“Faith to the religious is like sand to an ostrich.” I saw this quote recently on Facebook and it raised the question in my head, what is faith and is it always bad?
Even science is based on faith. Every scientist has certain beliefs that allow him to work in science. These include faith in the scientific process, belief that scientific laws are objective and they are uniform across the universe and are invariant with respect to time. But the faith that scientists have in science is different from religious and spiritual faith. Religious faith and spiritual faith are also different from one another but are usually mixed up. Religious faith is a somewhat “blind” faith. We believe because we are told so. “This is the way it is,” we are told. Religious belief in many ways does not brook questions or allow criticism. Spiritual faith is more experiential. It comes from within. It happens because of personal experience and is not something that is imposed from outside.
The difference between science and spirituality is that while science is objective, spirituality is subjective. The common notion is that the spiritual experience cannot be replicated through an objective process. The spiritual spark spontaneously ignites in some people and not in others. It is felt that there is no reliable process by which we can make it happen in a replicable manner to everybody. That is why spirituality is not considered as scientific.
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