So . . . a spiritual leader and guru died this past week. Sathya Sai Baba was revered by millions around the world and believed to be holy and capable of miracles (one such miracle, it seems was his amassing of $8.9 billion, with a b, in net worth). These miracles supposedly include conjuring items out of thin air, both in person and in photographic form (i.e. if you put a picture of Sai Baba on your mantle, you might find treasure there in the morning), such as rings, Rolex watches, and a holy kind of ash that he pulls from his 'fro. By now you may be thinking that this is something of a joke, or if you haven't heard of him before (as I hadn't as recently as a couple of years ago), something I made up. But before you dismiss Sai Baba as ridiculous, you might want to cast a more critical eye on yourself.
My first reaction upon hearing about Sai Baba was probably like yours: yeah, right. As someone I know recently said about the deceased guru, how can any intelligent person believe in such a thing? But is the idea of a eighty-year-old Indian man conjuring jewellery or predicting the date of his own death (er . . . even though he was off by a decade or so) that much different than believing in Jesus, or Zoroaster, or the Buddha? Sure, the latter examples have the benefit of having existed long ago so their mystique is greater, but belief in their miracles is no more rational. Hell, billions of Christians just finished celebrating a weekend commemorating the death and resurrection of their god (despite the more logical explanation that he was not dead in the first place), but no, it's impossible that someone pulls ash from their hair.
It's really about the nature of faith, which is belief without proof. As soon as you get into a discussion about why one belief system is better than another, proof has to come into it, which mucks up the works. Logically, it's just as (il)logical that the earth began because god (or, as George Carlin said, the Invisible Man in the Sky) created the earth in six days 6000 years ago as it is that the earth began when Xenu brought billions of people to earth in airplanes 75 million years ago and then detonated nuclear bombs in volcanoes (well, I don't know, Scientology is really out there). But faith isn't about logic, it's about belief. And if six or so million people want to believe that Sai Baba is holy, more power to them (and apparently less money to them, too).
Because if people get value from their faith, even if it costs them money, that's fine for them. Your religion or belief system is not more supported by logic than anyone else's, a point quite elegantly made by the flying Spaghetti Monster. Even if you have texts from long ago, or millions of adherents, or holy artifacts, there's still no logical basis there (yes, I know, you atheists are laughing your asses off at the silly believers; to you I say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and you have no more certainty of knowledge in your position than anyone else, but your position is probably the most logical, though I'm most sympathetic to agnostics for the courage to say they don't know).
That long-ago spiritual leader Jesus said in the sermon on the mount that before removing the speck in someone else's eye, remove the log (or beam, depending on the edition) from your own. In other words, don't pick on someone else's position if you are in no position to judge because you're just as blind, if not more so. Let he who without a faith (even if that faith is an absence of faith) cast the first stone.
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