I’m not proposing an anti-religious genocide. I am a person of faith. So are you and I wish you well, even if you have a different belief system to mine, even if I think yours is foolish. It’s just that the label ‘people of faith’ as lumped on all religious types grates with me. Here’s why:
Firstly, ‘people of faith’ sounds like an objective term applied to people with subjective belief systems. It is commonly used as a bucket category for religions by secular humanists, who appeal to reason over faith. However, you don’t have to even scratch the surface of secular humanism to realise that it is a faith system. Every kid in every science classroom has to exercise faith in a hypothesis and in the previously established laws of physics to conduct even the simplest experiment. Dig a little deeper and you find that atheism requires an enormous faith boost to get out of the hole and get airborne. Secular humanist atheists insist on the total meaninglessness of the movement of electrons, from the ones in the labs of Miller and Urey or CERN to the ones in the brains of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche. How then, can it then muster the moral strength to insist that the gathered thoughts of these labs and brains reveal reliable truth to the exclusion of religious systems of thought? Because secular humanists are people of F. A. I. T. H. faith.
Secondly, I’m uncomfortable with being lumped in together with other religious belief systems. I’m sure Jehovah’s witnesses and Wahabi Muslims would feel likewise. From the outside, It’s obvious that the Watchtower Tract Society (another name for the JWs) is a religion of Christian derivation. However, they employ a system of biblical interpretation which, by joining together unconnected passages of scripture in a way which would make deconstructionists blush, comes out against the worship of Jesus and against the unity of redeemed humanity in a merged new heaven and new earth (contrary to the plain suggestion of the texts). Religious hair splitting? I don’t think so– look at the outcomes for folks who leave the fellowship or for folks who need blood transfusions. Lumping all religions into the same category fails to acknowledge that specific problems are associated with specific religions. When was the last time you heard a Christian justify an honour killing? Why are Richard Dawkins and Ayaan Hirsi Ali now cultural Christians rather than ‘cultural people of faith’? I have some things in common with Witnesses and Wahabis as I do with Marxists and Humanists. I do think we should work together to build society. Maybe I’ll do a later blog about why I think we can to do this. We are all people of faith, but we’re not the same.
I believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection and everlasting life. I believe these things have radical implications for the way I live my life. I know these beliefs may be odious to you, but please don’t tell me you are a not a person of faith. I just can’t believe it.
For more of Tom’s thoughts on comparative religion or on faith and science, you may want to listen in to two pastors in a pub: