The skeptic's faith

I have to say I'm very excited about the return of scripted television. Have you been watching The Office? or How I Met Your Mother? I'm one of those people that gets really invested in the relationships of television characters, I'm what the chat rooms and web boards call a "shipper".

Buffy and Spike, Rory and Logan, Joey and Pacey, Veronica and Logan...I've shipped for all of these couples, and more recently Robin and Barney (on How I Met Your Mother) and Jim and Pam (on The Office). So, if you've been watching these shows you'll know why I'm so excited about TV this week.

Another relationship I'm routing for is Booth and Bones (on Bones). They're getting closer every episode. Though they haven't gotten together yet their relationship (still just friendship) leads me to another discussion of faith.

There was an episode of Bones several months ago (before the writers' strike) where Bones and Hodgins got kidnapped and buried alive. It was a serial kidnapper who buried people alive and then demanded huge ransoms from their friends and families. If he got paid he told them where their loved one was buried, if not he let them die.

So, Bones and Hodgins were buried alive and Booth and the rest of the lab techs were having trouble coming up with the ransom because while Hodgins did come from a rich family, he is the only surviving member so with him buried no one could access the money and Booth couldn't really negotiate with the kidnapper because Booth is FBI and the official stance of the FBI is to not negotiate.

Now, Bones is well known to be a skeptic. She doesn't believe in God, she believes in science (I won't get into that more than to say I don't see any reason not to believe in both). So, she and Hodgins only have a few minutes of consciousness left and he is trying to make peace with God but she tells him not to worry that Booth will find them. That statement, he explains to her, is evidence that she does have faith (which she emphatically denies).

Maybe all she has faith in is Booth's detective skills, and his determination, and the fact that he cares about her and Hodgins and life in general. Maybe. Those things she does have plenty of evidence of. However, those things don't constitute evidence that he will find them in time. There's evidence to support that he has the capability to find them and the desire and determination to find them, but there's no way of knowing when he will find them. He could easily be too late, but she believes he will not be and she believes it thoroughly. That's faith, as Hodgins points out to her and she is forced to admit.

I won't go so far as to say that we all have faith, but my point here is that some people think they have no faith because they don't believe in God, or aren't sure about God, when faith isn't about believing in God or not.