This clip is relevant to the recent discussion as he talks about “faith” and points out that it isn’t the enemy. In fact, “faith” is important, faith is something we have to embrace he says in a wonderful climax to his talk. The climax can also be read towards the bottom of Dale McGowan’s post My cover is blown, which might or might not have been the first place I spotted that Joss Whedon clip.

To talk a bit about Joss and worldviews: I understand Joss to be a humanist / absurdist / existentialist with Jean Paul Sartre influences. I really loved the portrayal of the power of belief in Firefly, or rather the movie Serenity which is set after the series to tie up ends left tragically loose by its premature termination.

I recall the Operative is described as a particularly deadly and “unstoppable” foe because he is “a believer”. Quoting wikipedia for confirmation: the Operative single-mindedly hunts down River Tam because he believes that his actions “make the world a better place”. He recognises the evil in himself, but his belief in the greater good he is committing atrocities for succeeds in completely overriding any guilt and concern he might have had. For more details on his “believer” worldview including his realism about his own place in it, see “Operative” on firefly.wikia.com.

Mal on the other hand was floating through space without much of a mission or belief providing a goal or some sense of profound meaning in his life: he had lost all his faith in the aftermath of losing the war against the Alliance. Towards the end of the movie they reach Miranda and learn something exceedingly horrifying. As a result (quoting Serenity (film) on firefly.wikia.com) “for the first time in years, Mal is moved by something greater than himself; a belief, something he thought he’d lost in the Battle of Serenity Valley”.

One last recap of this theme for both characters, from “Serenity (film)” on Wikipedia:

The Operative believes so strongly in this idea that he willingly compromises his humanity in furtherance of it. In contrast, Mal is, at the movie’s beginning, a man who has lost all faith. By the end of the movie, however, Mal has finally come to believe in something — individual liberty — so strongly that he becomes willing to lay down his life to preserve it.

This also reflects for me the advice Dan Dennet gave in a TED talk I wrote about nearly two years ago:

I myself am a philosopher, and one of our occupational hazards is that people ask us what the meaning of life is. You have to have a bumper sticker, you have to have a statement, so this is mine:

The secret of happiness:
Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

For a more thorough treatment of the portrayal of religion in Firefly (which features Christianity, rare for sci-fi set in the future), check out Chris Bateman’s excellent post Religion in Science Fiction (7): Firefly — certainly worth a read in my opinion! And enough material for an interesting discussion if anyone’s keen.

Some of the discussions that post sparked were particularly interesting and in line with what I was hoping for, others went off on a tangent. The most recent comment by Bendul got right back on topic. First an extract from Bendul’s comment (do also go read the comment in full):

I want to stab at a different interpetation of this. what if the substance of things hoped for is in a sense “being the change you want to see in the world” becoming the substance of the things you hope for? what if the evidence of things not seen refers to going against the mainstream – the things seen (selfishness, hate, arrogance) – and providing evidence that there is hope for contrived mankind?

This very much touches on a meaning of “faith” that I consider valuable and important. And it reminds me of a friend’s blog post that I’ve been meaning to share. This friend of mine came from a Christian background, and walked a path that led him to explore Buddhism. I think there is much we can learn about our own religions by looking at others’ religions. In contemplating (the good and the bad of) something not so close to home can provide renewed and improved insight into our own traditions.

Please now go read the post Taking Precepts on a friend’s blog, Bertus Gaan Huis Toe.

Bertus, do you mind if I copy your entire blog post here? For now just an extract, please do read the original in full, it isn’t very long:

[...]
I have sometimes wondered why tulkus, young Tibetan children who get identified as the reincarnation of lamas at an early age, so often do indeed grow up to be wise and gifted meditators and teachers. Apart from any supernatural explanation I have come to believe it is because they are told from an early age that they are lamas – eventually they come to believe it, they start to act like lamas, the world responds to them as lamas, and before they long they turn into real lamas.
[...]
It is a way of being the change you want to and expect one day to see in the world.
[...]

This talks about a kind of “divine” life path you could commit to, the kind of commitment you can tackle in your own religion, or if your own religion has become too polluted to see such a path clearly it may be the kind of life path you more easily find through investigating a tradition not so close to home. The latter new perspective, less obscured by culturally piled-on tradition, could provide a fresh view. And it is also the kind of commitment you can make as a humanist.

And that is the kind of “faith” we are trying to talk about, a concept that can clearly also apply to Christianity, a commitment to a renewed life of living out the change you want to see and expect to see in the world, a choice to “become a member of the body of Christ”, about being God’s hands and feet in this world.

Faith is merely belief without evidence; a process of active non-thinking.

That definition is nonsense. Religious people do not believe the things they believe without any evidence. There is scripture, there are millions of believers in the present and the past, there is personal experience, there are observations made throughout life that confirm the religious worldview… If that is the definition of faith, then no-one has it — that kind of “faith” doesn’t exist.

Of course not much of this “evidence” is empirically solid. Scripture was written by fallible human hands. Millions of people believing something is evidence of the strength and persistence of the idea believed in, not that it is empirically provable fact. Personal experience and observations made through life is inherently flawed by the observer’s various biases. None of this evidence for religious faith is actually scientifically acceptable as evidence, but it is still evidence. Psychologically.

That does indeed turn this into a semantic argument, what do we call evidence and what don’t we call evidence? I mean, what’s the difference between “belief based on invalid evidence” and “belief without evidence” anyway? A lot, in fact. When we’re talking about humans, about practical living, rather than some academic and abstract idea toyed with in an ivory tower. There is so much more to “faith” than that reductionist-rationalist definition suggests.

My biggest gripe with that definition is probably that I feel it shuts down the important conversations we should be having, that it incorrectly pigeon-holes those with religious faith, that it promotes a lack of understanding on the inter-personal level.

Up next: So that’s what faith is not, to my mind. Next post I’ll touch on what faith is. To my mind.

Incidentally, I missed this blog’s third birthday yesterday. I think it’s old enough to start shunning birthdays, to let them pass without much fanfare. Besides, I didn’t have much to write right now that was birthday-worthy.

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