A new perspective on Faith

The fourth Article of Faith of my church states, "The first four principles and ordinances of the Gospel are first, faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ. Second, repentance. Third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and fourth, the laying on of hands to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." (I was too lazy to verify individual words or punctuation, so I apologize if my memory is a little off on that)

Perhaps it is not so odd that I regularly see people around me having the most difficulty, of all things about religion, with two of these.

First, I must state that aside from church members, I really only ever associate with physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists (if computer science is really a separate discipline from math or physics, but I digress!), so I can't say I have a well rounded population for my observations. Regardless, there is a high percentage of these people that are atheist, and very outspoken about it, even proselytizing. One of the biggest 'issues' they have with religions in general is faith. It is obvious to me that one of the main goals of the adversary is to give faith a bad name. Do that, and religion dies. The only problem is, so does everything else!

See, all of learning, whether spiritual, scientific, philosophic or otherwise, requires faith. This is because faith is simply a belief in something you do not fully comprehend (yet) or have observed no evidence to suggest yet. This particular attribute has to be applied to several different things for learning to exist. For one, it must be assumed that the current base of your knowledge is correct. In addition, you must assume that the source of your knowledge is correct, or at least suitably so. And, most importantly, since it is simply impossible, with finite time, to learn everything about a subject, you must assume that what other people know on the subject is correct. All of these assumptions require faith. The less you currently understand about a particular subject requires a greater leap of faith to accept a deeper principle.

Let me attempt to provide an example. Growing up, in science classes, we are taught that conservation of energy is an unbreakable law. This seems to make sense to us at the time; since nothing can really have a beginning (and not break down under the Socratic Method), it fits. Heck, the universe was thought to never have a beginning for a long time for that very reason. Logically, things are eternal. If I were, soon after you accepted this fact that conservation of energy is a law, and before you delved much deeper into physics, tell you that it is quite accepted in the physics community that particles exist that VIOLATE conservation of energy, and instead follow the Uncertainty Principle, you'd have three choices. The first choice would be to have faith in the scientific community and assume you will eventually understand, based ONLY on other people's word and past experience. The second would be to disregard what you know about conservation of energy (and have a lot of other things suddenly make no sense as consequence) and accept this new fact as exclusive of the old. The third option would be to cling to what makes sense to you now, and refuse the theory of virtual particles, and deny yourself a more sensible explanation of the universe's mechanics. Depending on your predisposition to the field, the first or the third are the most likely. The third requires no faith, except in what you already know, but also leads to lesser learning. The first requires the most faith, as well as humility. The second is a function of blind faith, and probably would not happen.

Let's posit that you followed the first path. At this point, you've had some education on quantum mechanics, wave mechanics and the uncertainty principle, and many of its applications. This means that you will, in all likelihood, be able to accept virtual particles as existing and still accept the law of conservation as valid. However, it will be a long time (and may in fact never happen) before you understand all the mathematics, vastly done by Feynman, that describe how the virtual particles cause the attractive and repulsive forces of gravity, electromagnetism and Strong/Weak nuclear force. So, you don't have a perfect knowledge of these particles, very probably never will, but you will accept that someone else has done the math, has experienced it for you, by proxy. This is definitively faith.

The argument can be taken deeper than that (eventually, the Socratic method breaks down all science to, "I don't know"), but there's no purpose. There is something else I feel the need to clarify, however.

In my discussions with people both atheist and theist (of other faiths), it has surprised me that many of both actually think religion functions purely on blind faith. When I hear of this, I can fully understand why many give faith such a dirty connotation; they are assuming all faith in religion is blind. This, quite simply, is a gross misinterpretation of God's plan for us!

James makes it quite clear this is not the case in James 1:5, which states, "If any of ye lack wisdom, let him ask of god, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him." (once again, from memory, sorry if I misquoted) This is further clarified in the Book of Mormon, Moroni, Chapter 10, verses 4 and 5, which states, "...if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. 5: And by the power of the Holy Ghost, ye may know the truth of all things." This means that you can't attempt to fool God; if you don't truly have faith in Him, you will likely not receive and answer. However, as James goes on to say in his epistle, just because you ask, doesn't mean you should assume you'll get an answer immediately. Learning about anything rarely requires no effort on your part.

There are scriptures that often say that it is wicked to seek for a sign, and I am not saying these scriptures are wrong. When I read those scriptures, I interpret them to mean that it is wicked to ask God for a specific confirmation, or a sign of your choosing. This is not the way things work. Different people receive knowledge different ways, depending upon our spiritual gifts. Different people require more knowledge than others. I have known people who can lead phenomenal lives on very little confirmation, because they do not need more. I myself require more, and God gives it to me, when I am worthy of it. I have a particular way I feel the spirit. In truth, I have several ways. They are rather intense and undeniable. I know this is because God knows I'm stubborn, and would probably reason away a lesser confirmation. Asking God to give you a confirmation you should not need, or do not deserve is wicked, because it is arrogant. Asking to know the truth never is.

I know this has been rather long. I'm inexperienced at this; hopefully future posts will be clearer and more concise. If anyone has questions they want me to answer (honest ones... I won't get into an argument, as that accomplishes nothing), let me know in the comments. If you have other suggestions, let me know as well.

God be with you till we meet again.