People die and this is essentially the finiteness we expreience. In order to satisfy ourselves God becomes our ultimate protector, he is the innfinite and the omnipitant. "No matter what answers faith may give, its every answer gives to the finite existance of man the sense of the infinite- (Tolstoy 23). In is quote Tolstoy struggles with the battle of the meaning of life and he concludes by stating that in order to find the answer to our finintness we need to seek the infinite. He believes that faith will trancend the answer. .
So it seems as though faith is nessacary in order to live a rational live, but there is still the question as to what it means to live a "rational" live. Tolstoy says that in order to to answer the question about human finitness one has to first stop looking for the answer in rational knowledge. He believes that in order to live and find meaning it is nessacary to renounce "rational knowledge" and replace it with a higher "irrational knowledge" that he said was faith. On one side there is the idea that faith is needed for people to live rationally and on the otherside someone such as Nietzsche would say that, "In Christianity neither morality nor religion has even a single point of contact with reality" (581). Both of these men have strong arguments that seem to be contradictory to oneanother. Tolstoy believes in a higher power and that higher power is good, to him if God does not exist then there is no point to life. Conversaly, Nietzsche says that if God does exist then there is no point to live. It is by taking these two extremes and forming them into one viewpoint that one is able to understand the role faith plays in leading a rational life and that it is indeed nessacary.
Throughout history there has been religion, however, not everyone has the same religious beliefs. Some people believe in many gods while others believe in God the Father, and still others believe in many different things.