While reviewing my portfolio from high school I came across a philosophical essay debating science and religion. At the end my teacher wrote "but- if we must 'prove' faith- what's the point in faith? (complicated- right?)" I don't remember what I wrote in the essay but I must not have done a very good job of explaining faith. Upon the moment of reviewing the paper an error on my part did not ever occur to me as possible and I instinctively assumed something to be wrong with my teacher's comment. I had to repeat it out loud several times to make sense of it. He is not entirely wrong. He knows perfectly well that faith consists of a belief without proof, and therefore questions its value when evidence is required. With that in mind I suppose the only error was ever putting science and religion to a debate at all. Winning a debate calls for factual and logical proof of one's position. While science may have all the tangible evidence it deems sufficient it could never compete with religion because its foundation is faith (a belief in things unseen that are true) and has never yet produced enough physical evidence to satisfy them.
A major part in God's earthly design for us is that we learn to believe without having seen. Why come down in a burst of glory with a choir of angels when the words of a song, kind act of a stranger, or tight hug of a friend in time of need can convince us of God's love just as profoundly? Why pay for a limousine to go to the grocery store if a mini-van can do the job just as effectively? Returning to the essay, why debate a thing which-- by its very nature-- should not be provable? In that light I declare the situation not the least bit complicated.
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