Faith, continued.

Faith

                Faith is a difficult topic for me to discuss, because I have already condemned it in my mind, and I frankly find any justifications for it to be flimsy and poorly thought out. Before I say anything, let me define faith as it is defined by those who have it. Faith is the belief in something you don’t know and can't prove. It’s knowing something you can’t know, it’s irrational. Now I appreciate that not all things worthy of merit are necessarily rational, but still, one must admit that when you look at it this way, it does seem distinctly silly. A faithful person reading this might feel just the tiniest nagging sensation in the back of their mind. If you want that sensation to go away, I recommend you step away from this essay and go start a holy war or something to make you feel better.

                Anyway, faith is something that I hear a lot about from theists, but which I don’t really hear explained at all. In fact, I am honestly lead to believe that many people who use faith as an explanation or an excuse, don’t even think about what it really is, even just in the way that they look at it. They leave it a fuzzy, undefined thought buzzing around in their heads, like a bad algebra student might know of the order of operations, but not really have a clear, articulated grasp of it. And yet, when in any kind of verbal confrontation about their beliefs, most theists will immediately pull the faith card, and hide behind it like it’s diplomatic immunity while they’re visiting the land of rational thought. Seriously guys, is this in your handbook or something? I can just see it, “If an irreligious person approaches you and begins making ANY KIND OF CRITICISM OF YOUR BELIEFS, the only safe response is to immediately begin rattling off as many faith-related justifications as possible, and the more vague the better! Most attackers will become confused, flustered, or satisfied by this technique. WARNING: If attacker persists and asks you to consider faith on any level deeper than the word itself, IMMEDIATELY block both ears, yell LALALALALA, and think of cats until attacker desists. IF YOU ACTUALLY THINK ABOUT FAITH, WE PROMISE THAT YOU WILL TOTALLY NOT REALIZE THAT IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE, BUT DOGS WILL COME FROM HELL AND CHEW YOUR BALLS OFF ANYWAY!!!”

                But seriously, whenever I talk to any theist about their beliefs and ask them why they believe in such nonsense, they say “faith,” and go no further into detail. It really is as if they haven’t thought it through, which makes it completely invalid as an actual point in any context. How does this sound? “I believe in something that I can’t know, because of faith.” And this is the same as saying “I believe in something I can’t know because I have a belief in something I can’t know.” Circular much? I mean, you could say it’s because you’re faithful, but that brings up the question of why you are. Because god said you should be? And you know he said so because you have faith. And you have faith because he said… Oh, making less and less sense, isn’t it? Seriously, I would bet that a significant amount of theists, if made to turn a logical eye on this, would probably at least be forced to seriously reconsider their beliefs. But I suppose that those truly determined to delude themselves would just make up some flimsy, vague justification for faith in their heads without thoroughly exploring that, either. And that’s what they've been trained to do; they are given an illogical justification for something, taught to use it as if it were proven fact without applying common sense to it, and as a result if this idea is challenged they simply come up with a new one exactly like it. In the external world, that's enough grounds to call them mad, in a manner of speaking, but the harmful thing is that in their heads they are trained to block out reason. That’s the source of this whole mess, really, corrupted reasoning skills.

                But let’s just say, for a second, that believing in something that you can’t prove has some freakish sort of merit to it. Let’s just pretend that in the way the world works, that actually makes sense. What separates any one belief that you can’t prove from another? What makes the Christian god different from Allah different from Zeus different from Quetzaquatl different from Krishna different from fucking unicorns? If you can’t prove something, there is no evidence to support a belief in it, so why would you believe in one thing more than another, if there is equal reason to believe either? (that amount of reason being zero, of course) It would seem, then, that believing any one thing on faith over another is just an arbitrary choice. I mean, you could say that you have faith that a certain god exists instead of any other, but that's just as circular, why have faith in that over any other? It really is arbitrary, in a sense. It's not in that there aren’t things to influence which belief you have, but there is no factual reason to believe one idea over another. So, since the whole belief in god thing is just a crapshoot that 90% of the world is involved in, screw agnosticism! I want in on this! I think I’ll believe in Zeus, he's pretty freaking badass. I mean, he usurped the Titans and defeated them all, he tricked his siblings into giving him the sky and earth to rule over, and he reins over all mankind, throwing lightning bolts at them when they piss him off. Of all the gods out there, I want that guy to have my back, you all have fun with your “God of the Desert.”

But back to being serious, I’m sure you all can see by now that having faith is really for its own sake. Faith justifies faith? Sure, why not, I’ll let you get away with saying that. You’re deluded for thinking that, but if you can say that with a straight face and not realize how stupid and pointlessly circular your faith is, you aren’t even worth my time and breath. Well, maybe I’d invest some into getting you put into a mental asylum…

Okay, by this point I have pretty much slapped every theist reading this in the face, and I know what your reaction will be. Faith is the first reaction any theist has to being questioned about their religion, and whenever it is challenged you guys almost invariably come around with good old number two. Predictable. Can any of the irreligious ones out there guess what I’m thinking? That’s right, it’s scripture! Okay, listen, I will only say this ONCE. The freaking bible, or quran, or torah, or whatever the hell kind of scripture you can use to justify faith, IS NOT VALID EVIDENCE. EVER.

                Do you want to know how I got into the stupidest argument of my life? I told a Christian that he had nothing to prove any of his petty ideas of god and the universe, except the pages of his bible. He responded by telling me that the bible was valid evidence, because the stories in it were first hand witness accounts of the resurrection, etc. Okay, there are so many things wrong with this. I will keep this broad and brief, because I don’t want to torture to many of the sane people reading this by wasting time explaining things. Just because someone wrote down that something was true, does NOT make it a fact. If multiple people did, it might make it a popular legend/story, but it is NOT historical evidence. I have in my book shelf a copy of the story, “The Alchemist,” by Coelho. It is a story that was completely made up. It had a few messages about life and morality that may be solid, but none of the events portrayed were anything more than loosely based on actual events. Just like all stories are told, it was written as if it was true, and it was also published into fifty six different languages according to the copy I have. But does that make the impossible events in it any more plausible to happen? Does that make it historical fact? FUCKING OF COURSE NOT, YOU TWIT! And it could be so many other things too, the person who wrote it could have been delusional, it could have been a common legend at the time, the people who confirmed the story could have gotten it from the first guy! The bible was written in like 300 AD, what the fuck do you know about how it was written? Besides, there are tons of other stories in Greek and Roman mythology, hinduism, etc that all are very similar to those of the bible, and do you believe in them?

Anyway, moving back onto the topic of faith itself: We’ve addressed why faith of something that cannot be proven is irrational, yes? What about faith in something that can be disproved? That is the kind of faith that many literalistic Christians have, I’m sure as well as plenty of other groups. Now this is where the idea of faith goes from trivially stupid to condemningly harmful. Science, as I either have said or will say in a different article, is basically observation. It is using your senses to observe and learn about things you do not understand, right? I mean sure, a microscope isn’t your eye, but your senses do tell you that the microscope will accurately show you infinitesimal particles, right? Even though the microscope is not your eye, if you cannot trust what it tells you, then you can either not trust what your senses tell you, or you cannot trust what your logic tells you about the connections between what your senses say and actual fact.

So, if science disproves things like how old the universe is, or that creatures evolve, or anything like that, and we refuse to believe it, then we are essentially saying that we cannot trust our senses. And think about that for a moment, if we can’t trust our senses, how the hell can we trust anything? How would we know that all the stimuli we have ever received, even that pertaining to god, isn’t just fabrication, and that all real truth about the universe is completely lost to us? If we cannot trust our senses, we are essentially perpetually hallucinating. The other alternative is that we cannot trust logic and reasoning, but honestly, I don’t think I should even need to justify those things. If you think that you don’t need logic, then tell me why you don’t go stick your head on a stove right now and do the world a favor, you dip-shit. And I just know that someone out there is thinking “Well faith is its own separate sense, I feel it inside of me, it tells me what is true!” This isn’t worth its own paragraph, so let me keep this concise: Teenagers think they feel true love, schizophrenics are sure they feel the presence of aliens, and everyone of every other goddamn religion thinks that they feel their god, just as surely as you think you feel yours. Feelings are not fact, nor are they evidence; and though I can’t stop you from honestly believing that you are the one person in a billion whose unexplainable feelings are actually fact, I’d just like to remind you that every person who was ever wrong followed the same thought process.

Using faith as grounds to disbelieve logical reasoning and one’s senses is actually harmful. If you can deny one thing that you have reason to believe is true, then please tell me, when does it stop? Do you attribute everything to god, or fate, or some higher power? Do you renounce control of your destiny because you believe someone else has it mapped out? Do I even need to explain why these things don’t work? Okay, so these are rare cases that people actually let faith get in the way of helping themselves, but on a smaller level it’s a bad thing too. I mean, just the very attitude of believing in things that don’t make sense is just unhealthy! It makes one gullible, irrational, and prone to choosing actions unwisely for the sake of superstition. Let me put it this way: if a forty year old man says he can speak to unicorns, would you be concerned? If the world were ending and, say, the president could save us from an apocalypse (just make up the scenario in your head, the specifics aren’t the point) but he chose not to because he thought it was god’s will for us to become extinct, would you approve? If a business man made his investments based on star patterns, and he inevitably became broke, would he have spent his money wisely? If the leader of a poor nation wasted money that could be used for hospitals, to donate to the Vatican, (which has plenty of money) would you say that the leader was smart? No, and all of these things practices are clearly detrimental to those who practice them, and all are a result of faith. Though usually they manifest themselves in much smaller forms of harm or inconvenience, often emotional or mental, the point is that faith is not a virtue, it’s a mental condition with a pretty name, that is glorified by society.

                This leads me to my final point, and also back to my first. Why have faith? Sure, the ostensible reason is because god says so, circular reasoning, blah blah blah, but what really causes people to have it? Well, the answer is pretty obvious. It’s the same thing that makes a child become a christian, or a hindu, or an atheist. Indoctrination. Children are born, and immediately they are fed mounds of information about god, and just taught it as if it were fact. Never mind that it doesn’t make sense, it’s ingrained into their minds, and they are programmed to believe these things. And whenever they have doubts, because they don’t see the logical reason to believe their teachings, what are they told? Believe it because of faith. Of course, they don’t realize that this is the same as saying “have faith because of faith,” but it is drilled into their heads, and treated like a virtue and a valid point. The idea of faith is reinforced in people’s minds not only as a logical, agreeable reason to trust something, but it’s also presented like a virtue. When everyone treats the very word faith as if it were a holy relic, how is a child, growing up around the people who do so, supposed to see that it doesn’t make sense? How can they hope to learn proper reasoning at all? Reasonable people will believe something, justify it, and say “It makes sense because…” but what happens with people who use faith as a justification, they are just trained to think “It makes sense,” and not even think about why it does, but instead to just take it for granted. In this way, faith is inescapable in the minds of individuals, and in the consciousness of society. Not only is it inescapable, it is possibly one of the most dangerous of all human follies, and despite its connotations in society, it is nothing short of a fatal cognitive error, worthy of as much disdain as any other form of insanity.

Caution, the following paragraph is just me rambling on in self-reflection. If you care about my history with religion, feel free to read on; but if you really don’t care, just skip to the signature.

On reflection, it’s truly a miracle that I escaped from this vicious cycle myself. I don’t know if I said, but I was once a devout Christian. I think, however, that who I was got the best of me. Even while devout, I would question what I was told and modify my beliefs to suit what made sense to me. “God hates gays,” I was told at times, and I would think “Well, I don’t think gays are worthy of being hated just for being gay, so I doubt that god would hate them.” My only flaw was that I overlooked the idea of whether god even existed or not, I took it for granted without thinking it through fully, because I was never taught to do so for that particular topic, even if I did with others. It was my grandfather who first exposed me to atheism. He showed me a video of Pat Condell’s, because he thought it was funny. To this day I can’t tell if my grandfather agrees with the man, and I don’t fully agree with him myself, but it triggered something in me when I listened to him tear down the concept of religion and god and faith. After that, I immediately began thinking about the topic, and reading up on various sets of beliefs about it. Through introspection and a newly opened mind, I came to acquire the set of beliefs (or lack thereof) that I have today. I suppose it wasn’t so amazing, though, because it didn’t come as much of a shock of me to learn it. I honestly think a small, repressed part of me doubted the existence of god for a long time before that, and as I write this I even recall it nagging at the back of my mind frequently while I was theist. Regardless of exactly what happened in my head, I am grateful for every circumstance that lead me here. Through once being religious, I came to understand it, and through an open but critical mind, I came to realize exactly what is wrong with it.

I don’t know if what I have been through has taught me anything. I couldn’t say if really know what is right and wrong on anything more than a basic level, or if I have any kind of wisdom about the universe. I am uncertain of so many things, because I can see that there is no way for me to be certain of them, and so I can only hope for a day when we as a race can see the real truth about the universe. I only really want to do one thing in life to help accomplish this. I don’t want to change the world. I don’t want to teach any specific ideas to any person, forcing them to see only my vision. What I hope to teach people before I die, is how to see past all of the lies, and cognitive error, and anything else that stops them from thinking reasonably; and to use logic and reasoning as their tools for finding truth. In short, I do not want to teach people what to know, but rather, how to know, and why they should never be fully certain. And perhaps one of the most important ways that I can do that is to address the issues that prevent rational thought, like obstinacy to reason, bias towards certain beliefs, and most importantly of all: Blind, irrational, self-destructive, unquestioned, and mind numbing faith.

Perversely Yours,

The Ellipsis…