Perhaps nothing has been scorned more in modern times than faith. It has been derided by Enlightenment philosophers from Rousseau to Voltaire and intellectuals have sympathized with Marx’s claim that it is the opium of the masses. To them faith is nothing more than the superstitious consumption of bread and adherence to pointless cultural taboos. This is no doubt a supreme caricature that could only be created by intellectuals who can’t help but revel in the powers of their considerable, though limited, intelligence. What they fail to recognize is that man cannot live without faith.
So what is faith? As much as it is derided by modern philosophers, the ancient Greeks thought it was essential. In the words of New York Post editor Sohrab Ahmari, they believed that “there must be some unchangeable being in whose absolute being all others participate (Plato), or some unchanged cause that is the ultimate cause of all other change (Aristotle).” Aristotle and Plato believed that in this “system of the supreme being” individuals would work to achieve virtue. They would do this by achieving their purpose (telos) in the world.
Christianity provided the necessary framework in which people could work to achieve their purpose through the use of their reason. It supplied the Greek philosophers with an answer to their question of who was the supreme being in the universe. The Jews and Christians believed that it was a benevolent and loving God who made man in his divine image.
Of course it required faith to accept it. The Bible was the product of revelation, not reason and was thereby able to supply the deficiencies of human reason. This is the pure view of faith; submitting to a universal moral code that allows you to use your reason in order to fulfill your purpose in the world.
However, as I said before, man cannot live without faith. Therefore, the attempts of philosophers to get rid of faith has led to the spread of a new and perverse form of faith with no resemblance to Judeo-Christian morals. This faith relies on the idea that there is no objective truth in the universe. Rather it is nothing but a social construct.
Those who make such a claim have one problem. If there is no objective truth, how can your statement that there is no objective truth be objectively true? Therefore proponents of nihilism must have faith. They must have the faith that nothing is certain except uncertainty.
The new generation is the byproduct of the perverse faith encroaching on the true faith. Men of science attempt to stave off nihilism by positing that scientific fact is the ultimate truth. Science popularizers such as Neil Degrasse Tyson love to repeat the poetic line that “we are stardust.” This merely masks the fact that science has no inherent morality. It cannot tell us how to act. Only knowledge within a moral framework can guide our actions.
In addition to this, young people shun church service and engage in pseudo-holy rituals such as yoga and meditation. None of these new personal paths to spirituality can fulfill the void which Christianity was meant to fulfill. They impose no moral code or guiding light. They merely stave off the inevitable realization that you believe in nothing. In the end one must choose. Either you have faith in an objective moral code which allows you to fulfill your telos or you have faith in meaninglessness and succumb to the pit of despair and death.
