A Matter of Faith
We need to have faith. This may sound like an obscenity to secularists, but I put it to you that human beings inherently need faith in their lives. It is built into our biology.
By batsman
In these troubled times and at a low point in the confidence of the crowd, I hope this write-up will receive a more sympathetic hearing than the last one.
We need to have faith. This may sound like an obscenity to secularists, but I put it to you that human beings inherently need faith in their lives. It is built into our biology.
Through the co-option of science, secularists try to suppress and marginalize faith. Science is promoted as the new religion that can explain everything without the need for faith. With science, there is no need for superstitions. Everything can be explained by reason, logic and empirical proofs. Human beings no longer need faith in their lives. Science promises certainty and predictability.
In a way, the secularists even co-opt the comic books to marginalize faith. People who are rational to the point of suppressing their feelings – not allowing any emotion to interfere with decision making (e.g. Spock of Star Trek fame) are promoted as superheroes.
Things such as feelings, emotions and faith are seen as human weaknesses which heroes never compromise with.
Sadly for humanity, the secularists have succeeded to a large degree. Sadly for humanity, secularism has been built into a brand new religion with fanatical followers out to suppress and marginalize all the other old-fashioned faiths.
Why so? Life and all its uncertainties have been forgotten. Ignored too are the needs of human beings to have faith in the future. Without faith many humans are reduced to binge drinking, sensation seeking animals living for the next high and shooting drugs and taking Ecstasy pills to numb the accompanying emptiness. Without faith many of us will have given up the struggle for a better Malaysia long ago.
Without faith that there will be a better tomorrow, what is the point of carrying on today? But who can be certain of what tomorrow brings? Faith holds everything together.
For those who are comfortable and secure, there is an unfortunate tendency to have too much faith. Accidents and bad things only happen to other people – never to us. Too much faith to the point of arrogance and feelings of invulnerability is unfortunately also one of the human conditions, but that does not mean we need to reject faith.
Faith is built into our biology. If you ask me to prove this empirically, I cannot. It is my faith that tells me this and this faith is expressed most strongly when things are troubled and uncertain.
So while the wealthy, comfortable and secure humans tend to have feelings of invulnerability owing to too much faith in themselves, the weak, the marginalized and people who are at risk, suppressed and in danger find faith makes them stronger and better able to cope.
So it is that secularism will never be able to marginalize faith completely however hard it tries, whether or not it co-opts science and comic books because life is not secure and not assured for almost everyone. So it is that secularism itself is a faith since there is uncertainty that its policy of marginalizing faith will succeed eventually. Secularists need to have faith that their creed will be successful. That is why there are fanatical secularists too. Too little faith sometimes makes fanatics. That unfortunately is also another human condition.
So who was the scientific idiot who said taking too many Ecstasy pills will scramble the brains in the long run?
