One Hundred and Forty Four

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  It’s irrational to have faith in something when all the evidence we have suggests it's not true; but we’re limited beings, so we can never have enough evidence to know with certainty that anything is true.  At some point we must decide we know enough to act, and hope that what we don’t know doesn’t contradict what we do know.

People used to have faith in religion because it was rational. It gave order and meaning to their lives, and all the evidence they had supported it.  When scientists found evidence that seemed to contradict religion, priests redefined irrational faith as a virtue superior to reason.  Some accepted this, but the more rational made science their new religion.  

Their faith in science was just as irrational as their faith in religion because they didn’t understand it any more than they understood religion.  They merely trusted that scientists knew the truth as naïvely as they once trusted priests.  But instead of making our lives better, scientists brought us to the brink of destruction.  So these people lost faith in scientists just as they did in priests; but they still had faith in the truths they claimed to know, so they read the sacred books of science just as they had those of religion, and made their own interpretations.   

This would have been laudable if they had understood that they’re different methods of searching for truth; but they assumed that if one was true, the other must be false.

Everything that can be said is true in some sense, otherwise it couldn't be said; and everything that can be said is false in some sense because we can never know enough to say with certainty what's true.  We can only say what seems true to us at this moment.