'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Blind Faith

 A guy I know supports a sports team (I won’t say which sport or what team) that has slumped to the bottom of their league after the usual string of ‘bad luck’ losses. I ran into him in the street and started to commiserate only to be cut short by a wave of his arm. “Don’t talk about it,” he said. “Its’ my religion.” His smile made it a half-truth, but not a joke, and I found myself thinking ‘Why not your religion?’ All teams, like all religions have a code and their congregation is engaged in the worship of something ephemeral.

What’s ephemeral about a sports team? Well, as soon as you look at it over a few seasons, you’ll see that the coach and the players all change, and sometimes even the town they play for, and all that is left is ‘tradition’. You can’t get more ephemeral than that.

But surely, that is where the similarity between a religion and a sports team ends. Religion is not competitive. No, of course going to hell if you’re not a Catholic or being an Infidel if you’re not a Moslem, or being one of ‘The Chosen People’ if you’re a Jew has no hint of ‘top dog’ about it. Such people know these truths in all humility and of course, they are right, even if this must mean that the rest are wrong!

When it comes to religion, my personal suspicion is that, like electricity, there is something out there, and that may be what makes all these ‘faiths’ so believable. The best lie is the one, which is closest to the truth. But I certainly wouldn’t swear that there is something out there, because I honestly don’t know.

So, we come to the nub of things concerning ‘faith’. No matter how strong your personal feelings may be about your faith, and whatever occurrences have brought you to that conclusion, how can you be sure? I don’t believe that you can be, and that’s all that I believe. How can the Clergy, the Buddhist Monks, the Ayatollahs, the Rabbis, and yes the Agnostics all be so sure that they are right? I believe that if they were all truly honest, they would have to say that there is always a chance that………after all, they are only human.

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