The First Step Toward Community Success

Finding the role of faith
By Pierre Belhomme

January 3, 2011.  Revised January 13, 2011

The path to community success seems to lead to decisions whose answers seem, at some point, to require faith.  It seems that, perhaps, in an attempt to avoid dangerous, abusive claims to religious or supernatural authority and/or tensions associated with debating sharply divided perspectives on religion and the supernatural, decision-making has been structured to bypass the issue of faith and embrace instead logic-based principles of scientific discovery, rather than faith-based principles associated with religion and the supernatural. However, closer examination seems to suggest that human scientific thought might also be based, at some point, on faith and that faith, therefore, isn't ignorable. If this is true, perhaps the first step toward community success is addressing the foundations of faith.

This suggested dependency of scientific thought on faith seems to stem from the apparent limitations of human first-hand knowledge. Logically, a guess, a calculation or second-hand knowledge on such circumstance seems to require faith in the intuition, calculation or communicator from which such knowledge is obtained. Even first-hand experience seems to require faith in the accuracy of human perception. Learning, therefore, seems to be an act of faith that suggests existence beyond the current capacity of the learner and an entity -- perhaps an originator of what's being learned -- with greater capacity and, therefore, greater authority than the learner. Some seem, however, to relegate consideration of any intelligence beyond human intelligence to religion and the supernatural and away from scientific thought.

Whatever the reason for the apparent hesitancy to consider the possibility of supernatural ability and/or knowledge, the hesitancy seems, logically, in my humble opinion, to impede community well-being, due to the hesitancy's role in stopping individuals short of answers to community issues that involve faith and would bring about community well-being.

If this is the case, perhaps the first step on the path to community well-being might be to recognize human authority as less than ultimate and to recognize the role that faith plays in scientific decision-making.  The result might be community perspectives that recognize and address rather than bypass issues that involve faith and determine community well-being.