Niphredil16 Oct 2005

I'd like to comment, if I may.

You are talkng about an abstract concept know as 'faith', where someone who believes in God has 'faith', and someone who is an atheist does not.
I'd like to extend that concept and change it a little. What I believe is inherent within human beings is not the capacity for faith but the prayer for deliverance - or hope.

Any human being has prayed for help at least once in his life; for example, you walk around the corner and see that your house is on fire and your family is inside. The first thing that whips through your mind is, 'Please, let them be all right'...
Most events in life can't be controlled. Hoping for something to turn out okay is essentially the same as a prayer to God, Luck, or the laws of physics; and this is, in my opinion, a trait common to all living beings, on different levels.
I'd like to argue that this, in fact, should replace the concept of 'faith' that you are disputing. Change it to 'prayer for deliverance'.
Do animals 'hope', or 'pray for deliverance'? Why shouldn't they, in the sense that I described? In fact, the entire concept of 'God' is, basically, just an extension of this tenet based on the fact that humans have superior, more developed brains; allowing them to develop this *extremely* basic idea along with the development of their brains over time, or evolution, if you will.

So in my opinion, what I would say is:
The hope of being delivered from trouble is a universal trait and common, on one level or another, to all sentient beings. Humans, having superior brains, have developed from this a concept of 'God', 'religion' and 'faith' as an outlet and a reason for hope - we will always hope for the best, because God is with us. However, since most phenomena can be explained perfectly well by physics, faith is no longer a necessity in modern life, and has been spurned by atheists; however, every human (faithless or not) continues to hope.