“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” – Thomas Aquinas

Both the atheist and the faithful have the same fundamental problem: there is no way either can prove their point because it requires knowledge of the future after death. While both can argue that they “know” whether God exists, or does not, neither truly knows. The atheist may point to data point after data point which denies the existence of a Creator, similar to someone who only sees white swans in history with each prior white swan reaffirming that fact, until the magical Black Swan appears. The faithful may or may not have data points to support their faith, but faith does not require proof in the near-term, small sample of life relative to eternity. Belief Is faith in an unseen and unknown future, which is something related to life after death.

With my travels around the country over (at least for this year), I've had much on my mind as it relates to this business of investment management. The atheist and the faithful both are making an inherent prediction about the future which no one can prove until the future becomes the present. The same applies to investing. Both the bull and the bear speak confidently about why stocks, bonds, commodities, or currencies will do this thing or that thing based on data points or faith about cause and effect, yet no one despite that confidence truly knows whether they are right or wrong until after the fact. The atheists in markets would have said that buy and hold investing was dead in March 2009, and that the buy and hold model was broken. The faithful would say quite the opposite, despite suffering a severe beating financially in the midst of brutal bear markets and crashes, and likely losing their sanity as colleagues, friends, and enemies scream about how wrong they are as the world falls apart.

There is logic, however, in being faithful, and in believing. In the midst of the market collapse during the post-Lehman free-fall, you needed to believe that things would be okay. If you didn't, you inherently then believed capitalism was coming to an end, and in turn needed to leave your home, buy guns and butter, and get the hell out of dodge. From a payout perspective, there was logic in having faith that the world would survive and that buy and hold was not broken, but rather broken in the small-sample. Those familiar with Pascal's Wager recognize probability theory. Assuming that there is indeed infinite gain or loss from believing in God (spending eternity in heaven or hell as defined by your religion), you might as well believe. The downside if there is no God? No heaven, no hell – a definitive end in time.