Faith of an Atheist

It was Shakespeare who said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” What he meant was that the nature of a thing doesn’t change just because you rename it.

Take the word “faith,” for example. Faith is often associated with religion, but everybody has the capacity for faith. Even atheists. That’s right, atheists live by faith just like religious people do. They just call it something else.

In general terms, faith is about believing that something exists even though you can’t directly observe or measure it. Atheists don’t like to admit that they live by faith but consider this: scientists believe that the universe is held together by an unknown force. They can’t observe it. It defies the laws of science. And it doesn’t conform to any of their calculations. Yet, they still believe something is there. Sounds a lot like “faith,” doesn’t it? Except, the science community labels it “Dark Energy.”

Which brings us back to Shakespeare’s comments about renaming a rose. It’s no accident of evolution that we marvel at sunsets or ponder the mysteries of the universe. We are wired for faith. We are more than just physical beings. We are spiritual beings as well, designed for faith and created to place our devotion in things that transcend us.

Every single one of us lives by faith. All of us, even atheists, are born with a beautiful rose of faith in our soul. They just call it something different.