What's wrong with faith?

Great Debates
1

Today I’m going to ask the question, “what’s wrong with faith”? It’s a more broad question than the one that prompted it which is, “what’s so important about being right”?

I had a friend who a few years ago became a born again Atheist. Since then, he has been on a verbal crusade against anything even vaguely faith based ( but he believes in voodoo which, yeah I know ). He has the ferver of the recently converted. It was not what caused our friendship to end but it certainly made the decision easier. Heck, I know a man who was once the president of an Atheist whatever they call their groupings and if engaged could be excoriating but otherwise had a live or let live attitude.

My question though, is why so many Atheists are so incredibly driven to denigrate faith, in and of itself. I’m not asking them why they don’t believe, I get that, but why does it matter that others do?

Me, I have faith. I have faith in lots of things. I recognize that fundamentally there is no truth to these things but that matters not a bit to me. Something does not have to be real to provide benefits to humans. We don’t doubt the placebo effect but we know that the pills are not truly providing a physical effect.

So, for me, I will be ridiculed if I say I have faith though I will freely admit there is no basis for it and scientifically my faith is incorrect. I can converse with people and discuss the irrationality of my beliefs and it neither offends me ( because they’re right ) nor changes my mind ( there’s no need to change as it doesn’t affect my daily life and I like the internal feeling I get from my faith ).

I don’t see where faith necessarily hurts the person who has it. It’s not real. So what? Really, so what? Now, if the person actually IS getting hurt by their faith, thats a different issue but most people of faith are rational people who aren’t being harmed.

What’s the difference between believing in say The Flying Spaghetti dude and dying and ceasing to exist and not believing and dying and ceasing to exist except how you feel before you get to the dying bit? I really want to know. I’ve asked but no one yet has really given an answer. I usually get a rehashing about how dumb faith is which isn’t what I am asking.

I’ve heard the argument that you should believe in god because you may be wrong about him not existing but I reject that. I’m asking if there is no afterlife when you die, what did you gain by not believing in something?

I’m not saying of course that an atheist should try and gain a belief in something he finds absurd. I don’t think you need to force it either way. I find it incredibly easy to believe in things but I was quite influenced by Lewis Carroll growing up and sometimes I believe at least 6 impossible things before breakfast. I don’t see the problem.

I’m not going to think I can fly and jump out a window. I don’t think a god is going to protect me and go wandering into fires or pits of lions. I don’t think belief requires that. ’

Now, I realize that the possibility that I don’t understand what faith means at all and I don’t have it but there are things I believe in that don’t exist. Some of these beliefs either influence my moral code or most probably are adapted to fit my moral code that I’ve already developed. Some, are pure entertainment. They mostly serve a purpose though and that’s to make getting through my day a little better. Just like the humble placebo.

So, again, why give it up? what makes you feel it’s imperative I give it up and how do you judge my intelligence based on this peccadillo? What am I not seeing?

I blame Socrates and my disdain for human ego for my ease of belief. Socrates of course said, “if indeed I am the wisest man in Athens it’s because I realize I know nothing.”

We as a planet have an infantesimal perch to judge how the entire universe, infinite as it is mind you, works and for us to claim something always works one way, everywhere in the universe, always, we’re over reaching. If we say it doesn’t on Earth then I’m with you. It’s not real even if it actually exists outside our perception which doubtless many things in the universe do.

Heck, we just found out that carbon based life may not be the only life in the universe though we just knew that it was. It’s arrogance is what it is.

So, there’s an infinite universe which we have zero chance of ever even beginning to explore in any meaningful percentage and possibly even infinite planes of reality and now we know that time isn’t exactly what we thought it was and at least with light effect can cause cause instead of vice versa so how do we say we have anything nailed down except in what we can observe directly? Infinite isn’t a closed system.

So to me, out there in the irrelevant are goblins in pants, flying spaghetti gods, old white guys with beards, zombies, lions and tigers and bears OH MY and I love it. Practically, I know that they’re not here so they don’t encroach on my daily life or decisions or even more importantly, how I react to you, so again, what’s wrong with faith?

I’m not talking about in message board debates on the subject. That makes sense but those who throw in the disdain when it’s really not appropriate. I actually got the lecture for exclaiming “jezus christ” when I slammed my thumb in my car door. Really? That helped the situation in any way? I don’t get that.

Sorry this was so long and not well put together. It’s something I’ve been meaning to put to paper and tonight was the night.

2

I can only speak for myself but, as far as I’m concerned, people can believe whatever the heck they want as long as it doesn’t impact my life in any way.

I find it unacceptable that Christianity affects legislation that determines the role and trajectory my government takes on any number of issues that affect my life. I don’t find it acceptable that ignorance is lauded and promoted in the name of Christianity and that my children must be subjected to rules designed to inculcate them with religious dogma at the expense of real education. I am sickened by the stranglehold religion, Christianity specifically, has on meaningful discourse in this country.

If others’ faith didn’t affect me or mine, I wouldn’t care one whit what they believe, but it does, so I strongly, and vocally, oppose it.

3

I understand this view I think. Depending on what you mean by strongly and vocally oppose it. Would you feel the need to interject your opposition when talking to someone who was not affecting you or yours? Would you vocally oppose someone whose religion didn’t do what you feel Christianity does in regards to legislation, say a non political religion?

If not then yes, we agree, but if so, why would you strongly and vocally oppose that? Would you do the same for a non political Christian who does not vote or proselytize ttherefore not affecting your life in any way? If so why, because that’s really what I’m asking? I get fighting the influence of organized religion but organized religion doesn’t equal faith.

4

I call it “Evangelical Atheism,” you see it a lot on this board.

There is a 13 page, 619 post thread in Great Debates that consists mainly of the resident atheists adamantly insisting that their belief system is in fact, not a belief system.

The funny thing is that this lack of tolerance and acceptance of diversity would get most of them fired had they stated their opinions in the work place.

It is bigotry at it’s most elemental level, but they are blind to see it.

5

No, not at all.

Again, no, not at all.

If not, then I don’t.

Let me be clear. I believe every citizen should have the right to vote, Christian or otherwise. Christians are Americans too. However, Christians are not super-Americans, the “real” Americans, or any more American than any other citizen, and America, last I checked, is not a theocracy, but there’s certainly a swath of the electorate who would like it to be, and a number of their representatives who would only be too happy to set the foundation for it. And before any of the hand-waivers come in and pounce, I should only have to mention Sarah Palin, who’s as dumb as a wall, but is as popular as ever, primarily because of unapologetic, if illogically-expressed, social-conservative views hewed and honed by her religion, for anyone with half a brain to understand how detrimental it would be if she, or anyone like her, were to ever have the reins of real power.

6

Because, as much as people of faith like to claim that they hurt no one, they do. Christian Scientists hurt themselves and their children through rejection of modern medicine and reliance on prayer and faith. And this is a story that is told over and over in all societies. It is not right that a child should suffer because the parents believe that sickness is a punishment from a god. But it runs deeper than that. It is the child raised in an evangelical household that chooses not to study biology or geology or other sciences because they are from the ‘devil’ that suffers because of faith. It is all the people who can help themselves and others but do not because ‘god will provide’ and so they languish, unable to see what they could do if they could stop relying on faith. Faith, religious faith is worthless and is nothing more than a shiny toy to distract people from the realities of existence. That is why it was created and why it should be shunned.

7

Interestingly, “faith” is essential to progress/invention. Einstein developed his theories by believing the impossible might be possible, and let the math get worked out later.

In his early years, by the way, he found himself “enthralled by the Nazarene” and said nobody could read the Gospels without feeling personally close to Jesus. He is one great thinker who saw Jesus as a kindred spirit. In later years though he came to doubt the Gospels.

We can only contact God through thoughts and acts of faith, because if there is a God we are boneheads by definition. If there is a God, our minds are too puny to understand him BY DEFINITION. Therefore we cannot discover or even reject him except by faith. Rejecting him requires huge amounts of faith. By faith you have to declare Jesus an invention, a liar or a nutball in order to reject him. That’s what is so foolish about atheism.

We hear ad nauseum about the horrors of the middle ages and the crusades, but we never hear that the greatest social reformers of the 17th to 19th centuries were Christians- Fox, Stapleton, Whitefield, Garrison, Beecher. Even Gandhi called the crucifixion “the perfect act” of love. How do you know that, but for Jesus and Christian cultures, you would be staring at a picture of der Furher or Mao all day??? You don’t know any such thing and you ignore all the evidence you don’t like BY FAITH. This is the conclusion most great thinkers have come to. They realized it took more faith to reject Jesus than accept him.

Don’t be fooled by atheist “logic.” Don’t be fooled by “arguments” Christians do/did evil things. Am I a patriot because I say I am? No I am not. Some Christians did evil and some set the greatest examples of all time, like Garrison’s example in the fight against slavery. The 'Enlightenment" wa sled almost entirely by Christians, and yet we have been fooled into thinking Voltaire and Paine did it by themselves. Actually they were 50-100 years behind Fox and Wesley in their social thinking and “enlightenment”

But what Christians do or don’t do has absolutely nothing to do with whether Jesus is who he said. “Logic” is all in the mind of the beholder. Watch carefully and you will find one logical fallacy after another in atheist arguments, (as well as some Christian arguments).

8

Correlation and causation yadda yadda yadda.

Just because Einstein was religious doesn’t mean we must assume that one must be religious to be an Einstein. One could just as easily take it the other way and cluck disappointedly about how much greater he could have been if he weren’t weighed down by his faith.

Here’s a hint. Advances are made in science, not theology.

9

I apologize if you felt I was implying you might want to deprive anyone of a vote. That was never on my mind. I was just trying to boil the question down and didn’t go far enough. Your reply is spot in and we seem to pretty much agree on this issue.

10

So, because certain faiths have harmful followers all faiths, no matter how far from the above they are must be shunned?

As for your passioned rejoinder “Faith, religious faith is worthless and is nothing more than a shiny toy to distract people from the realities of existence. That is why it was created and why it should be shunned.” that’s excellent. Now, you’ve just said what was the statement that drove the OP.

You said that’s why? But why? Really? What is it in you that goes off when a stranger presents as having faith that compels you to shun them for having a distraction from reality? Television is nothing more than a shiny toy to distract people from the realities of existence. A yoyo is nothing more than a shiny toy to distract people from the realities of existence. Heck, this message board is nothing more than a shiny toy to distract people from the realities of existence. No one shuns any of this.

11

Not to speak for the poster but I took it that you had to have faith in the impossible not necessarily faith in a God to have the insight to create above and beyond what is currently possible and that is assuredly so.

Here’s a hint. Christianity is not the only form of faith, neither is organized religion.

12

I know it’s an absolute waste of time and space addressing this again, but, oh well, I’m awake anyway, so here goes. Atheism is not a belief system. It is not a system at all. It is a non belief in a specific set of supernatural propositions. There are no rules, there is no dogma. It is nothing more than as there is no evidence that gods exist, the default position is they don’t. Just as the default position for anything else supernatural is it doesn’t exist. I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand about it.

I am tolerant of anyone and everyone’s beliefs, but I simply won’t humor the religious by giving their beliefs special status or respect over any other supernatural proposition, such as ghosts, demons, fairies, unicorns, or the like. To me it is all the same.

If people chooses to believe in unicorns, more power to them; I could even manage a productive relationship with them if it is in my better interests to do so. People believe in lots of crazy crap, so who am I to dismiss the Unicornian or the Christian?

13

By the way, I have a disclosure before I get to far. I had it in the OP but that got too long.

I am not a Christian. My upbringing however is in Christianity so I tend to express certain philosophies in those terms but I am not a believer in that faith. It doesn’t work for me.

14

Because when someone tells me they have faith it is a prelude to informing me why I should join them in their faith. Because when someone tells me they have faith, it is in justification of an irrational action or belief. Because when someone tells me they have faith, it is because they are denying reality. And that is dangerous to them and to me.

15

No need to apologize at all. I probably came off harsher than I meant to.

16

I like most of this but if someone gave you an alien box, which resembles nothing you have ever seen before and comes with no instructions. When you open it, it has 100 trillion separate boxes, each box holding something you can’t really see. You open box one and it’s a poem, particularly a haiku. How certain are you that all 100 trillion boxes hold poems let alone haikus? That’s what saying unicorns don’t exist really is.

Now, do unicorns exist on earth? Nope. Absolutely not. How sure are we that there isn’t a unicorn in box 546,645,456? Even if we can peek out and kinda see 100,000 of those boxes? Still want to be drop dead certain that they don’t exist? We’re also talking infinite planets.

I am not a scientist or a statistician but it really seems to me that the planet Earth is entirely too small of a sample size to definitively say what is and isn’t in it. To me, the only answer that isn’t a profession of some belief is, I honestly have no clue but given what we know there’s none on Earth and likely as far as we know the universe there is nothing to suggest that they exist anywhere else for that matter.

17

I just wrote that I have faith. Can you point out where I’ve done any of the rest of it or how I am dangerous to myself. Need answers to that last one fast!

18

Missed the edit window.

I mentioned above that my beliefs specifically not denying reality as I don’t base reality decisions on my beliefs. As far as I know I’m not lying. Are you suggesting that I somehow am denying reality and don’t know it and that is dangerous to me? I’ve never been in a situation where my faith has honestly came up that I know. I can’t imagine how it could.

19

I don’t have an argument with your thesis, which is why I said the default position, barring evidence, is that gods, and unicorns, don’t exist. Gods may very well exist for all we know, but there is absolutely no reason to believe they do, and even less reason to create them as we have.

ETA: However, if we want to be adamant against all logic and continue to contend that gods exist, then it, IMO, should be stipulated that anything and everything that could possibly be imagined exists as well.

20

Ah, I agree 98%. I do think that at the beginning there was a reason to create them. It gave us not only an ideal to rise to that was greater than howling at the moon and in days when violence was the norm, anything that could dissuade that had a stabilizing effect on society and that was painful but ultimately good. It could still be good for getting people to understand the actual philosophical tenets which pretty much every religion espouses which facilitate society. The golden rule comes to mind.