Here’s where we make the leap to the metaphysical, so please bear with me because a “proof” (for lack of a better word) doesn’t come until the end.

Faith is the unqualified belief in a benevolent reality outside of reason, and beyond human intellectual conception… but a reality that is still accessible to each one of us (more on that later). It’s the possibility that there is one “truth” that unites us all. It is the hope for hope, goodness for goodness sake… a divine virtuous cycle of love.

Why do you consider this “reality” benevolent you ask? Why not just believe that there’s a “higher power” and leave it at that? Faith is the positive conception of reality… because I’m even able to conceive of it in the first place. It’s a slightly different take on Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum”; I’m not proving my existence because I’m able to contemplate my existence — My existence indicates that reality is inherently positive. The set of circumstances that brought me (and you and the oak tree outside) into being is inherently constructive. It’s opposed to deconstruction and chaos. It brought being into being, and order from that being, and life from that order. But what if it was just a set of random circumstances that caused “us” and now we’re just marvelling at how unlikely it was, even though if it hadn’t happened, there’d be no one to do the marvelling? That’s a good point, but it doesn’t matter. These circumstances were positive; order, life, growth, and consciousness are the virtuous cycle of love. Faith doesn’t compel us to explain the causes any further, or ask whether they were random or not; it’s the unqualified belief in a positive reality that exceeds our intellectual conception… a “super” reality.

But what about that proof? Unfortunately, Faith is definitely not a self-assured certainty. Self-righteous certainty, be it religious or secular, is dangerous. Religious uncertainty means I’m never going to sure I’ve got it all figured out, which is where our forebears got it wrong with the heretic-burning-thingy. Belief is subtle, self-reflective, precarious, mysterious, without “proof”, and without cause. In short, if I think I’ve got it figure out and am self-assured in my world-view, I’m not. In The Word of my faith, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet believed.” Proof and causation are the building blocks of reason, not of faith. So we’re not going to understand this positive reality I’m referring to, but we can definitely experience it. For the “how-to” on this type of “proof”, how this reality is very much accessible to you as it is to me, you’ll need to read to the end of this Apology.