"The Myth of the Faithless Human"

 

The Myth of the Faithless Human

By George Knight, adapted from a chapter in his book Myths in Adventism, pp. 130-132. (c) 1999.

Adapted by Gary L. Clendenon, 2024.

Click to see my previous post from this book "The Myth of the Sacred and the Secular"

All men are essentially religious in the sense that they live by faith, even though they may disclaim that fact with the greatest zeal and sincerity. It is not possible to make statements about reality without first having a theory for arriving at truth and, on the other hand, a theory of truth cannot be developed without first having a concept of reality. Human beings find themselves caught in the web of circularity. Nothing can be known for certain in the sense of the final and ultimate proof that is open and acceptable to all men. Every person—the skeptic and the agnostic, the scientist and the businessman, the Hindu and the Christian—lives by a faith. Each of us must individually make a “faith-choice” and a commitment to a way of life. All men live by faith in the basic beliefs they have chosen.

This fact does not come as much of a shock to the Christian, but it disturbs the average “secular” individual who has scientific “proof” for his beliefs. What such a person fails to realize is that science rests upon a set of unprovable assumptions that humanity must accept by faith. Thus, “naturalistic” science, when isolated, is in effect a religious alternative to Christianity. Science as method is valid in the sense that it can discover regularities in the physical world. But when science becomes a view of reality it has exited the realm of proven facts and entered the realm of metaphysics and religion and stands on the same faith basis as any other system of belief. Harvard’s George Buttrick wrote that “secularism is not objectivity, but a faith after its own kind.”

People cannot escape religious choice. A choice against God is still a religious decision. One cannot avoid individual responsibility to relate to Christ by pretending that He doesn’t exist. Religious reality encompasses all aspects of our lives. Neither can a person escape placing faith in something, since life becomes meaningless without an aim larger than our individual selves. J.E. Barnhart said it this way “the unbeliever is also a believer.” Marxism, for example, despite its antireligious attitude, has all the attributes of a formal religion, with its sacred writings, prophets, and holy places. We might say the same about “civil religion” in the United States, which sets forth the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as its basic documents, has rituals surrounding such “holi-days” as Thanksgiving and Independence Day, and has shrines such as the Lincoln Memorial, which, according to Ira Eisenstein, “is visited by Americans in a spirit similar to that which animates the Jew who stands before the Western Wall” and has a religious experience. Belief in meaninglessness thus becomes a faith that meaninglessness is at the base of human existence. Meaninglessness, therefore, becomes a criterion for ordering life’s priorities and activities. In short, all people have chosen to believe in something.