An objective moral standard without a god

 The moral argument for god can be summarized as follows: 

If god does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.

Objective moral values do exist.
Therefore, god exists.

     The moral argument for god is very interesting deductive claim. We can imagine if a god did exist, then its very nature would dictate our moral compass. Yet, despite this speculation, there is no sufficient evidence available for a god. Because of this, belief in a god is not reasonable. This fact is what makes this claim so interesting as we consider the nature of morality. Where do our morals come from? What is the objective moral standard without a god? It seems clear that we need objective morals so we can accurately assess what is right and wrong. It seems self-evident that an objective standard of morality does in fact exist (and needs to exist) . This has led to numerous different claims about morality from leaders in the atheist community. One common claim is that morality is dependent on wellbeing. This has been proposed by Sam Harris in his book The Moral Landscape, and by Matt Dillahunty, host of the very popular live call-in show The Atheist Experience. Although wellbeing is going to be a large aspect of human morality, wellbeing is ultimately relative to a particular perspective. Perspective leaves the door open to bias, feelings, and a host of non-scientific (subjective) influences. This presents a predisposition to be wrong about our perspective, and therefore incorrectly justified in our immoral actions towards others. This is a dilemma that has plagued moral philosophy and is a topic that frequently emerges in arguments surrounding the existence of a god. 

     Although human wellbeing will invariably be an aspect of moral judgements involving humans, it is ultimately irrelevant in the actual determination of what is moral. This is not to say that morality is not important for wellbeing. Morality, at its core, is a rational acknowledgement of Truth and the actions and ideas that coincide with this Truth. Truth itself is the objective standard for moral values. In order to consistently perform a moral action in any situation, we need to know what is True of that situation. Likewise, we cannot accurately have an idea of what is moral without having an idea of what is demonstrably True. Truth is not subjective because we logically recognize that there can be only be one Truth, just as there can be only one Reality. What is Real is what is True. In our current world, people believe a whole host of incorrect things, leading us to believe in various truths: things we mistakenly believe to be True. To not be concerned with the Truth, or to not be open to being corrected, presents a fantastic source of potential harm for us. As such, the only objective moral standard  (something which is morally True in all circumstances) is a commitment to the Truth itself. Truth requires evidence. This is the source of the massive and often unseen damage caused by faith: believing in things without evidence or in spite of the evidence. Faith is tantamount to religious belief and indiscernible from gullibility. Faith is not a virtue. 

     Nestled at the heart of our cognitive functions, there exists a profound and inextricable connection between Truth and morality. Interestingly, this notion is already evident in our language. For example, the words “right” and “wrong” contain both Truth and moral elements within them. For example, if someone asks if  2 + 2 = 4, responding “right”, or even “good”, although the latter being somewhat odd,  would still indicate that the proposition was “True”. Likewise, if someone asks if punishing an innocent man is correct, we may reply, “no, that is bad”, just as we could say, “no, that is wrong”. This makes sense to us despite the common language for morality being “good” and “bad”, and the common language for Truth being “True” and “false”. This is a fascinating aspect of this proposition.

     What is True is good. What is false is bad. We recognize that acting on unTrue things is inherently morally wrong. This is a necessary condition of rational cognition. Without unjust harm and/or cognitive dissonance, there will never be a case in which something that is false is good, just as there will never be a case in which something that is True is bad. To reiterate, any actions or events contrary to this would necessarily represent some element of unjust harm or cognitive dissonance.  Coming to an understanding of what is True is how we ultimately decide what is right and wrong. As such, increasing our knowledge of any situation gives us a greater understanding of the moral imperative of that situation. This idea is illustrated by the allegory of two labs which is posted on this blog. This connection between Truth and morality is manipulated by our knowledge. As our knowledge changes or is modified, so also does our moral “compass”. Because of this, we can effectively alter our moral compass with knowledge. This is profound. It is clear that Truth itself is the objective moral standard in our Reality. We can increase our moral behavior by increasing the amount of knowledge (Truth) that we have.

     As stated previously, we require an understanding of Truth to have an understanding of what is moral. Truth is the objective moral standard. Because of this tandem nature between Truth and morality, just as logical fallacies do not provide evidence toward the Truth of a claim, these same logical fallacies alone cannot justify a moral onus because of the same logical principles. This is to say that a fallacious logical argument is necessarily a fallacious moral argument. For example, the concept of utilitarianism is morally fallacious. This is to say that utilitarianism is immoral because it is illogical. Utilitarianism is the moral equivalent of an ad populum logical fallacy. In the same way, divine command theory is morally fallacious, mirrored from the logical fallacy of argument from authority. Divine command theory is nothing more than following orders from an undemonstrated authority.  Although “the golden rule”, understood as: "treat others as you wish to be treated", is practically reasonable, it is still morally fallacious because it makes ourselves the authority and not Truth. As such, the golden rule is another form of the logically fallacious argument from authority. Furthermore, the golden rule does not eliminate our bias, as such, does not provide an accurate assessment of Truth. Kant’s categorical imperative, as understood by the maxim: "act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law” is similar to the golden rule. As such, the categorical imperative also falls victim to the logical fallacy of argument from authority in which the authority is the self. Another moral philosophy, moral absolutism, fails to recognizes the nuance of a particular circumstance, becoming something similar to a false equivalence logical fallacy. We recognize that we must have knowledge (Truth) of a situation before we can make a moral decision about the situation. Currently, the most accurate moral philosophy is that of cultural relativism, with the knowledge (Truth) of that culture dictating the moral structure of that culture. The massively interconnected world we live in brings supreme complications to this idea. Our collective inability to identify Truth is the source of tremendous injustice and harm in the world. 

    We recognize that religion often promotes social cohesion and community. As an evolved social species, these elements of religion are critical to a functioning society. Faith on the other hand is not required for religion. This should hopefully illustrate the strength of secular morality, a system which relies on evidence to determine what is True, and therefore a far greater moral proposition. The million dollar question is, “how do we determine what is actually True?” Let’s take a look. 

MBTI: a powerful tool to better understand who we are

     The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a helpful tool to discover more about yourself and others. It lends insight into behavior and motivation, strengths and weaknesses. The more we understand about ourselves the better we can contribute to society. Here are the results of my test. 

 (image from personality central)

Faith is not evidence

What is faith?

     Faith is the reason provided for our god belief. Colloquially, faith has come to mean “hope”, “a sense of wonder”, “a recognition of what’s possible”, or even “allegiance”. Faith has also come to mean “a source of encouragement”. Although these are generally considered positive characteristics, none of these definitions present logical or verifiably consistent routes to the actual Truth of an idea, much less the Truth of a god idea. Faith alone, is the belief in something without evidence. As such, faith is very difficult to distinguish from gullibility. The clearest distinction between the two words (faith and gullibility) is how they sound to an audience. Audiences will generally agree the word “faith” sounds positive, and agree the word “gullibility” sounds very negative. In general, we may also think of the gullible as eventually seeing the error of their ways, “gullibility” seems to have some conclusion associated with it’s meaning. In this way, we can understand faith as romanticized gullibility. The intention of this statement is not to be offensive, although with this topic, being unintentionally offensive is unfortunately inevitable. Each of the vastly different faiths on Earth would find offense in these statements. It is not possible for all of our faiths to be True. Furthermore, the vast majority of us have been asked to defend our faith. This is where the entire field of christian apologetics comes from. Do we have a different definition of faith? The book of Hebrews, chapter 11, is a great place to start. We should all read our faith-based books much more. Coming to an understanding about this issue will help all of us. In a metaphorical sense, faith is the language of the imagination.

     When we confront this conversation, we may want to suggest that faith is actually evidence. Faith is not evidence. Faith is maintaining a belief without scientific evidence, or even in spite of scientific evidence. If the goal is to find Truth, then we do not logically need faith if we have evidence. Faith demands 100% certainty in our beliefs. How strong is our faith in our god? 

What is Truth?

     Truth is an explanation of what is and what is not. Truth is Reality. Any proposed explanation (known as a hypothesis or claim) put forward to answer the question of “what is True?”, or “what is Real?” requires evidence to validate the claim. The more evidence there is for a claim, then the more likely it is to be True. A claim without evidence cannot be logically accepted as True (yet). While an unsupported claim is not necessary false, it cannot currently be logically accepted as Truth. In general, logic is the system through which we most quickly identify Truth. In a more poetic sense, logic is the language of Truth. 

     Without evidence available, the only logical belief is skepticism or uncertainty. Skepticism is the default position for any claim. When developing a hypothesis (claim), the burden of proof belongs to the person making any claim of Truth. Of note, the default position must logically be disbelief (or skepticism) for any new claim proposed. This default position is also referred to as the null hypothesis. Disbelief is a logical necessity for the following reasons. First, if the default position were to automatically accept the claim as True until someone else demonstrated otherwise, then the claim would be True unless we were able to disprove it. It is not always possible to demonstrate something doesn’t exist. Secondly, all things cannot be True. Because of these reasons, a claim must always be met first with skepticism and the burden of proof belongs to the person making a new claim. 

  Skepticism is an engine toward truth. Skepticism is a logical and critical examination of the facts presented, meticulously reaching conclusions about what is True as the evidence mounts. Faith (or believing in a claim without actual evidence) is not an engine toward Truth. Faith is an engine toward feeling good about things we don’t actually know. Faith is synonymous with gullibility, guessing about an outcome for which we may not have any evidence for.

Daniel Dennett: the secret to happiness

(image courtesy of quotefancy)

Logic 101: the burden of proof

     The burden of proof identifies the default position in the step-wise process in our understanding of True things. This is where the logical obligation to provide evidence rests. This is a fundamental aspect of rational thought and reasoning. 

     If we present a claim toward Truth, then the burden of proof falls squarely on the idea we have presented.

  #appreciatefineart

     If the evidence presented does not satisfy the burden of proof, then the belief in the claim is not logically justified. It therefore cannot be considered True (yet).

     Skepticism is logically the default position for any claim, always. Logically, to shift the burden of proof causes anything we can imagine to become true to us. This is not logical as everything cannot be True. The position of skepticism (or the position that does not claim a relationship between ideas) is known as the null hypothesis. 

Faith and selfishness

    To begin, let’s distinguish self-care and selfishness. Self-care is a necessary aspect of our existence, self-care becomes selfishness when our wellbeing comes without concern for the values of others. We can recognize that we are just one part of a larger whole, or in the more eloquent language of Brian Miller: “our world is a shared experience, fractured by individual perspectives”. Human beings have inherent value, to ignore this is void of virtue and ignores the Truth.

     There is insightful research indicating a strong correlation between religiosity and selfishness (Cell, 2015).  This research indicates that children from non-religious households were more altruistic with an anonymous beneficiary than children from religious households. This insight is contrary to the religious narrative that god is the objective moral standard, and therefore without a god we cannot possibly know what is right and what is wrong. This assertion leads to the widespread belief that atheists are morally suspect and untrustworthy. This can be a frustrating aspect for atheists as belief in a god is not indicative of upright moral character. Although it logically follows that an objective standard is necessary consistently determine right and wrong, it is not logical that god is this objective standard. There has yet to be any actual evidence for the existence of god. As such, god is perpetually found not-guilty for the crime of existence.

     One of the most selfish tendencies is the belief that the local religion we were born into (at the precise time in history that we were born) provides us knowledge of the one True god. It is very hard to describe how phenomenally selfish this belief is. To address this, some theists will claim that all gods are actually the same. It is not possible that all gods are the same as their own definitions make them mutually exclusive. This magnificent selfish tendency stems from faith: believing ideas to be True without evidence or contrary to the actual evidence. Faith is clearly not a reliable path to Truth. Without verifiably knowing what is True to begin with, we cannot make a consistent moral decision. This is why Truth is our objective moral standard. In conclusion, not being responsible with the Truth is by definition immoral, tantamount to faith, and typically indicative of selfish behavior.

    The philosopher Daniel Dennett has an especially pertinent quote: “The secret to happiness: find something larger than you are and dedicate your life to it”. Hopefully we can recognize that our shared humanity is very much larger than we are. 

Why does Truth matter? an allegory

     Let's imagine the following allegory: 

     Two laboratories exist that currently cannot communicate with one another. Both labs perform research on the same vitamin and have their own respective patients. The vitamin has the same impact on all patients and the impact has always been the same. Additionally, all patients and both labs currently believe that the vitamin has a positive health benefit. With this in place, let’s now imagine that lab #1 discovers evidence that the vitamin actually causes cancer. Lab #2 and their patients are not yet aware of this knowledge. 

     From the perspective of lab #1, we (hopefully) agree that it is now an immoral act to provide the vitamin to their patients (we can assume that none of the patients want cancer). If the vitamins were prescribed to the patients anyway, we would (hopefully) consider this action unethical (immoral). 

     From the perspective of lab #2 (which has no knowledge of the cancer causing issue), we agree that prescribing the vitamins is still a moral act despite the fact that all of these patients will still get cancer. We recognize that the objective moral standard in each scenario is the awareness of knowledge (the available Truth). This is why Truth matters.

     At this point in the story, we have lab #1 no longer prescribing vitamins while lab #2 continues to prescribe the vitamins to their own set of patients. Every action in this allegory was moral despite the very different impacts on wellbeing. 

     From our perspective (as the omniscient reader) we can (hopefully) see a very different side to this story. We can understand how knowledge of Truth is required before a moral decision can be made. Furthermore, we understand the incredible importance of accurate (True) information within a society. We can also imagine the damgage of widespread false belief. Simply put, as our knowledge increases, so also does our ability to undertand moral decisions. If our goal is to reduce harm, then believing in True things is critical in doing so. 

     Faith is not a path to Truth. Faith is synonymous with gullibility. In our current world, 1000’s of faiths exist across the world. All faiths cannot be True. All faiths can be false. 

    Final test question: is there a moral obligation to share this knowledge with those who are currently unaware of the harm? 

(illusration produced by non-existent art team)

#thoughtprovokingThursday

Faith is neither scientific nor ubiquitous

     Faith in a particular god (or God or GOD) is tantamount to many religious beliefs. The bible most notably defines faith in Hebrews 11 (NIV): 

“Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”.  

     In addition to this, many theologians and modern christian apologists (professional defenders of religion) have (re)defined faith in the following way: "the remaining bit of confidence for a belief when evidence doesn’t provide 100% certainty.". In doing so, modern apologists have seemingly accomplished a major goal of making faith an integral part of non-religious beliefs as well.  The idea of faith is now synonymous with a ubiquitous scientific concept: “confidence”. As we recognize, only deductive claims (that are both sound and valid) can be known with 100% certainty. All scientific claims are known with something less than 100% certainty (albeit 99.999999999999+%) due to the requirement of evidential falsifiability. Because of this fact, the apologist can now assert that faith is integral aspect of science itself. 

     To many this may feel like a frustrating “checkmate” position as this massive “movement of the goalposts” actually seems to be reasonable. In reality, this doesn’t present a problem whatsoever as the simple question remains:

What is the actual evidence for the god belief? 

     No matter how much confidence (or this newly redefined faith) we have in a belief, our beliefs cannot be rationally considered as Truth unless there is actual evidence to support the claim. In other words, no matter how faith is defined, Truth requires evidence. 

Top 4: logical fallacies for a god belief

     1) ad populum fallacy: Appealing to popularity to support a claim. Appealing to the fact that many people do something or believe something to validate your claim.

     example: “everybody around me believes this, of course it must be True.”

 another example: ”This has been around for thousands of years, not everyone could have been wrong.”

     The number of people that believe something tells us nothing about the validity of the claim. This may be easier to understand if we look at one of those “other” societies. Another question: If we were the last person on the planet to still hold our faith-based religious belief, then would we still believe it? 

     2) Fallacy of not having enough time to understand, or not being able to understand a claim, or not liking the idea of the claim, etc.- suggesting that our lack of understanding or attitude towards a claim has anything to do with the possible Truth of a claim.

     example: “I don’t understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, therefore it must be wrong.” or “I don’t believe Darwin’s Theory of Evolution because I don’t want to be related to a gorilla”. This is one we will run into very often when discussing complicated things. This type of fallacy is often associated with willful ignorance As a reminder, Reality doesn’t require any one individual’s approval or recognition for its existence. Did anybody hear that tree fall?

 Particularly valuable here is the phrase, “I don’t know (yet)”. 

 We will discuss this idea in more depth in other posts. This fallacy described here is often referred to as the fallacy of personal incredulity or the argument from ignorance.   

     3) burden of proof fallacy- attempting to shift the burden of proof to justify our position. 

 example: “You cannot seem to disprove my claim that the blue 7-legged unicorn is real. Because you can’t disprove it, it therefore must be real….duh!“

     It is critical we understand exactly where the burden of proof rests when discussing the Truth of any claim. This may seem relatively simple, but this idea often becomes very lost and distorted in conversation. 

     4) confidence fallacy - suggesting the amount of confidence we have is somehow relevant to how True our claim is. 

     example: “My friend was unable to explain the Theory of evolution to me. Because of his lack of confidence I am going to assume evolution isn’t a real thing.”

 another example: “My friend was able to talk at length about how the Earth is exactly 5012 years old. He was so eloquent plus he had charts and graphs and everything. I am going to believe him because he was so confident!”

     This one is a big league part of our conversations surrounding faith. Because we are asked by our religious institutions to have complete 100% confidence in god, we will often feel as though we are right. Feelings are not an indicator of Truth. Likewise, if we have conversations with people who are not 100% confident, we may feel as though we “won” the conversation because of our confidence in our belief. 

reminder: the only thing that matters in the determination of Truth is logical reasoning and evidence. 

the Truth is still the Truth

The fear of being wrong: an obstacle to Truth and morality

     One of the largest barriers we face in recognizing Truth or investigating our beliefs is the fear of being wrong. Nobody enjoys the feeling of being wrong especially about our most personal and valuable beliefs. Because of this, an investigation into the beliefs (or even an honest conversation about our beliefs) often represents a risk that is not worth taking. Additionally, if we are more interested in feeling good about the belief rather than the actual Truth of the belief, then to critically investigate our beliefs may feel very uncomfortable. For many of us, the very fact of investigating can only end up with a bad outcome: it wasn’t True after all. 

     Once we are convinced that the belief isn’t True, changes necessarily occur. How we choose to identify may change. How our friends and family treat us may change.  Our entire social community may change. Change is extremely hard for us because life is already hard. Shaking things up in your life and then finding your path again seems far to formidable a task to many people.  We already have our routines. We already have our schedules. As such, the fear of being wrong and having things change is a risk not worth taking. 

     If we are interested in gaining knowledge, then as we make learn, there is a very large chance we will be wrong at some point. This is a logical expectation. We could think about being wrong as progress actually: we are crossing one wrong idea of off the table, and therefore one step closer to the Truth.  We recognize that we must understand the Truth of a situation before we can have a True moral compass within that situation. In other words, we cannot know what is morally correct if we don’t know what is actually True to begin with. As such, we should encourage doubt and skepticism skepticism and doubt are both engines toward Truth. Furthermore, the Truth will always survive any amount of investigation, skepticism, or doubt that is applied to it. Lastly, overcoming the fear of being wrong is emotionally freeing and morally necessary. We could all be wrong. How do we determine what is True? 

(*psst* Truth requires evidence) 

(*psst again* faith is not evidence) 

What is the difference between belief and knowledge?

Understanding the difference between our beliefs and our knowledge is critical to an understanding of Truth. This is critical because Truth is the foundation for our moral compass. Let's take a look at the difference between belief and knowledge. 

To understand the difference between belief and knowledge we need to understand how each is defined. Beliefs, are those things that we personally understand to be True but may not actually be True. As such, our opinions, personal testimony, and anecdotal evidence all fall within this category. Belief is not a choice. Belief is an involuntary action occurring after our own internal standard for evidence has been met. Belief is the necessary result of being convinced. It is important to recognize that our own internal standard of evidence is not equivalent to scientific (actual) evidence. Lastly, knowledge is a subset of belief.

Knowledge is defined as the small fraction of our beliefs that actually meet the scientific standard of evidence. As such, knowledge represents the small fraction of our beliefs that are actually True. Therefore knowledge is by definition "True beliefs". 

As mentioned previously, knowledge is a subset of Truth. The absolute Truth of things don't change whether we have knowledge of it or not. Alternatively, our own awareness of the Truth can change as we obtain more knowledge. Because of this, the apparent Truth (from our perspective) can change with time. Truth is the objective standard for morality. This last point is an idea which will be addressed in other posts. 

In a Venn Diagram, these ideas would be illustrated as follows:

Beautiful quote... 😀

What is evidence anyway?

     Evidence is the term applied to the information indicating whether a claim (synonym for a belief, hypothesis, statement, or argument) is True or not.

Because we are imperfect systems (we are fallible), the information provided to support a claim of Truth must satisfy each of the following three ideas.

1) the information must be observable (measurable).

-we must be able to measure the claim in some way. 

If the evidence to support your claim is not observable, then it becomes impossible to detect. If we cannot detect it whatsoever, then we cannot logically include this as evidence toward your claim. 

2) the information must be repeatable.

-we must be able to repeat the findings through experimentation. Findings that are not repeatable through subsequent testing cannot be used as evidence. This is another word for a miracle. Most faith-based religions we have recognize miracles as a source for our justification in a god-belief. Because our senses are faulty, we cannot use a single incident as evidence of anything. Is there a greater chance that the laws of space and time were bent for us personally, or that our blood sugar may have been a bit low? We require repetition to eliminate known errors of our senses and our bias. 

3) the information must be falsifiable (testable). 

-we cannot use circular logic to support our claim. It is not logical to say something is True because it is True. Likewise, it is not logical to say something is True because it cannot be proven false (outside of pure deduction). To be falsifiable is synonymous with our claim being testable. Logically, these two words have nearly identical meaning. Something which cannot be proven false is synonymous with it not being testable in the first place.  Therefore, if the evidence cannot be demonstrated to be possibly be wrong then we logically cannot use towards the validity of a claim. 

     Because we could always be mistaken (and are innately biased), the scientific process as a whole requires a level of peer-review to further process any evidence provided toward a claim of Truth.

Truth and morality: an inseparable love affair

     Truth itself is the objective standard for our morality. Logic and reason (including the scientific method) are the only current demonstrable paths we have to understand what is True. As such, faith is not a path to Truth as we require evidence to determine what is True. Additionally, because we are not omnipotent, we (humans) by definition do not understand the whole Truth. Our understanding of morality is therefore subjective in any situation we may encounter. 

     Furthermore, Truth changes with time as we (humanity) continue to learn about ourselves and our environment. This is why our morals change (hopefully improve) with time and also why scientific education is so critical to a functioning society. 

Morality without a god?

     The question, “How can an objective morality exist without a god?” is one that plagues philosophers. Modern day philosophers tend to fall into one of a few broad categories: 

1) objective morality comes from god (typically the theist argument)

2) objective morality comes from wellbeing (typically the atheist argument) 

     There are problems with both of these positions. First, with the theist argument, this represents a logical fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam, or an argument from authority. Something isn’t true because an authority has simply said it, even if that person is “god”. If this were True, then if god decided that slavery or rape was moral would it become moral? Hopefully the answer is no. This is summarized in the euthyphro dilemma: “Is something good because god says so, or does goodness exist outside of god?” 

     In terms of modern atheist arguments for morality, in which morality is defined as collective wellbeing, a different type of problem arises. This particular argument takes the form of the logical fallacy argumentum ad populum, or an argument from popularity. The argument from popularity suggests that whatever the most people say is True becomes True. As such, this type of morality is essentially saying whatever the most people say is moral, becomes moral. This system of morality would not prevent oppression of any minority group that has ever existed. We recognize that allowing the majority to determine what is good for the whole has provided a recipe for disaster which has played out in history countless times.

     We hopefully recognize that each side of the debate is missing a critical factor: the element of Truth. As an atheist, I would argue that objective morality comes from Truth itself and rational actions that arise from this understanding. Truth is determined by logic and reason (including the scientific method). Additionally, faith is not a pathway to Truth. Our own individual understanding of morality is by definition subjective as we cannot be aware of the complete Truth. There is an inextricable connection between Truth and morality that we need to understand.  As we can see, there are many, MANY more elements of this philosophy that need to be defined and elaborated.

To be continued…

Food for thought - an interesting quote

My first post: an open letter to the faithful

Hello Friends,

     To summarize my thoughts and emotions in brief: I love you guys, but I am afraid that we are very lost. It is tremendously clear to me that reason and rational thought are the best way to solve problems as we navigate through Reality. We also recognize that we require an understanding of Truth before we can make a moral decision. Yet, for many of us, we will voluntarily dismiss these tools of rational thought when we actually encounter a problem. Even worse, we celebrate this dismissal and have given it a revered title: “faith”. Faith is believing in something without evidence. Many of us may use faith to find escape in an otherwise inescapable situation. I understand this. What I do not understand, is why we have prioritized faith outside of these scenarios? Why do we desire and promote faith in our schools, government, and our daily lives? Why do we desire faith in our friends and family? Together, we can solve today’s problems so they do not exist for us tomorrow. The ability to solve these problems is where our genuine wellbeing rests. We exist in a shared experience. We desperately need one another.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities ” - Voltaire, 17th century philosopher

“When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer”

-Stevie Wonder, 21st century musician

If I am wrong, then please let me know why I am wrong. I am desperately trying to reconnect with you all.  I am very open to being corrected. Why do we continue to believe in things for which there is no evidence? Why do we continue to believe in things that we don’t understand?

Much love