why we call it faith

it's so funny if you read a book and not even understand the title of the book. most catholics i know learn and follow the "roman catholic faith" and don't even know the meaning of the word "faith".

if instead of faith, we know there is a god and the bible is true, then we will all follow god's will but we will still be living in caves. instead of developing facebook, mark zuckerberg will rather build homes for the homeless so there will be no facebook. if you see you daughter get run over by a car and her brains scattered you will be like, "whoa !!! cool !!! lucky kid she is now in heaven". and when you enter heaven and you say "god i followed your will while i was on earth", god will say, "well of course you did but that's only because you knew i exist and my teachings are true". and if that person did the total opposite of god's teachings god will say, "i apologize for giving you a defective human body or mental illness, now your spirit is free from that body. welcome to heaven my child :-)"

having faith is beautiful but having a poor vocabulary or understanding of the meaning of faith is not good because it limits our ability to communicate (there's a reason why we have a dictionary). in the worst case scenario, having strong faith but a poor understanding of the meaning of faith has led to countless bloody wars that killed millions of people. it's still going on right now. even the MAINSTREAM sunni and shiite muslims are still butchering each other, not to mention the youtube videos of extremists beheading people.

the spanish inquisition under the blessing and grace of the catholic church tortured people suspected of heresy. the pope is suppose to be under the guidance of the holy spirit but it seems to me the pope was under the guidance and spell of satan because they did not just execute people suspected of heresy. they let them suffer unnecessarily in ways you can't even imagine - boiling them to death. why didn't they just hang them? the most common form of torture was they tied the victim down to a plank of wood while a crank was turned, pulling all four limbs away from the body. very creative !!! it's one thing to do something evil it's another thing to be so brilliant and creative in making a person suffer. i watched the movie series "saw" and found the scenes too gruesome it's hard to believe someone could be that evil. one might say thank god it's just a movie. then i realized tortures that horrifying and repulsive actually did happen in real for hundreds of years. then one might says oh well there are always evil people in the world but then i realized the tortures were done by the catholic church. crazy !!! this did not just happen one day or this was not just an "oops" mistake like forgetting your keys in the car. this went on for hundreds of years. i know during those times they did not know any better and humans were more brutal and barbaric but the pope was suppose to be under the guidance of the holy spirit.

the elders in my family are very devoted catholics - they never miss church and they regularly pray the rosary. christ's greatest teaching was forgiveness - that's the core of christianity. in fact christ's last act was to forgive the very people who crucified him. that is why i was so shocked and disappointed when they quarreled with my grandfather who was already SENILE because of old age. senile !!! senile !!! senile !!! c'mon !!! are you kddinng me ??? you don't even need christianity to teach you that. it's just common sense !!! it was so shocking and unbelievable. i wasn't able to say anything because i was already told by everyone never to correct my parents when they make a mistake because they are already fragile and it might give them a heart attack. thank god i just learned recently they realized their mistake. it would have been nice if they realized this while my grandfather was still alive.

faith cannot be argued. yet so many supposedly smart and highly educated people argue about faith. it's stupid to argue the existence of god or if the bible is true or not. a better question is:

"do you wish there is a god or not?"

this is a more useful and productive question. because if you say you wish there is no god, then maybe i should not trust you because maybe you are a bad person.

my aunt told me i'm taking a big risk by not following the bible because if it turns out to be true i could go to hell. i told her she is also taking a very big risk because if the koran turns out to be true she could go to hell for walking around in public without covering her entire body.

i notice faith is more of an emotional desire. just google quibology. it's like my salesman spectrum phenomenon. on 1 end of the spectrum, people will approach the salesaman and BEG:

"excuse me, are you selling something? no? why not? can you sell me something? because i really want to buy it. anything. pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese !!!".

on the opposite end of the spectrum, a person is dying of a disease and a salesman sells to the dying person a medicine that would immediately cure the disease".  the dying person refuses to buy the medicine and says,

"you are probably a nice person. i don't know you. but i'm sorry i would rather die than buy anything from you".

funny but so true. extrapolate this phenomenon and use it to understand the other different relationships and human behaviors and you will be much happier in life. i even used this phenomenon to prevent the girlfriend of my babygirl from committing suicide when my babygirl dumped her. emotional desires are simply rooted from inborn personality traits which are nothing but a random natural occurrence just like getting a thousand likes on your facebook posts, typhoon yolanda killing 5 thousand people in tacloban, or liking/disliking a politician.

nobody really knows for sure if the bible is true or not. even the pope agrees with me. unless God appeared to you and performed miracles to prove he exist and told you the bible is true. even that can easily be attributed to illusions or hallucinations. even the pope agrees with me when he says "the roman catholic faith". look up the word "faith" in the dictionary. faith means complete trust in something based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. there is nothing wrong with not knowing. faith is more beautiful and more admirable than knowing 100% for sure God exists and your religion is true.

there is nothing special about a man who knows for sure his religion is true if it is because God appeared to him. of course he is going to dedicate his life to God. you have to be mentally ill to not be happy serving God knowing our life here on earth is just about 100 years compared to eternity you can spend in heaven or hell. you have to be mentally ill if you prefer to go to a disco rather than go to church or serve the poor if God appeared to you. i think God will be more impressed with a devotee who serves him out of faith instead of a person who serves him because of knowledge. yet i know supposedly highly educated family and friends who thinks it's a sin to declare you don't know if the bible is true or not. maybe they are just confusing and intermixing the word knowledge and faith as if it's the same.

exercise: give examples of ways for God to appear to a person and prove to that person the encounter was not just a dream or illusion.

here's my example: God will let you know in advance the exact time and place where there will be an earthquake. you write it down on a piece of paper. you mail that paper to yourself certified mail with the date of mailing stamped on it. after the earthquake, you open the mail in front of many witnesses. (in the real world if this actually happens, you will be the most famous person in the world,if the CIA has not yet abducted you).

now it's your turn to give an example. this is a good way to test your logic skills and problem solving skills.

what really cracks me up is when my family says i'm falling into satan's temptation of pride when i say "i don't know if catholic teachings are true". hahahaha. when someone says "i don't know", that's the opposite of pride - that's humility. it is correct to say "you are too proud to read the bible", or "you are too proud to go to church". but saying "you are too proud to admit you don't know anything" just does not make any sense.

as the saying goes, the more you know, the more you know that you do not know.  scientists believe that if the amount of knowledge was scaled down to a the size of a wall, the amount of knowledge mankind knows is only a dot in the wall.  the converse is also true - the less you know, the more you feel that you know. the religious counterpart of this is - humans don't have the capability to comprehend the ways of God. so we should never question why an innocent young girl from a very religious family gets run over by a car.  i have no argument to that, what i'm preaching in my blog is, although we don't know everything, we do know that 1+1 = 2. that is math. that is logic. and we do know the agreed upon definition of the word "faith".

when my family tells me i can't use my logic or reasoning to evaluate religion. i tell them that if a stranger approaches telling you to give him money or you will go to hell, you are basically using logic and reason to evaluate that stranger's religion. we enjoyed poking fun at the recent doomsday cult fiasco, but we didn't realize we were also using logic and reasoning to evaluate the cult's beliefs. at least the cult had the guts to predict something that can be verified. mainstream religions like the catholic church only survive because they conveniently change their teachings as soon as science proves they are wrong. so finally the catholic church categorized the teachings that can never be verified and called them dogma and declared the non dogma teachings are not that important. oh how convenient. i have nothing against religion. i think it's great. but we should develop "strong faith". not "blind faith" or just shut down our logical brain when someone preaches to us about religion. not using our logic can actually be evil, just think of the innocent women burned alive because society thought they were witches. not to mention the cruel and gut wrenching spanish inquisition directed by the pope that went on for more than 500 years.

another characteristic of faith is that it's less of a choice and more of a personality. it's more like a gift that not anyone can just control. you can do everything the catholic church tells you and NOT develop any faith and you can also do nothing the catholic church tells you and develop strong faith. it's like the height of a person except tall people don't tell short people to have more height.

which leads me to another common logical flaw - just because A precedes B, does not mean A causes B. it only makes it POSSIBLE that A causes B. example, it's possible that a family stays together because they pray together. but it could also be that a family prays together because they stay together. meaning it's possible they stay together because it's just their personality, prayer or no prayer, and that personality predisposes a person to be religious. how do i know this? because there are many non religious family who stays together.

i notice the logic on cause and effect is quite difficult to grasp. my mother has a college degree yet she adamantly claims that this mangagaw herbal drink cures dengue. but the doctors said it's just a myth and the only benefit of mangagaw is that it contains water and drinking plain water is just as effective. she cites the numerous examples of people who got cured of dengue because they drank mangagaw.  using this logic is like saying i brushed my teeth before going to work and got into an accident, therefore i will never brush my teeth so i will not get into an accident. she cannot comprehend that there are also so many people who got cured of dengue by just drinking water and taking paracetamol to control the fever. in fact, the mortality rate of dengue is less than 1% in patients where the only medicine given was paracetamol.

another common logical flaw is when my supposedly highly educated parents and aunts use teachings written in the bible to prove that the bible is true. that's like defining a word using the word itself. they also point out historical figures that historically did truly exist like the roman emperor to prove that the bible is true. that's just ridiculous. so if i say i had a fist fight with barrack obama that has to be true because obama is a real person and not a myth?

there has never even been a verifiable or reproducible supernatural phenomenon or paranormal activity. that's why i say ideally, horror movies should be happy movies if you just think about it. our life here on earth is just 100 years but if horror movies are true that means spirits are true and that means we can continue to exist after we die and maybe reunite with our dead love ones in another dimension. that means we should not even care if we get killed by an evil ghost because in the big picture learning that there is such a thing as spirits is by order of magnitude better compared to living a full life and just ceasing to exist after you die.

so when my friends start running away from a ghost, i would run towards the ghost because to me, being harmed by a ghost is a thousand times more amazing than traveling to space or being president of america. just think about it - there have been many people who went to space, there have been many presidents of america, but no one has ever really been scientifically proven to be harmed by a ghost in the history of mankind. apparently i'm not the only one who has this absurd mentality. i saw a documentary in TV where this guy offered $1 million to anyone who can successfully voodoo him. many voodoo priests tried but no one succeeded. but of course you can always say voodoo is real but it won't work if there is a reward or the person being voodoo'ed knows he/she is being voodoo'ed. hehehe. so the superstition lives !!!

not that i feel the need to exist after death. it's ok with me if i cease to exist. although i understand it's normal to be afraid or have a hard time accepting that we will just cease to exist after we die. faith eases many fears and apprehensions and worries of humans.   i think the root cause for this is pride. we think we are so special so we can't accept the idea of just disappearing forever when we die. i think it's a better attitude or healthier to be humble, not think you are so special and just be thankful for the short life that was given to you. i even think it is necessary for humans to die because after a while you don't enjoy and appreciate the things in life anymore as much as your first time so we need to give other lives a chance to enjoy their first ice cream, their first kiss, etc .. and the resources on earth are limited so it would be a waste to prevent more lives or humans to be born just so that the existing lives can continue their already mundane and monotonous lives. that's why i invented this quote:

"life is a waste if humans don't die"

once you have experienced most of what life has to offer, it's a waste repeating the same experience over and over again because it's not that special or feel great anymore. mother earth can only support a limited number of lives so it's best if we die so new lives can experience the great gifts that nature or god has to offer. this attitude of mine comes from absence of pride. i am not someone special enough to prevent another life from experiencing the gift of life.

i started to be truly happy when i accepted that it is ok to be just a spec of dust in a universe with billions of stars and planets. if it turns out there is a god who loves me and there is life after death, then great. that's a big bonus. i became more thankful for the simple things because my absence of pride makes me feel i received something i did not deserve. i appreciate friends, love and respect but can be be easily happy without them. i don't waste time worrying about things out of my control.

humility actually avoids conflicts and wars. if there really is life after death, that would be more of a huge plus, and not a necessity. so i think it's still awesome if the religious teachings are true and i would continue to exist as a spirit after i die.

my mom told me there are verifiable miracles like the saints bodies that don't decompose. i asked if this only happens to the bodies of saints. she said yes. i said that's a thousand times more interesting than the biggest news of the year. why is the media not making a big fuss about this? she said there is a conspiracy to hide these facts because the media is against the catholic church. i was like holy cow there are thousands of people working in media there is no way they can pull of this conspiracy. surprise surprise the body of a former porn star also has not decomposed.  http://www.philstar.com/cebu-news/2013/08/29/1146771/claudia-zobels-body-intact-after-30-years.

my mom and aunts also talks about the miraculous heart of a saint that bleeds during certain times of the year. i told them if that is really true all scientists will stop what they are doing and run to wherever that heart is to study it. they said the scientists won't do that because it would hurt their atheist pride.

my mom also said there is no hard proof evidence to support the theory of evolution, i said, "of course. that's why the scientists called it a theory". that's why it's not called "law of evolution". i said there's also no hard proof evidence to support catholic teachings are true, but that's why it's called faith. to make her happy i just told her that it's possible God created earth 5 thousand years ago with  all the fossils in it that are 5 billion years old. THAT CANNOT BE ARGUED because it does not contradict any laws of science and logic. and also a year is defined as 1 full revolution of the earth around the sun. how on earth (pardon the pun) can you interpret the word "year" before god created the earth and sun? maybe when god said "year" he really meant 1 billion years.

there's many levels of probibility. we give nicknames to them - fact, opinion, theory, ideal, principle, rule, law and then there is faith. there's also many levels of faith ranging from no faith to very strong faith. for example, you don't know if a plane is going to crash but you ride a plane anyway because you have very strong faith it is not going to crash. if a person is too afraid to ride a plane, technically that would be considered irrational or phobia because statistically the probability of crashing is too low for you to be afraid. however, you cannot call a person irrational for not believing the bible because there are no statistical facts and figures to prove otherwise. and, if you use airplane argument to convince someone to believe in the bible, the problem is you can also use the same airplane argument to convince someone to believe in the koran.

on the other hand, you cannot call someone irrational for believing in the bible because even scientists like einstein recognize the high probability of the existence of god or supernatural being due to the perfect harmony of nature and the universe. although they also believe that the god or supernatural being does not concern himself with the fates and actions of human beings, which contradicts pretty much all teachings of all religions especially christianity and islam. TOINKS !!! example, it is a scientific or statistical observation that there is no correlation between prayer and it's effects. there are many cancer patients who did get cured with prayer but there are also just as many who did not get cured even if there was prayer and many who got cured miraculously even without prayer (taking into account the placebo effect).  this is another cause and effect logic example.

i watched the movie exodus  (in imax 3d).  the movie was quite entertaining. i watch movies to give me a glimpse of what it would be like to live during those times. i invented a nice quote:

"through imagination you can simulate virtually living for a thousand years.if you study history through reading, documentaries, and movies especially imax". if it makes you sad that you will not be around to know what the world will be like a thousand years from now, cheer up and just simulate the reverse by studying what the world was like a thousand years ago, spend time imagining or fantasizing living in that era, and then waking up a thousand years later to know what the world is like. that is why i love imax movies where the setting is historical.

sometimes i don't even care about the plot if the cinematic effects are awesome. i was like wow the pyramids are living proof that the bible has some historical facts but now i google it turns out there was no mention of pyramids in moses' story in the bible. the plagues were mega events happening to millions of people who can write. i realize there should be multiple stories or accounts that match and the super coincidence will verify the existence of something paranormal.

so when my mom asks me what makes alexander the great more real than jesus christ, even if alexander the great came 300 years before christ? i told her because with alexander the great there were many accounts and writings from different places of the world that matched or coincided. when specifics and details matches you can't declare that as just a coincidence. example, if 3 separate witnesses (who did not conspire to memorize the accounts to fake the event) to a murder give exactly matching account of how the murder happened, to the detail like the specific action or movement the murderer did to stab the victim and the specific and detailed movements the victim did to try to fight back, then there would be no doubt the witnesses are telling the truth. the probability of that happening is like winning the lottery 10 times in a row. with the bible, there were many writers and authors but on different events, not the same event. so there is not much sources for confirmation. the writings on alexander the great did not contain conflicting accounts. .

one of the things that gives me a certain amount of faith are the super amazing things in nature that happens around me. example, the ability of our eyes to see is too complex that it could not have happened by chance. it must have been designed by a supreme being. i am aware of the explanation - about cell mutation, adaptation, and billions of years of evolution. the tv servies cosmos gave a very good explanation on how our eyes evolved. i also read in the internet how it's theoretically possible to produce a simple biological cell by accident from a soup of organic matter. but i still think it's just too marvelous to happen by chance. that's why i still have faith.

(for more of my knowledge bombs, click the "ian's knowledge bombs" banner at the top of this article and choose any article in the table of contents that piques your interest)