Great post, W.

Perhaps faith is the art of tentative answers.

I’ve always thought that reality is like a a set of nonlinear partial differential equations, sort of like a much more complex version of the Navier-Stokes equations. It can’t be solved as-is, so we are all forced to throw out terms to make the problem tractable. Trying to solve it as-is will simply drive us crazy.

Thing is, different people throw out different terms, but not all simplifications are equally valid. Throwing out the wrong term will give you a really wrong answer. Sure, the problem is solvable, but the answer is not true. (Kind of a variation on Gödel.)

In the end, then, our world view is defined by what we ignore. So choosing what to ignore is the art of faith, an art that relies on both Athens and Jerusalem. But while all answers are indeed tentative, if we ignore the right terms we never stray too far from the truth.

And that is a comforting thought, especially when we are confronted with evil.

Cheers,
L3