On Faith, Part III: Faith Beyond God: Atheists, Agnostics, and the Courage to Continue
When we talk about faith, we don’t need to limit the term to one that speaks about faith in a God or a deity. Faith is a far more encompassing term — actually utilized more than it’s spoken about. For, faith isn’t something exclusive to the realms of the religious.
Faith is a way of being. It is a mode; and, again, something we exercise daily in almost everything we do. In fact, we cannot operate without faith. Faith, in fact, underwrites our every action.
French writer and existentialist Albert Camus said there is only one really serious philosophical problem: suicide. In other words, is life worth living? If you do not actively seek to destroy your own life by literally cutting it off, then, at least for Camus, there is a spark of faith — some small amount of hope. (Camus, however, did not go so far as to call this “faith”, per se…..But I am more bold!)
Exploring it further (in boldness and otherwise), the logic bears out like this: we all persist in this life — for one reason or another. Many might argue that the reason is simple: we have a fear of death. However, what death is is an utter mystery; so, we might well-argue that we more so fear the unknown. (Anxiety is usually rooted within that which is ultimately uncertain.) And within that uncertainty, most choose to continue to live within the mystery. To persist is an admission that we have some faith in the process that is life, regardless of how we face the mysteries within it.
So, even if you never set foot in a church, even if you do not pray, even if you openly deny the existence of any god, the simple act of continuing is already a kind of faith. There is a trust, however faint, in the unfolding, in the next moment, in the possibility that what is coming might be worth experiencing.
People will sometimes say that scientists and academics do not really have faith — they have evidence. But that argument misses something essential: such people have faith in their observational powers and in the science that precedes them and the conclusions that they have come to. However, what is misguided about the premise that science somehow replaces faith is that science is only as powerful as its observer: if we had different observational powers, our science would look completely different. If we had a different understanding of what science is, the science itself would look completely different. Broadening that view, ever our understanding of the universe is one that we create vis‑à‑vis our understanding of the observations that we make. So, when we put our faith in science or within an ‘academic understanding’, what we are doing is reaffirming faith in ourselves — faith in our capacity to interact with the world; that, in and of itself, is an incredibly powerful act.
And this is where many people quietly go wrong: they imagine that “faith” is only something reserved for the religiously-minded, or a sect of spiritual practitioners, and that the secular person stands outside of faith in some pure, neutral objectivity. But no one stands outside of faith. The question is not whether you have it. The question is: where do you place it? Because, again, every action is underwritten by a belief within something.
So, where do we put our faith? Where do we deposit our comprehensions — however small and incomplete they might be? What do we do to reaffirm the world and have faith within that happening that we participate within? And after all that, what does it all look like?
That all said, you absolutely can put that faith into a god or a religion or spiritual practice. And you can just as easily put it into science or political ideology. But most of us, without realizing it, we actually put it into ourselves; for it is we, ourselves, who continue on — regardless of how well or how strong.
The crucial thing, though, is not to pretend that faith disappears without the concept of God. Rather, it is to recognize that whatever we call ourselves - whatever labels we adopt - we are already moving in faith. We are already betting on some picture of reality, some way of being, some understanding of what matters.
My work within this field is largely an attempt to bring that movement into a general awareness. To see that faith is not just a set of propositions about a divine being: it is the courage to continue, to keep participating in what is, even when we do not know how it all works (or even, exactly, what it is in the first place).
And if an atheist can do that, if an agnostic can do that, if a scientist can do that, then they are exercising faith just as surely as any believer in a pew. Different stories, different symbols, but the same underlying act: we keep going.
To hear more of Dr. Atman’s thoughts on faith and other topics, visit: https://www.josephatman.com/podcast
