Disintegration of Adam in the Nothing paradise by Darwin Leon
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“Thou art great and great is Thy name in might.” Jeremiah

Countless arguments have been offered in favor of having faith in a single, almighty god, whereby the faithful might be raised to a power greater than the sum of their number and somehow be united by a higher power in which all members might have some share of the almighty power to exercise here and now. An equal share in paradise has often been promised, but those divine shares have never amounted to equal shares in the spoils obtained by the exercise of that power on Earth, and it appears that false promises were made regarding the afterlife so that the power elite might keep the dispossessed in place in this life.

Religion constitutes the worship of absolute power, whereas politics regulates the distribution of that power. Religion and politics are joined at the hip in both church and state, as we can see for instance in the power structures obtained by internal church politics, and then again in political religions with their “one nation under God” theologies couched in “liberty and justice for all” ideological terms. Brute power is tamed by liberal politics, which dilates the circle of freedom with the help of the religious suppression of the selfish self that would have all power for itself; a virtual suicide is obtained through the cultivation of that caring for others called charity – the would-be omnipotent infant soon learns that self-love must be extended to another to obtain satisfaction. Society demands a more just or broader distribution of power. Although religion is the worship of power, the power elite must share that power if they would enjoy it for long against the numbers who want it and might combine against their presidency. Politics, then, involves the relative distribution of power, originally in the form of the spoils of the hunt and rudimentary war, distributed around the campfire dedicated to the gods: the smoke, made more pungent with herbs, went to the fire god; the chef or pope and his cooks got the fat, liver and kidney; the noblest hunters and warriors enjoyed the choice muscular cuts, presumably most suited to the development of their physical powers; weaker or almost outcast people on the fringes got the charity of scraps. A cook discovered fermentation in the spoiling of food; the sacred power-beverage was passed around in a skull, and stories were told about the hunt and about the demonic people who do not have the good religion or way of life, the outlaws. After the sacred cooking and eating utensils and the articles of furniture were devised, the booty included luxuries, eventually to be piled up in sacred treasuries in temples along with armament

We are naturally inclined to faith as would-be omnipotent infants; an almighty power has no reason or cause to think, for thinking is a defensive measure. So-called innocents have an excess in faith and insufficient reason as far as others are concerned, and they are bound to realize resistance of the world and adapt to survive. Gently but firmly guided by their elders and presented with good examples to mimic and eventually mime, children shall have sufficient remaining faith to function socially long before they have religion, if they have it at all. As for forced faith or faith consciously willed, it is a response to fear of an overwhelming and generally abusive power: When someone trembles, she is told to “have faith,” and somehow that faith alone is expected to provide her with some share of power to steady her self and stand fast, or at least lie still instead of fighting back, and thus shall she be eventually rescued from being thoroughly crushed by the dominant and sometimes merciful lord of the domain. Faith in salvation by an imaginary almighty is not all that it is claimed to be; religious skepticism may be the most rewarding course to follow in the direst of circumstances: a cloth that Jesus reportedly wiped his face with was hung from the city ramparts, but the city perished nevertheless; the peasants who flew the rainbow banner were promised invincibility, but they perished at the hands of professional soldiers. Lately, Christian troops returning from Iraq have said that the old adage is false, for many atheists are in fact found in foxholes. According to the Apocryphal Gospel of Peter, Jesus the addressed the highest power in this manner: "And the Lord cried out aloud saying: ‘My power, my power, thou hast forsaken me.’ And when he had so said, he was taken up." We assume that Jesus survived the ascension, and so it would seem that Jesus was saved not by faith at all but rather in his greatest moment of doubt.

But let us give faith another chance to work its miracles. Even devils have faith in the gods they love to hate lest there be no gods at all to work their ruin and thereby define their devious existence. If what we know is not the thing-in-itself but our limited notion of it, our rational belief verified by perception still partakes of faith in things unseen. The philosophers seek Being and wind up empty handed, with Nothing; yet what is is, is, and nothing else is besides. We do not see an abstract name or a class of being such as ‘man’ walking about independently of particular men and women who nevertheless prove that universal man does have being; and likewise for other universals or absolute terms, nor can we shake hands with the incomparable Being of relative beings, loosely speaking, or being generally absolved of its particular instances, but that is not to say that Man and Being are not. Man, after all, is a distinct class of being, and Being-in-itself is the thing-in-itself next to Nothing. Paul Tillich observed in My Search for Absolutes: In any case our thoughtful race direly needs its abstractions. “There must be some absolutes that make meaningful life possible, or it would be like the chaos before creation, described in Genesis. Therefore I believe it may be a service to life itself to find these absolutes and to show their validity and limits.” Furthermore, “Abstraction liberates us from bondage to the particular by giving us the power to create universals…. Abstraction gives us the power of language, language gives us freedom of choice, and freedom of choice gives us the possibility of infinite technical production.”

Faith in the lord may be blind to the ambiguous nature of its object, the lord in whom one has faith in the old sense of faith as a pledge of loyalty to the lord of the land, that he might have mercy on his poor slaves if not his serfs or hired hands. That sort of faith is rooted in the fear of being overwhelmed, and is easily dispensed with when the real cause of fear is removed. Belief is a different matter, for it differs from faith inasmuch as belief, or the ‘be-loving’, is perfected by carnal knowledge, until one no longer has faith in something, no longer merely believes it because it is wanted, but one knows it. So it is of no wonder that we believe in the utility of our beloved absolutes when they produce certain results. As the English historian James A Froude (1818-1894) observed, “The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.” As for faith, he said, “We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be faith at all, or it is nothing.” Scientists have sufficient faith to proceed but of course they are not absolutely certain of the outcomes of their experiments; the experimental method is couched both in faith and doubt. A scientific theory is imperfect if exceptions obtain, yet scientists admit the possibility of exceptions no matter how improbable they are. But faith admits of no exceptions; we deplore fanaticism, but sometimes certainty is wanted; even the scientist must take an experimental step out of ignorance.

So let us not condemn faith altogether, for we cannot dispense with faith and still progress as human beings. The French economist Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) remarked, “What I admire in Columbus is not his having discovered a world, but his have gone to search for it on the faith of an opinion.” We expect faith to be justified by the evidence, or at least not to be denied by it: Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), a French philosopher and mathematician, remarked, “Faith affirms many things respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing which they deny – It is superior to their testimony, but never opposed to it.” And we have this remark made by the American theologian, A.A. Hodge (1823-1886): “Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.”

Whether a man really believes in a god or not is between him and his god, but we shall know if he stands firmly on this Earth and is a good sailor in this life – Old Testament faith, “Emunah” or “firmness,” is a matter of character rather than the content of belief. Faith happens to be the substance upon which our reasoning stands; how could we advance to our conclusions without the help of the premise that implicates the conclusions? If the profession of blind faith in Nothing offends our sensibilities, then let some dogmatic piece of nonsense serve as our under-standing or platform or principle point of departure. If it is true that none other than Socrates is wise, and then only because he knew he was the only one who knew his knowledge was not perfect, yet he faithfully persisted with his inquiries, it might be better to say that faith is the motivational foundation of belief, and claim that it behooves our race to perfect that belief with knowledge instead of going blindly into the night. Nothing may be perfect, but absent faith in perfection or the seemingly impossible ideal of perfection there would be no effort to perfect belief with knowledge. We must persist against all odds. Of course those persons who have faith alone or faith unjustified by the knowledge that salvation is obtained through reasonable works are the most credulous of all believers: they tend to believe almost anything couched in the nebulous terms of their faith. Still the power of faith is a wondrous power for a free person to have, at least from his or her own perspective, no matter how foolish that person may seem to be, for the freedom of faith is freedom from fear. As a matter of fact the skeptical intellectual is more easily swayed than the by-God bigot. The foolish Christian emerges from some valley of death with an ecstatic grin on his face. A witness might admiringly exclaim, If only I could be such a fool!