Complete trust or confidence

Dear editor: After reading both Rod King’s and Frank Martens’ letters to the editor (Okanagan Weekend, July 14; Daily Courier, July 17) regarding their pro-atheism stance, my head was just spinning.

There is so much fodder for discussion in these letters; however, I am only going to comment on a few points.

While King’s definition of faith can be found in the dictionary, the primary definition of faith is “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” As I navigate this life, I have learned that faith isn’t about belief without evidence, but rather faith is a state of trust.

We all trust ourselves to someone or something. Reason is a tool I use to gather the knowledge necessary to decide on which object(s) I will place my trust.

Travis M. Dickinson, PhD (Univ. of Iowa) said it better: “…it is precisely because I have applied reason to the Christian faith that I have given my life to its truth … given the intellectual track record of the Christian world view for me on my journey, I have confidence. That is, I have found Christianity eminently reasonable and worthy of venturing my trust.”

In his letter, Martens may not want to give the Judeo-Christian tradition any credit for the golden rule, but he still gave it to a theistic belief system (the ancient Egyptians) who believed in some sort of absolute moral law giver(s) outside of themselves.

Bertram Russel wrote in his article “A Free Man’s Worship” (1903): “Brief and powerless is man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way…”.

Many decades later Ravi Zacharias (The Real Face of Atheism) responded “that to find their way, atheist must make sense out of a random first cause, denounce as immoral all moral denunciation, express meaningfully all meaninglessness, and find security in hopelessness. This is a tall order….”

Don’t believe me? Then read the books “The Dawkins’ Delusion” by William Lane Craig and Ravi Zacharias’s “The Real Face of Atheism” and “Why I Still Believe” by Joe Boot.

Sherry Ure Kaleden