an irrational belief in the supernatural God would mean having to close down part of my mind even to myself and I just could not go there. That meant facing the reality that I no longer could trust in the support of a loving God, I had no answers to the big questions and that when I died there was no hereafter.

Still, I was young and, as I look back, I had Faith I could find a better philosophy to live by; Faith in the methods of science; Faith that the laws of nature governing what transpired on our planet would be recognized; and Faith that in understanding them, that all the variety and complexity and beauty on Earth could be revealed.

I have lived a long life and realize that the faith I had at 20 has been vindicated many times over. We are all living in an extraordinarily and momentous time in the long history of the world. Many many answers are now available that reveal the fascinating path that nature has taken to bring about the emergence of life in all its manifestations on Earth, finally culminating in human consciousness.

I am an optimist and I have Faith that enough cooperative, environmentally responsible and intelligent humans will become interconnected, that they will find ways to work together to stop the short sighted greed and insanity that is doing the most to destroy our planet. I have Faith a self-sustaining, more equitable human condition will emerge. I don't expect this will happen in my lifetime. Rie