Belief or Faith?

Once upon a time…there was a young girl named Amerilda. Amerilda was a commoner whom spent most of her time planting flowers in her garden. One day a prince from the next village offered to help her out. From the moment he gazed into her eyes they both fell in love with each other. They got married a month later and…lived happily ever after. This is an example of a fairytale common in the imagination of many of us today. In this fairytale you have the ‘perfect’ gentleman who pursues and marries a young lady besides her commonness. I have often heard comments from young ladies who state, “I believe that one day I will find a perfect gentleman”. Just recently saw a poster that illustrated the opposite. The caption read, “Women waiting for the perfect gentleman”. The illustration was skeletons sitting around a table, implying that time will run out if you wait for that ‘perfect’ gentleman. What becomes very important in my illustration is two terms: belief and faith. Before beginning my discussion by saying perfect gentleman I imply that the individual is without any flaws or errors.

Faith is something in which someone has confidence or trust but actually has to proof or evidence to support that. In this sense, young teenagers who believe that they will end up finding the ideal gentleman have faith that such a person exists, or in other words, they have faith that fairytales exist. The idea of a perfect gentleman actually existing is ridiculous because there is no way that one can actually prove that a ‘perfect’ individual actually exists. In an Islamic context the only person who is considered to be perfect is God, and yet still there is no way to prove this. Therefore, it is nothing but faith.

On the other hand, a ‘belief’ which Lopez discusses, is not the same as faith as it requires some sort of evidence or past experience to support it. The idea is that if you have no evidence at all for something then one cannot believe in it. For example, older women who have had experience dating men will actually believe that there really is no perfect gentleman that exists based on their experience. In other words, someone’s experience can become evidential because one can prove whether or not such a gentleman exists by having multiple partners. Of course belief does not deal with any certainties, in the event that finding a perfect gentleman may be likely, but the chances are slim to none.

So the question is then, how does this relate to religion? I believe that religious belief should be reinterpreted to religious faith. There is no evidence at all that supports the “truth” of religion. In other words, any attempt to put ‘truth’ to any religious material is always contested which goes against claims of ‘truth’. In other words, there in ‘truth’ unless there is physical evidence that support such claims.

However, there are some who claim that they have personal experiences with God and therefore they have evidence so it is belief. I will argue the opposite because there still needs to be some evidential dimension. In this light, personal experience that cannot be proven loses all claims in believing in something. If belief was totally based on personal experiences then any ordinary person can claim that they communicate with God can argue that their belief is a valid one, even though the opposite is true.

Ultimately, religion is a constructed phenomenon that should not be directly equated with belief but rather with faith.