You know the term "faith" is basically unbreakable, you can stretch it as far as you want. There is this thing called solipsism which says the only thing you can ever know for sure are your own thoughts, because you don't know that your senses aren't deceiving you.
Memory is fragile, and so are the senses. You could get an account of a crime scene from five different witnesses there, and each could see something at least subtly, if not radically, different. Knowing that, I don't have 100% supreme confidence in how even I interpret the physical world.
So if everything in the world is faith, then the word doesn't mean anything anymore.
My point is that every person has a personal system of metaphysical beliefs and the codes for supporting it. No exceptions. And that those codes are not without their imperfections. No exceptions.
I can see the argument you might make that it could be a cop-out, since what to believe in if everything is subject to error. But accepting the error bars is critical, particularly in scientific thought.
But you don't seriously mean that. It is different. Religion is based on supernatural entities in some form or another, and that is in no way similar to empiricism.
I do seriously mean that. I don't have it in myself, but I know people who truly have a sensation of the soul that motivates them. People I respect and would have little reason to believe that they're just some duped crackpot who never seriously thought through things.
Any "-ism" is only as good as the person who believes in it. That is perhaps one of my core beliefs, so to speak.
And so you're going to say "that too is religion" so then there's nothing that isn't religion and again we're full circle.
What some people call religion is just one flavor of what I express as personal metaphysical belief systems. And I lump things like atheism and agnosticism (both are "-ism"s, after all) in the same boat.
Why not, we do it in every facet of life. Fight over who's right and who's wrong. Ever seen a tv show about lawyers?
Because religious intolerant zealots come in all forms -- men of the cloth, and men against the cloth. All driven by their metaphysical beliefs. And all deluded by their arrogant superiority.
And one of my core beliefs is that the zealots of any flavor are dangerous and deluded. I have a stronger affinity who see multiple possibilities for truth in different forms. That to me is an interesting exercise. But that's just me.
History is littered with those who suddenly felt they had the pieces of the puzzle to finally proclaim theirs as the one, true belief system. And every time without fail, we've found reasons to question those claims. We've heard that story many times before with different casts of characters -- it's innately human. The key is recognizing the need to examine that by looking inward, not outward.
Hey, today I believe religion is a hazard. Tomorrow I might think different. Who knows, I try not to be dogmatic.
And my counterpoint would be that people who think of themselves as devoutly anti-religious can be just as much of a hazard. No worse so, because while they wouldn't know it -- neither do the people who are many of the zealots of specific religious faiths for that matter. But no better a hazard either. (Hardline Communism, anyone?)
But then you would still have said I'm just bashing on religion.
I'm not such a San Francisco crystal-wearing hippie freak as to assume that all forms of faith have equal merits. Perhaps that much might surprise you a little.
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