Faith is not tangible: it cannot be held in one’s hand or proven to another with certainty. Faith is an attitude that centers on belief; specifically, the belief that certain tenets (e. g. the words in the Bible) are beyond reproach. To those who are religious, the truth behind religious faith is much like the truths mentioned in the United States’ Declaration of Independence: self-evident (Jefferson 612).
Skepticism relies on the tangible: it is, in part, the act of holding a thing up for examination to prove its truth.Skeptics need a thing to be concrete before they can suspend their doubts about its existence and/or accuracy. If not for the need to address skepticism, why would the authors of the Declaration of Independence have claimed the self-evidence of the truths they then carefully listed? (612). It is because of the schism between faith and fact that believers and skeptics cannot find common ground when it comes to discussions surrounding the truth or falsehood of religion.The origin of human life is an easy place to begin a dialogue about what is accepted by the religious faithful versus what is rejected by religious skeptics.
Christians turn to Genesis to understand the origin of human life. They accept without hesitation that all human beings are the direct descendants of Adam and Eve, and they accept without question that whatever needed to occur (e. g. genetic mutation) did occur to ensure that all of the offspring of Adam and Eve were able to reproduce additional healthy humans (Genesis 1:26-27).
Biological issues prevent skeptics from accepting that one male and one female produced children, who then mated and produced more children (all of whom were related), and that this is the origin all human life. The skeptic is forced to consider the biological truth that the lack of a larger gene pool would deem this explanation highly unlikely and most probably false (“Family Health”). The facts surrounding creation are contained in the Bible, and in the sense of a thing being written, are tangible which is more than enough for the religious faithful, but supremely insufficient for the religious skeptic.Closely related to biblical creation is the Fall of Mankind, and again, while those who look to the Bible for their truths find easy answers, the skeptic isn’t so sure.
The biblical explanation has Eve violating God’s order not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge as she falls victim to the temptation of the serpent (i. e. the devil). Eve then tempts Adam who also eats from the forbidden fruit, and when God learns of this violation, he punishes his first couple and by extension, all of mankind (Genesis 2-3). The results: human mortality and original sin (“Christian Beliefs”).
Skeptics want to know why one mistake led to the semi-permanent ruin of the whole race; it brings to question just how “good” God’s creations were. What God did is akin to a parent flogging a child for taking a cookie out of the cookie jar—the punishment simply does not fit the crime. And really, it was God’s garden; if he blames Eve for being naive (i. e. falling for the serpent’s lie), shouldn’t he take some responsibility for failing to construct a serpent-proof garden? If God is the almighty, all knowing, all seeing being the religious faithful claim, didn’t he see the serpent thing coming?As for human mortality: simply put, nothing is immortal, and it makes little sense to think that was the “plan. ” If immortality was part of God’s original design, why bother making only two people? Why not make all of them at once; after all, if immortality had been built-in, God would have eventually had to rescind the command to be fruitful and multiply, and that seems like poor planning.
The religious faithful feel no compunction in responding; their honest, heart-felt response is that each of these things were indeed a part of God’s plan.The question of immortality versus mortality raises a final issue: what was the initial role of Heaven? What was the point of God’s creating Heaven if His plan was that Adam and Eve should populate the Earth with “good” people who followed His rules without question? The religious faithful view Heaven as a reward for a life lived by God’s rules. They believe that those who fail to worship God, act in the name of God, and ask for forgiveness from God will not be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 7:21).The skeptic wants to know why God had a Plan B (i.
e. Heaven) in the first place. The skeptic considers the idea that death is final; that there is no next life; that all anyone has is the time she is given on Earth is profoundly humbling and frightening. The skeptic understands that the human tendency to avoid one’s own extinction begs for an alternate, if improbable explanation. From the point of view of a skeptic, Heaven is a means for those who cannot comprehend their own demise to live in less fear of their eventual deaths.
Those who are religious shake their heads and pray for the skeptic who they know on judgment day will learn the painful truth: Heaven is real, and the skeptic won’t be allowed in. There is very little common ground between those who turn to faith as proof and those who require fact to believe the veracity of a thing. The very essence of faith is the unconditional belief in that which isn’t provable; whereas, the very essence of skepticism is to demand proof of a thing before it can be accepted.The closest thing to common ground that one might find is from the mind of C. S. Lewis who stated in his work God in the Dock that, Christianity claims to give an account of facts—to tell you what the real universe is like.
Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all. (qtd. in Pfanstiel)It seems from this that there might develop a common ground if both sides were to work on stepping closer to one another: if the faithful begin to move beyond mere acceptance, and if the skeptical conceded that automatic dismissal of all things religious might not be in the spirit of truth-seeking.
If this were to happen, the schism between the religious faithful and the religious skeptic might be bridged; however, there currently remains far more that contrasts than compares when looking at the stance of the religious faithful versus the stance of the religious skeptictic.
