Faith in humanity?

 

“I have more faith in God than you, but you have more faith in humanity”.

 

My agnostic kid said this earlier today as we were talking about evolution, theism, humanity, life, the universe, and everything.

 

And I realized afterwards, there’s a heavy correlation between increased faith in a god and decreased faith in humanity. So I wrote this in response:

 

The Evangelicals who raised me talked a lot about total depravity and sin nature and how all humans are worthless vile sinners who deserve eternal torture for our sins, so all our faith has to be in our god because humans will never be able to do anything good without him. The less faith they had in humans to make the world a better place, the more faith they placed in a god to do it for them.

 

But the thing is: Humans definitely exist. You don’t NEED faith to believe in humanity; you can rely on EVIDENCE instead.

 

And believe me, I’m with you in bemoaning the mountain of evidence that humans are fuck-ups. Just the other day I learned that the government is no longer mandating that health care workers must have the COVID-19 vaccine… which means, in practice, that we are no longer requiring the people who practice medicine to UNDERSTAND HOW MEDICINE WORKS. Every anti-vaxxer Republican out there who stubbornly refuses to understand such basic things as “viruses are more dangerous than the vaccines that reduce their virulence” and “it’s cheaper and more humane to use government funds to help people than it is to punish people for needing help” is evidence that humans can be stupid, selfish, short-sighted, and cruel.

 

Yes.

AND.

It was ALSO humans who risked their own lives, health, and safety to CREATE the vaccine. It was also humans who spent lifetimes studying how the world works to give us the basic foundation of information and techniques that allowed the vaccine to be developed. It was humans who worked together to develop the vaccine in a year rather than the decade-plus that it normally would take when there isn’t as much cooperation and pooling of data and research funds.  

You don’t NEED to have faith in humanity. Humanity has already given you tangible proof that, despite our being monkeys that are bad at climbing trees, we can achieve incredible things when we’re willing to put in the thought and the effort.

And that means you can too.

You don’t need to “believe in yourself” either. You already have EVIDENCE that you can do worthwhile and necessary and fun and important things, so much so that every night before bed you can list at least three* and often tangentially end up talking about far more than that.

God may or may not be real, but YOU are real, and you can do real good. YOU DO real good. You WILL do real good. You don’t have to believe it. You can KNOW it. All you have to do is look objectively at ALL the evidence.

Amen and amen**.

 



 * Something we've been having the kid do every night for the past couple years. A practice I highly recommend, especially for tweens and teens.

**”So be it” or “It is so”, depending on translation.

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