confusism demystified...

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

-- André Gide

Well, I guess you've got to start somewhere... What is faith? By most definitions, it involves having a conviction in something for which you have no evidence. People have, probably since the advent of sentient thought, created stories to explain how we got here, our purpose for being here, and what happens after we "depart" (which also assumes that we "go somewhere else"). The interesting thing about this litany of faiths is that they share many common concepts, providing fuel for thousands of comparative religion theses, but that they're all different. Moreover, since those stories are communicated by their originators to others via spoken and written word ambiguities are introduced.

Many words we use from day to day have reasonably concrete meanings because they are tied to physical objects or places we can touch or visit, but words related to faith are much more subjective because, by definition, they have little grounding in our physical reality. There is no guarantee that a person hearing one story of faith will appreciate its ramification, inspiration, or spirit in the way its teller intended. As a result, when someone adheres to a defined faith - and most of the organised religious of the world feature exhaustive definitions of faith, the official telling of their story as, well, gospel - it's never clear what they actually believe. The only thing that is clear is that those people want to be associated with other people who use the same name to describe their faith, nothing more. That's where my troubles start.

So, the question: is everyone's subjective faith in something simply a different perspective on the same real something, or are there as many disconnected faiths as there are people who, either consciously or unconsciously, espouse faith? I don't know. I also suspect (or at least have faith) that no one else knows either. This inability to know is the fundamental problem. Many forceful or eloquent people can achieve an effective "proof by assertion" - where they simply say that something is true. That was a very effective practice in the middle ages when the Catholic Church tortured and killed anyone who in any way contradicted the teaching of the Church (they also figured out ways in which people they just didn't get along with were somehow being "blasphemous" and killed them too, just to be safe). Arguably, today, where dipping one's toe into the waters of the media is like trying to sip daintily from a firehose, proof by assertion is more prevalent than ever. Of all the decisions we each make every day (which brand of toilet paper or toothpaste to purchase, whether drinking Coke will, in fact make us sexier or give us cancer, etc.), who actually has time to research each on its merits. Very few of us can afford to follow up more than a few of the uncertainties (our chosen "causes") in our lives to develop an informed position. In order to simplify our lives, we are forced to put our faith in those who have every reason not to be trustworthy... Does that proposition make anyone else uncomfortable? Yup, you have to pick your battles, and the one I return to relatively frequently is faith.

One person can argue with another about their respective faiths until the cows come home, but neither will get any closer to being right. What can happen, however, is that one or both of them will alter or refine, or perhaps even swap wholesale, their faith based on the discussion. This altering of faith, tuning it based on experience, based on learning, is the part that interests me. What it assumes is that faith is a fluid, relative thing, more of a function of its holders and their whim than of some universal absolute floating out there somewhere.

Realising this, at one stage I thought - well, what do I want to get out of life? What is my primary need or desire? To do good things, have rich, palpable experiences, to share with others, feel that I've earned what I achieve, and to have fun (they're usually the same thing, in my experience). To me that philosophy is sort of a "meta faith" in that, in order to achieve that purpose, I strive to find faith that supports that behaviour. So for me, the path of exploring faith helps me to live my purpose. So why should I look at my faith as something that has, at some point time, to be carved in stone, made a cornerstone of my identity? Just as my maturity, self image, priorities, and circumstances change every day, why can't my faith?

Every day brings new weather, a different light in the sky, new stimuli and responses in variety beyond my ability to predict or comprehend (so I, somewhat presumptuously, assert that it's "infinite variety"). As my life tries to find the level of the riverbed as it shifts underneath me, so to does my idea of faith - it is a seemingly paradoxical faith characterised by uncertainty... I believe that while the desire for faith is fundamental to our human condition, it differs for each of us in flavour and associations. As a result, my faith of one is one that is allowed to be ethereal, impossible to pin down precisely, sometimes internally inconsistent, but always as honest as language allows it to be. I call my faith confusism, because I like the idea of embracing change, and don't align myself with what I see as a prevalent need to apply certainty to something which is inherently human and therefore subject to emotion, irrationality, and - sometimes uncomfortable and unsettling and sometimes altogether delightful - chaos.

If you want an omlet, you gotta break a few eggs... Life is sloppy - live with it.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

-- André Gide

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Added on 21 May 2003 after an email discussion with a friend...:

I was raised as a Quaker (aka the "Society of Friends") and even went to a Quaker college (Haverford), which bases things like its Honour Code on its Quaker heritage. But for the rest of my life I've had very few positive experiences that I can in any way relate to Christianity (or any other "formal" religion). I have, however, in my study of history, seen innumerable examples of horrible, unconscionable things done in the name of the Church (well, various "churches").

Those human acts - even petty ones like religious intolerance, separatism, exclusivity, etc. performed in the name of religion have forever sullied its image in my mind and I cannot feel any allegience to them. For it to have meaning for me, religion must be separate from that, based on my own sense of moral and ethical "rightness" and unpolluted by the acts of weak individuals in the past. I saw the film, "Magdalene Sisters", a few nights ago which is a case in point... True sickness in the name of faith. Don't get me wrong - although I don't even agree with Christianity in theory (I don't see Jesus as anything more than a wise and benevolent man), I don't fault its underlying building blocks. I see most of the "10 Commandments" and other tenents as common rules of civilisation, nothing unique to Christianity or any other established religion. It's the human interpretation of Christianity that leaves me feeling oh-so-cold, and something I could never embrace.

So on I look, endeavouring never to become smug or resolute in my confusion (as so many of the pious of any established faith tend to - the number of people I've talked to who can't imagine anyone who's "Godless" being a good person or even knowing right from wrong is very discouraging - and an image I'm trying to change with my own example), and continue living up to my (admittedly simple) modus operandi: spread joy and confusion.