Faith and Reason
Solomon Moore’s “The Outer Limits of Faith” (April 13) surely comforted many who found the deaths of the Heaven’s Gate cult confusing. Yet Moore’s article also underscores the arguments that rationalists have had with the concept of faith.
The fallacy of faith is that it is directly opposed to reason. Faith asks of its adherents to believe in an absence of evidence, or in contradiction to evidence that already exists, which by definition makes faith irrational.
Many people confuse faith and trust. We do not have faith in our ability to perceive and reason, we have trust in it; trust based upon evidence. Our world operates by the laws of nature, and they remain consistent, day in and day out. Do we have faith in gravity, or do we trust our knowledge that the physics of matter creates the field of gravity and will continue to do so as long as these elements remain unchanged? And when we speak of “faith in a friend,” we again are trusting based on rational evidence: If the friend behaves as an enemy, isn’t that “faith” broken?
Moore errs when he states that traditional religious faith doesn’t offer an escape from life. A promise of eternal bliss is the engine that drives most religions; our fear of mortality convinces us to believe at nearly any cost. To attain these unsubstantiated promises, religion asks us to abandon our reason, our senses, our perceptions, thus ultimately making reality incomprehensible to us.
Until we learn otherwise, tragedies like the cult of Heaven’s Gate, and the tragedy of religious factionalism, where one group and their unprovable claims are pitted against another group and their equally unprovable claims, will diminish us all.
GEORGE SCILEPPI
Glendale
* Moore is a very spiritual person whose own faith seems to be the most important thing in his life. But how far must he go to justify his lifelong belief system? He says “faith is a worldly virtue.” Oh? Because he says so? Also, tell me why a nonbeliever “who lives through adversity and, despite the persistence of injustice” cannot serve humanity. You can celebrate “life on this planet, in this existence” without faith. I do. Millions do. Without God. Without angels. And without spaceships following comets.
Moore states he was brought up (brainwashed?) to believe in “an immortal soul” and that his purpose in life is to “prepare for the afterlife.” The truth is that Moore believes, like so many other religion apologists, in the supernatural and persists in magical thinking.
When it comes to faith, reason and critical thought are totally abandoned. So no matter what he says to justify his belief system, it’s really not much different at all than that of the true believers from Heaven’s Gate. Sorry.
MIKE COHEN
Studio City