This is the on-going confusion, isn’t it? Particularly among Christians. The man at the pulpit always throws this one out; does belief count as faith? Is there even a real difference?
I say there is, and not because I am a Christian.
Siddartha Gotoma–The Buddha–was already determined to be the one to achieve Nirvana by the gods. And yet Buddhism, as a religion, is an atheistic religion. The question I asked was how this was possible when atheism rejects the existence of god(s) and/or supernatural deities, and yet it was only possible for Siddartha to become The Buddha through divine intervention.
It would make more sense to say that Buddhists are secular; Buddhism considers god(s) irrelevant to their equation at hand.
19th century semi-Victorian, semi-modern poet Thomas Hardy claimed the same view. God was indifferent to him–a man–and God was irrelevant to his life just as he was irrelevant to God’s.
So what is faith? Faith, in my definition, is a life that revolves around the existence of God or gods, and it is based solely on rituals. To practice faith would be to attend Sunday mass and take communion with bread and wine. And it makes sense that Christians would call their religious life a life of faith; the acceptance of Christ is a ritual (one man–pure and completely without sin–must die for all of mankind in order to end the ritual of sacrificing livestock to atone for one’s sin).
Rituals exist in order to perpetuate the illusion of there being a god who deserves it. It is elaborate, tedious, and often nonsensical.
“Your world is you. My world is me.”
–Wallace Stevens
