Think of the last time you booked a cab. Uber didn’t sell you a ride home. They sold you a certainty on a myriad of factors that influence the ride back. To name a few: the time it takes for the ride to arrive, the ETA, a background on the driver, and so on. A traditional cab gets you home as well; but we crave certainty on most unknown variables. Our cortex throws a hundred unknowns at us throughout the process.

Any faith continues to thrive and exist for the same reasons. Take for example, the process of awaiting some results that affect you. You could break down your expected outcome by reverse-engineering the process. Stack every possible factor that made a difference against its respective probabilities. But this is a long process. It’s anxiety-inducing, and has a tough waiting period that follows. This reminds me of being at the end of a semester at University. We’d calculate all prior scores and compute the odds of getting letter grades.

The previous generations were partly right, when they’d leave this to their faith. I am the first to reject any notion of an omnipotent being that controls the odds. But here’s the thing. They weren’t right because they got to the root of the problem. What they had found, was a source of certainty during the wait. It’s like shifting a huge computational load off your shoulders. Booking an Uber gives you an estimate of your life, one hour from now. In the same way, folks turn to their faith as their source that explains most of a situation’s complexity.

We have access to applications today that do this heavy lifting for us. If you visit a strange new country, you’d only need a few of them to thrive. Airbnb for shelter, Uber to move around, and the local food delivery guys to drop you off some food. In a world that doesn’t push the limits of technological innovation, we’d have no choice but to believe in some faith.

But, we don’t have all the answers to the unknowns today. We cannot view technological progress merely as a fountain that gifts certainty to human needs. If anything, we’re only moving to the next phase of unknowns we encounter. And along the way, we’re searching for the next coping mechanisms.

Rejecting a faith these days is social signalling to come off as smart. But it is smarter to understand why it has always thrived.