During my monthly atheist discussion group which I attended last night, we had, as we always do, a dialogue about faith.  I made the point that we all live by faith, that is, we all live with faith that certain things will always occur or will always be true.  For instance, we all assume that the sun will rise each morning, we all assume that when we get out of the bed in the morning there will be a floor for our feet, we all assume that when we eat we will be able to chew.
     Not so, one replied.  We do not live by faith; we live by reasonable expectations.  That is, we have a reasonable expectation that the sun will rise each morning, we have a reasonable expectation that when we open the refrigerator we will see food in it. 
     Maybe so.  But what's the difference?  Either way, we are living on the basis of assumptions, assumptions at which we arrive by using other assumptions, namely, our faith (or "reasonable expectations") in our ability to make assumptions.  We are all locked in tautologies.
     What to do?  In the end, each of us needs to decide not so much which tautology makes the most sense, but why we can imbibe in tautologies at all.  In other words, why is the universe reasonable?
     If we say it is because we have a reasonable expectation that it is, however, we have proved nothing at all.