Faith in Politics
“Don't force your religious views on me. Religion has no place in politics. Believe what you want to in private but don't impose your views on the rest of us.”
These statements come from a belief that there are two worlds, faith and reason. This belief holds that faith is a personal matter, something akin to a preference for vanilla over chocolate. Reason on the other hand is public. It is supported by observable data which can be used to make public decisions.
There is a problem with this kind of thinking. It doesn't work. There are not two worlds. The truth is that we all live in one world and it is a world that has at its core, a miracle. Some people don't believe in miracles but non-belief does not make the miracle go away. The truth is, we and our world are here. That we are here is a miracle because something does not come from nothing.
People of faith don't have a problem explaining where they came from or how the universe came to be. They come right out and say it was a miracle. That which was before everything created everything. Their leap of faith is based on reason. If we are here, if the planets and the universe are here, someone or something made it happen.
People of reason do have a problem explaining where we came from. If they call themselves naturalists, they believe that nothing exists beyond nature. The don't have room in their beliefs for supernatural events. The problem comes when they try to explain the very first event. Why is anything here at all? Nothing comes from nothing but when the world around us is observed, it is clear that something exists. Naturalists must abandon reason and take a leap of faith to believe that something came from nothing.
So, we all live in one world and that world is a miracle. We are all people of faith.
Further reading:
Escape from Reason by Francis Schaeffer for more on faith and reason...
Cosmological argument – Wikipedia discussion of the “first cause” argument...
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