One of my FaceBook friends posted the following on his wall:
"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated." - Christopher Hitchens
According to Wikiquotes this is taken from "Holier Than Thou", Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, 23 May 2005.
Before going any further let me clarify that none of my friends agrees with me on everything. Even my wife and I have some areas where we disagree but still remain the greatest of friends. Things only get tense when you don't like me or my friends based on some form of group prejudice (race, religion, sexual orientation.) And now, back to Hitchens...
I will concede that his first sentence above is a definition of faith even in the minds of some "believers". Clearly, this is the definition of faith in the minds of Atheists as this quote is held up as a quotable quote among Atheists. However, that definition is by no means universal among "believers."
While my definition of faith includes believing that which cannot be empirically demonstrated, it precludes the surrender of the mind and the surrender of reason. On the contrary, it is precisely the use of the mind and reason that enables humans to have faith and the other mammals not. Faith is a peculiarly human quality not to be found among any other species on the planet.
Deductive reasoning
Astronomers, astro-physicists and other scientists tell us that the universe is finite in space and time; that its size and age can be approximately calculated. They tell us that "before" the universe was born there was "nothing"; not even empty space. Nothing.
I am not a scientist but my mind reasons that something cannot create itself out of nothing before it exists. It is not a surrender of reason but an exercise thereof to conclude that some "thing" beyond the confines of the time and space of this universe was responsible for the coming into existence of this universe. That "Something" I choose to call the Creator.
I deal with this topic a bit more fully in my blog of 19 Dec 2010 "I am sceptical of skeptical atheism"
http://terryin-sites.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-am-sceptical-about-skeptical-atheism.html
...and its follow up on 24 Jan 2011.
In my opinion, in the face of the evidence of the finite nature of our universe, it requires a greater and more irrational faith to say, we cannot prove a creator's existence empirically therefore a creator does not exist.
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