Respecting Faith

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m agnostic.

This doesn’t mean I’m “sitting on the fence” or that I’m afraid to make a decision. It means that I have no faith that I truly believe in, but I’m open minded to the idea of a higher power. I am not using this as some half-baked justification for the meaning of life. I personally believe that the universe’s existence could very well have been designed with purpose, and that the universe itself could be that perceived higher consciousness (for is that not what omnipotence is?). If there was such a higher being, I’m not sure it’d exist in any form we could fathom.

I’m certainly not saying that you have to be at least agnostic to respect other people’s faiths. Some people – and I won’t say atheists, for that in itself is a label of sorts – some people are just rude. Some people take personal offense to religion, as if those who have faiths are telling them that their children died for a reason and that they shouldn’t be sad. And that, I suppose I can understand, even if I don’t agree with it; grief can become this complex monstrosity that warps the world around you. In that hell of a state of mind, some things just twist you the wrong way.

What I cannot stand is when people look at those who follow a religion and look down on them as a lesser person. Those who look at someone with complete conviction and tell them they’re fools, they’re just desperate beings attempting to rationalise their lives, that only science holds the true key. Who are you to tell somebody what to believe? Who are you to insult their very core? And, of course, the heart of discussions such as these; if you’re telling them they can’t prove it, can you disprove it? Science is all about the search for facts, and the open-mindedness that your theories can be wrong, and attempting to disprove yourself in order to strengthen your findings. And here is somebody who lives their life like they want, believing in their faith as wholly and trustingly as you do your science, and you have the nerve to tell this person that they are not only wrong, but somehow less intelligent for having the strength – and I maintain that it is a strength – to follow something which has not presented itself in fact? It’s called faith for a reason. The idea is that your faith is a bond of trust, that physical proof isn’t required to acknowledge the way the world is and that you’re stronger, purer, kinder for it.

Sidenote: Who even says that science and faith can’t be mutually exclusive? There are plenty of scientists who are also religious.

Do not get me wrong, people can believe what they want. If you’re an atheist, that’s to be respected as much as if you’re religious. I’m not speaking to groups of people here, but individuals. Evil has been born in both religious and non-religious people, for it is not our beliefs that define us. That’s a whole other kettle of tea. You are not purely atheist or purely religious, for there is so much more context to our identities than that. What ultimately drives us to do what we do is something only we can answer on an individual basis, and to judge any group of people by the actions of one who belongs, or believes themselves to belong to it is what we call “prejudice”.

I just wish people wouldn’t be hostile to each other, and I personally see far more of it from people of no faith to people with it than vice-verca. What always gets me is that the reason some people lash out at those of religious belief is because they claim that they are ignorant. But these people are attacking others without stopping to consider the wider context of what faith is, what prejudice is, who this person is and what they’re saying to them, and that is the very definition of ignorance.