To skeptics faith is nothing more than the ability to suspend disbelief when common sense and reason would clearly support disbelief. I'm sorry, but to me faith is a measure of how purposely gullible a person can be. Am I wrong? Is there any rational argument for faith being a virtuous and reasonable attribute?
Blind, unquestioning faith is not particularly reasonable or virtuous.
However, not all faith is blind and unquestioning.
Most non-fundamentalist religious people do a lot of critical thinking about their religious tradition's history, scriptural texts, theology, and practice. They often approach their religious choices with complexity and nuance. They will often have experienced crises of doubt, periods in their lives of intense questioning, even leaving and returning to their religious practice. And, of course, they are not literalists, or "Biblical inerrantists," or so forth.
In fact, among Jews, we question a lot, and frequently. There is much made of the metaphorical significance of the name "Israel" (technically, we are the People Israel) meaning "he who struggles with God" or "he who wrestles with God," in the sense of questioning theology and analyzing what we believe and do in light of numerous philosophical points.
In the end, of course, I can only speak for myself, although I have discussed such matters with enough colleagues and friends to know I am not too far off from what they might say also.
When I chose to believe in God, and to believe that the enterprise of Judaism in which I was engaged was holy, it was a choice I made with serious deliberation, albeit with perhaps an unfair start. I had an experience I understood to be an experience of God, though of course I could not be 100% certain, both since it was without voices or visions (though of course those would've raised their own doubting questions, and possibly a request for an MRI), and because it was a subjective experience. But starting from there, I
chose to believe that it had been an experience of God, that God did exist, that God was personal and immanent (and also, paradoxically, transcendant), and that it was the right thing for me to be an observant Jew.
Is it faith if I believe I have experienced God? I say yes, because the experience was subjective, and because I cannot be 100% certain that I am correct, even if that is what my heart tells me. So I choose to believe. I choose to have faith, and I don't believe that doing so is gullibility, or a mere suspension of common sense. I know that I am making a choice to believe something that is not concretely and objectively provable-- or disprovable.
But I also don't particularly see the harm. While I am not, and cannot be, 100% certain that I am correct and God does exist, I feel sure enough for my own comfort. And since I (like any Jew) do not actively proselytize and attempt to convince non-Jews of the validity of my position (much less atheist non-Jews), that seems harmless enough. And what's more, my religion gives me a framework to construct an ethical life. It gives me a framework to teach people not only about ethics and morality, but about asking hard questions, about approaching text and tradition in thoughtful ways that avoid both fundamentalism and secular apathy. It provides me with a satisfying methodology through which to channel my human desire to reach out for the numinous. It connects me with my people's history and culture, and one of the richest bodies of philosophical, legal, and poetic literature humanity has produced. It offers me a way to structure the cycles of life in ways that generate meaning. And, since I am a rabbi as is my wife, it provides us not only with communities, but opportunities to help those in the communities with comfort, guidance, teaching, advice, hospitality, or even just sympathy-- plus, of course, it provides us with a living (such as it is). In fact, since it was at rabbinical school that I met my wife, I suppose in a sense that's one more thing I owe to my religion.
Every day, I get the opportunity to use my religion to help people ask questions, to give them tools to help them find what they need to make their lives more meaningful and fulfilling; I get to use my religion to help frame people's happiness, give them tools to deal with their sadness, show them hope when they may feel hopeless, or offer advice toward better behavior if that's warranted-- all of which are things not limited to being a rabbi, but things any very involved and engaged Jewish community member might do. Plus, it's beautiful: beautiful poetry, music, literature, philosophy, cooking, jokes-- it's delightful.
So, it seems to me that faith has brought me a lot. And questioning deeply and critically before choosing to have faith, and continuing to ask hard questions afterward have not detracted from that faith.
I don't know if I would say that makes faith a "virtuous" attitude, but it seems reasonable enough to me, and certainly beneficial. Especially since the best answer I've gotten so far to asking "What would
not having faith gain me?" seems to be something along the lines of "Then you'd know you weren't a dupe!" Which just seems silly to me, since I don't think I'm a dupe now. Everyone makes choices about what they will or will not believe, and subject to what evidence, and why.
