by Nouri Arif

Created on: March 18, 2009   Last Updated: March 25, 2009

Those that see the world as a miracle that was brought forth from the fancy of a Greater Spirit are worthy of praise for their unwavering devotion to their individual dogmas. Nothing, not even demonstrated truth, can ever sway them from what they are told by their spiritual leaders is the truth. That type of devotion is a hard snub. The man that depends upon reason for his answers works far harder for his truth. He keeps his mind open to the answers that are demonstrated to him by means of nature and his own experiments. He accepts truth that can be proved and nothing else.

The man of reason must work very, very hard to discover for himself the answers that faith hands out to every person that chooses to believe. A man that reasons must experiment to prove that what he believes to be the truth is, in fact, the truth. He subscribes to the idea that his experiments must be reproducible along with the results that they demonstrate in order for the answers they provide to be true. He accepts only what he can prove to himself by way of the scientific method and accepts no simplified shortcuts of dogma to side step research and effort.

Faith by its very nature and by its very definition is blind. Faith does not ever require evidence or proof that the dogma one chooses to have faith in is correct. Faith answers every question with one answer and one answer only and that is that "God" makes it so and demands that it be the way that it seems to us to be. Faith is simple. Faith can be explained as easily by the illiterate as by the scholar. Faith requires nothing but itself. It is enough to let the argument rest there and say no more to prove that the man of reason is to be greatly more celebrated for the effort he puts forth in order to find answers to the questions that plague mankind.

Who, between the two, should be more celebrated? It seems that the issuance of answers from spiritual leaders is an easy and convenient means of quickly dispatching with all the mysteries of life and comes at the small cost of consant devotion and prayer. It is the mindless practice of allowing one set of ideas dominate your life without question. It's clear that experimentation and devotion to using reason to solve problems and gain knowledge is the path that is harder to follow, the wiser to walk and the only one that can ever lead to the ultimate truths that faith states it will lead its followers to if they will only believe with all their heart.

Learn more about this author, Nouri Arif.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.