On hope as a defense of faith

JT Eberhard - July 16th, 2009 in Sandbox 7 votes Vote Up! Vote Down!

One of the worries that inevitably gets raised when criticizing faith is, “Where do we get hope if not from faith?” I’ve made a somewhat egocentric mistake in thinking that because the answer seemed obvious to me, that it would for others. I will now take the opportunity to rectify that mistake.

First, hope does not equate to truth. The truth sometimes can be downright unpleasant, since it does not conform to our sense of wishful thinking the way religions do. So you need to ask yourself what your priority is: do you want your beliefs to be true or simply positive? They cannot always be the same. There is a very large (and consequential difference) between hoping you have won the lottery and believing you have won the lottery, and failing to draw that difference would be quite a costly mistake.

Second, hope can be found most abundantly not by embracing unreason, but by mapping out reality as accurately as we are able. Every 200 million years on average an asteroid of sufficient size to annihilate most life on Earth will strike the planet. No amount of hoping otherwise will alter this fact. However, by acknowledging this fact, we can then set our collective minds to finding a solution. It should be clear to anybody that hoping to find a solution through effort is a much more full and meaningful hope than simply hoping the collision event won’t happen. The hope of religion, in opposition to the unpleasant facts of the universe, is merely the hope of closing one’s eyes rather than facing the oncoming problem. That is not hope; it is ineffectual cowardice.

Third, an examination of Christianity will reveal that there is very little hope to be found. We have this idea of Hell, this eternity of suffering so great that every second the agony of it escapes human comprehension millions of times over, exists because god allows it to (he could easily unmake it, being omnipotent and all), and the only way to avoid it is through a lifetime of groveling and thanksgiving followed by an eternity of the same? This is hope? These are very similar to the current conditions in North Korea with the cultish atmosphere of worship created by Kim Jong Il. If you do not grovel and thank him for your very right to eat and live, you are to be punished. Is this tyrant benevolent because he allows those who bow and scrape to escape the prisons and mortal punishment that are there by his command? If this is love and benevolence, it is hard to imagine tyranny. But god’s punishment is infinitely worse, and his standards infinitely more unfair. To pass god’s test, I must not merely prostrate myself before the dictator, I must also believe that events took place that are admittedly impossible by their very definition (miracles) – a feat that I argue is impossible. This is hope?

And even if the situation weren’t so terrible, even if Christianity did offer something that really did sound appealing, is it really hope if it’s based on an untruth? I would argue that hope based on a lie is just false hope, and that it’s nothing to be proud of – especially when actual hope, the kind that can help us face the unpleasantries that exist whether we have the courage to acknowledge them or not, is attainable through intellectual honesty. We just need to learn that we can run faster without the crutch – as scared as we are to let go of it.