Is Faith Ignorance?

A super-religious colleague got really offended when another colleague posted a chart comparing science to faith. She went ballistic over what she termed his equation of "faith" to "ignorance." So is faith ignorance? My colleagues are both mature people, both very well educated. He is from another country and a different mindset about religion. She is more local, deeply invested in the local religious community. I do not know this for a fact, but I have been told that she is very much under her husband's thumb, even though she is quite charming, intelligent, and vivacious. If he says "Jump," she asks, "How high?" Again, this is what I have been told, not what I know. I know that her door and office are covered with religious symbols and "inspirational" messages. But she is also the one who gave me a copy of the "Well-behaved women seldom make history" poster.

Several people have said about her that she is a deeply stressed person because of her husband. Rather like we often ask when a woman does not leave a husband who abuses her, we have often wondered why she tolerates her husband's iron thumb. The answer is obvious to me. Her "faith" tells her that she must. And in a nutshell, this is the main complaint I have against religion. As I have told many people, I became a feminist first and an atheist second. I saw no room for me in the patriarchal church structure, and I saw no logic in the dogma of religion. Nobody's religion. Not Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Methodist, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, or Shinto. None of them. It's all a huge stretch to believe in an Invisible Friend who supposedly protects and serves. If our police forces and firefighters protected and served as "God" presumably does, we might as well commit suicide.

But people who have been totally indoctrinated into one or the other religious tradition are fearful of questioning the tenets of their faith. I get that. I don't like to question the tenets of feminism, for instance. Still, I am willing to entertain or at least read and consider information that shows various types of differences between men and women and gays and straights. In the long run, to me, it boils down to what makes sense to us. To my religious colleague, it makes sense that women are inferior to men. To me, it does not.

But is it "ignorant" to have "faith"? In some ways, yes. Far too many religious people reject evolution and scientific principles. I don't think my religious colleague does. I think she has made an uneasy peace with science. But she has to admit and understand that she might be in a minority. When we have people who fail to understand that rape is a crime of violence, and that pregnancy might result, all we can say is that ignorance is out there. Are there "higher minded" people who are believers? Yes. I know several. These are smart people, people I respect. But I cannot help seeing them as smart people with selective blindness. I'm a smart woman who thinks her husband is gorgeous. One part of my mind admits that my husband is starting to look and act a lot like his father. I loved his father, but I didn't think him especially intelligent or good-looking. The dominant part of my brain still sees the 18-year-old I fell in love with, the man who was an insatiable lover, the man whose big blue eyes and acre-long eyelashes kept me entranced, the man whose mind is still fascinating to me. Yes, there are wrinkles there now where once the skin was taut. He's in better shape than I'm in, though. (I don't want to ask what he sees when he looks at me!)

So to answer my question--yes, sometimes faith depends on ignorance of a certain type. It also depends on knowledge of a certain limited type. The scientific method will always trump the accept-and-believe kind of faith that my family exhibit.