|
Faith vs. Skepticism
Why we should question everything.
I?ve always been curious about what people believe, why they have their
beliefs and the rationale or factual validity of their beliefs. What I have
noticed is that there are two spectrums of attaining belief, faith and
skepticism, which happen to be opposites of each other. Simply put, faith
is belief without evidence or question and skepticism is to ask for
evidence or to question the validity of a belief before accepting the belief.
Faith has a simple problem. It can?t be tested, confirmed, or falsified,
and in my opinion is a very irrational method of attaining beliefs.
Fortunately, there are some rational applications of faith. If I put a
bottle of water in my refrigerator, I have faith that it will be cold the
next day. If I put some food in a microwave, I have faith that the
microwave will make it hot. If I plug my cell phone into a charger before I
go to bed, I have faith that I will have a fully charged phone in the
morning. The two fundamental aspects that justify these faiths are that
they can all be tested, confirmed, and potentially falsified, and that they
can all be explained by natural methods. In other words, skepticism can be
applied to them.
Now what about faiths that cannot be tested or confirmed? If one holds a
belief that cannot be confirmed within their lifetime, or is not testable
or falsifiable, such a belief might be considered irrational. If something
cannot be explained by naturalistic methods, putting faith in a
supernatural story to explain such a thing is irrational because it can?t
be tested, confirmed or falsified. Skepticism can never be applied to such
a belief and nobody will ever know of that belief is true.
One example of this type of faith is the belief in a God or deity, belief
in reincarnation and belief in the supernatural, since one who believes in
these cannot get confirmation of them during his or her lifetime. The
examples of rational faith that I mentioned in the first paragraph would
become irrational if they were never ever tested. It would be irrational to
believe that my refrigerator made the bottle of water cold if I never
touched the bottle or drank its contents. If it?s not being tested or
questioned, then why believe without evidence? That is what I would
consider irrational.
One might ask what the benefits of skepticism are. Skepticism is merely
asking the question, ?How do I know that this is true?? Skepticism is the
rational inquiry of all aspects of life. Without skepticism, humanity would
have never advanced, we would never have developed technology and we
definitely would never have made any efforts to learn and understand how
the universe works. Without skepticism, we would still be in the Stone Age.
If we just kept faith in old beliefs and tradition, we would be an ignorant
species. As a human race, we are better than that. We can rationally
investigate why we believe what we believe. There is no belief that should
remain unquestioned. Question everything. Do not hold anything to absolute
certainty. Do not believe without evidence. Untested faith is a handicap.
|
|
|
