Excerpts from discussions in my Religion and Popular Culture course at Pima College:
QUESTION:
QUESTION:
1. Do you think that everyone - naturalists and theists alike - practices a faith lifestyle? Explain.
MY QUICK RESPONSE:
It seems best, for our purposes, to understand "faith" as a synonym for "trust" and in doing so, to view it not as a noun - simply a confidence or reliance or a belief - but rather as a verb form: "to place trust in," "to believe in," "to be reliant upon." I know that sound painfully basic, but at the core, so is the action of placing trust.
In this way, an atheist will "place trust in" science, reason, arguments and the like; and this is not bad but good. A theist will likewise "place trust in" all these same things - with obvious boundaries - but will trust most deeply in the central 'object' of one's trust, Theos, or God.
I've lived part of my life as an atheist, part as an agnostic, part as a shirt-pocket theist (God is whoever I say he/she is), and today as a non-religious Jesus follower.
One interesting thing I've learned is this. Of all the commonalities - and there are many - associated with various world and life views, i.e., various forms of theistic belief/non-belief, there is one major difference.
It is the concept of 'grace' or 'favor' without our meriting it. Of all the world religions and all the arguments against them, shining as a unique gem is the deep mystery of grace, that the person of God would favor us and take initiative toward us. To anyone who has experienced this dramatic encounter, it stands as a proof for God's existence like no other argument could. And with this encounter comes an imputed "trust" or "faith," a capacity "to believe in God" that was neither self-produced nor present before. Perhaps this is why foremost Christian philosopher and thinker Alvin Plantinga can argue that a Christian's experience of God is a cogent proof for God.
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