On Faith

On faith ...I'm not a big fan.

Lets be clear, I am not talking about faith in things that are real and or possible; like faith that your spouse will return from war alive, or your favorite football team will win the game, or the your child will succeed in life. I am talking about religious faith; faith in something for which there is no supporting evidence or objective likelihood of reality.

Faith, it seems, is the most important thing to religious people, who regard facts as secondary. If you discuss Atheism with a religious person, no matter how much rock solid evidence you present to the religious, invariably they fall back on faith as the answer to any debate.

Their particular faith, mind you, disregarding the faith of billions of others who have different views.  Everyone's personal faith, is of course the only "true" faith.

I cannot tell you how many times I have been told, by otherwise intelligent people, "I don't care about that, in the end its all about faith." Ever hear the religious statement, "God said it, I believe it." Never mind the fact there are no documents or recordings of anything "god" said, its based solely on the individuals faith that "god" said something they like.

The religious will disregard the laws of physics, textual criticism of the bible, and gross contradictions within their own texts, and claim faith as their key ingredient. It's as though the religious willingly put on a pair of blinders, walk into the pens, and allow themselves to be herded like cattle.

So, the question begs to be asked, "How accurate are humans with faith?" I thought I would offer a few examples of faith, in order to put faith into perspective. You will find these examples silly and repulsive, but bear in mind the following examples were/are bed rock beliefs for millions of people.

For thousands of years, and based on nothing more than faith:

Ø Humans believed in the Greek god Zeus, the Norse god Thor, the Egyptian god Isis, and the Babylonian god Anu, just to name a few.

Ø Humans believed that sickness was caused by evil spirits - this actually continues today, in this country, in many civilized and educated societies.

Ø Humans believed the entire universe was comprised of four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Ø Humans believed certain races were cursed by god and made fitting slaves - sadly this also continues to this day and also in this country.

Ø Humans believed that women were an inferior gender, cursed by god to be subservient to males.

Ø Humans believed the Earth was flat.

Ø Children believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny

Now, I agree, every single one of the above is both silly, and in the case of slavery and women rights, disgusting and immoral. But every one of the above are/were matters of faith to billions of people, who in many cases, fought to the death to stand up for their "faith".

I think that most people will recognize the baseless nature of faith in Greek and Egyptian gods. Children grow up and find the Toothy Fairy was a quaint childhood fantasy. I also think that most people recognize that as humanity has evolved, grown more sophisticated, and expanded our scientific awareness, that as a result we no longer believe evil spirits are the cause for sickness and we found the Earth was actually round. I think that it is pretty obvious, to even a casual observer, that the aforementioned citations were the cause of widespread human rights violations, evils committed in the name of gods, and stymied the advancement of the human race for thousands of years.

All of this evil was based only on faith lacking any facts.

Faith; the human belief in the unknowable (or what is unknowable at the moment), it would appear, has a very very poor track record. Humans will believe just about anything. Yet, people still cling to it. It is human nature, so it is said, to try and put some order to what appears to be chaos around us, to assign the unknown to a divine hand. It gives people comfort (?) that they at least believe there is some order to the unknown. Despite overwhelming evidence, and a failed history behind it, humans still cling to faith.

The most obvious question to me, is just how far would the human race have advanced, without all the silly impediments found in faith? How many lives, for example, could have been saved, if faith had not stood in the way of science?

It is said, those who ignore history, are doomed to repeat it. Let's hope humanity does not repeat the uglier aspects of religious faith; its wars, its slaughter, its human rights violations.

I believe the human race is capable of getting beyond this, to become all that we aspire to be. I believe in the human spirit. There is evidence for that type of faith and that's what I am standing up for.