My 22 year old daughter and I had a conversation about beliefs last night. The topic? Well, it started out with a remark she made about christians (rather derogatory) and about the (to her way of thinking) better informed scientific community, but it became much more than this. And it made me realize some things about myself.
Her view point appeared to be that while she believes everyone has a right to their beliefs, she feels that christianity, on the whole, encourages intolerance and prejudice against whatever it believes is "sinful" or "wrong", and that those who choose to believe in it dumb themselves down and that, instead, to believe in science is the more enlightened way, because science is all based on "facts" not "fiction" and is more tolerant because it’s based on fact and not on paranoia or mind control.
The more we talked, the more I felt it was necessary to remind her that just because someone has a belief we perhaps don’t understand or find impossible to take as truth for ourselves, doesn’t mean that that person is "ignorant" or that they are trading their intelligence for intolerant paranoia.
When it comes right down to it, evolution, just as creationism, at some point, comes down to a leap of faith. The christian has to have faith that there is a living deity who created us, and just as the evolutionist must have faith that somewhere out there is proof of the missing link. Neither can be absolutely proven, and as I see it, both come down to a matter of belief. To me, no matter what path you choose to follow, it’s not so much what you believe but rather what motivates you in using those beliefs that makes the difference.
For example, you can have two christians, both from the same faith; one will take their beliefs and from them create compassion, patience, and kindness toward the world while the other will take their beliefs and from them create fear, ignorance, hatred and intolerance toward the world. How is it that both can come from the same belief? I think it’s more a matter of living your life in bitterness and fear or living your life in love, and hope. Expansion or retraction. If we live our lives in fear, in anger, in hate, our whole beings and all we believe in becomes tainted with it. If we live our lives in love, in gratitude, in hope, our whole beings radiate that and everything we believe in becomes infused with it.
Sure, one’s beliefs shape to a degree, how we act in life, but I think it’s more our outlook that shapes how we act and what we do.
I hope she understood what I was getting at. Sometimes the most profound points are found in the subtleties.
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