A blog dedicated to posts about my thoughts as an agnostic atheist and scientist.
Faith has the potential to believe in spite of or perhaps because of lack of evidence. However, “faith” more accurately means “trust”, “confidence” and “reliance”. We all trust and have confidence in our reasoning and logic; it is well-placed. It’s simply faith in the supernatural, extending this trust beyond the parameters of reason, that it becomes an issue.
(via lostinthought92)
If someone believes what they are told, without looking for evidence to support the claim, and they simply believe despite this ignorance and potential lack of evidence, we call them gullible.
If someone believes what they are told about the divine, even after contradictory and/or unsettling evidence is presented to them, we say they have great faith.
Faith is not a virtue. It is an attribute deemed virtuous by religions as a tool to keep their flocks intact.
Coming from a former, devout believer in Christ with decent to extensive knowledge of the Bible and its theologies and philosophies.
I’ve been writing about faith lately, claiming it is an irrational leap over the probabilities. I’m not saying people who take the leap of faith are irrational, only that it’s irrational to take that leap. But once they take the irrational leap of faith they can be very rational based on it. It’s rational to conclude, as Pat Robertson does, that national disasters are God’s judgment for our sins. The problem isn’t that his utterly ignorant conclusion isn’t rational. The problem is his faith. Faith is irrational. It’s also rational for Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church to say “God hates fags.” The problem isn’t that their utterly ignorant conclusion isn’t rational. The problem is their faith. Faith is irrational. The Inquisition was a rational conclusion too. The Church believed heresy was a leavening influence in society and as such was the worst crime of all. It could send others to hell. So they concluded the heretic must die. The problem isn’t that their utterly ignorant conclusion isn’t rational. It was their faith. Faith is irrational.
To see this for what it is consider what psychiatrist Valerie Tarico wrote. “It doesn’t take very many false assumptions to send us on a long goose chase,” she argues. Then she tells us about the mental world of a paranoid schizophrenic. To such a person the perceived persecution by others sounds real. “You can sit, as a psychiatrist, with a diagnostic manual next to you, and think: as bizarre as it sounds, the CIA really is bugging this guy. The arguments are tight, the logic persuasive, the evidence organized into neat files. All that is needed to build such an impressive house of illusion is a clear, well-organized mind and a few false assumptions. Paranoid individuals can be very credible.” (Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light, pp. 221-222).
The false assumptions of the Christian faith make believers appear to the rest of us like they are mentally disturbed, just like a paranoid schizophrenic. No wonder we call their faith a delusion and say they are deluded people.
To further illustrate this consider the story of the man who thought he was dead. He went to his doctor, who tried to reason with the man that he was really still alive. Finally the doctor asked the man, “Do dead men bleed? If you cut a dead man, does he bleed?” The man replied, “No. The heart is not beating, there is no blood pressure, so if you cut a dead man, he does not bleed.” The doctor then took a scalpel and nicked the man on his finger, and he proceeded to bleed. As the blood continued to come forth, the doctor said to the man, “See, you are bleeding. What does that tell you?” And the man answered, “Well, I guess dead men do bleed after all.”
This hypothetical story illustrates what skeptics see over and over again, and why faith is irrational. Believers will either deny the evidence or they will reinterpret their faith to adjust to the evidence. Only a very rare few of them will ever seriously question faith itself.
This is what I know about faith:
1) Faith has no method.
2) Faith cannot settle differences between faith-heads.
3) Faith does not lead to new discoveries.
4) Faith cannot solve any problems.
5) Faith cannot explain anything.
6) Faith depends on mysteries.
7) Faith can and does lead to a denial of the evidence.
8) Faith is pretty much immune from debunking.
9) Faith is rooted in fear.
10) Faith is rooted in ignorance.
I don’t expect believers to agree but it is crystal clear to the rest of us that faith is irrational. All it would take is for Christians to see this same phenomena in the religious faiths of others. That’s all. It’s the same thing. Just as the religious faiths of others are considered irrational to Christians, so also is their own faith. Just as Christians think the religious faiths of others are held despite the cold hard evidence, so also is their own faith. The problem is faith. It’s irrational. All religions share the same fundamental basis: Faith. With faith as a basis anything can be believed and that’s simply irrational.
Very interesting. This argues that it isn’t so much a total ignorance of facts as much as it is a few false assumptions upon which the rest of person’s reality is based. Rationality, therefore, would occur either through a correction of the false assumption, or through such an overwhelming supply of indisputable evidence that it can no longer be ignored. ~ Steve
Ironically, I am writing a paper about faith in my Bible class this semester. I will definitely be using this post as an inspiration.
(via lostinthought92)
Absolutely amazing. “Where do you get your morals from?” and other questions completely and fully rationalized, explained, and brought to light in a perfect context.
This answered one of my long-seated questions about myself; where do I get this continued desire to be moral, and in fact, why is it stronger now than when I was religious? Answer: it is the end-product of a logical, rational mind. Pure, simple genius.
Winning on so many levels
Freakin’ spot on!
Ties in well with my previous post. Lol.
If science is a faith, why are you trying to reconcile your faith with science, another faith? Isn’t that opposed to your Gospel? Wouldn’t that displease your jealous god? I know why you’re trying to reconcile your faith with science; because science is the most…
“Would you give this picket a 10/10?”
“Yeah. God did this. Therefore it’s perfect.” (With smug grin)
These people are obviously hopelessly brainwashed. I honestly think it’s a wonder that they’re not locked up as being mentally insane. They’re lucky to have a lawyer in the family.
the-quiet1-has-a-new-blog asked: Stop dodging the issue. You can't insult a man's god without insulting him, this should be obvious. (Motive means nothing, in this case.) And as I have dedicated my blog to showing, the belief in god in and of itself is harmless. The two points combined make criticism of theistic belief not only needless but a rather backwards action if one truly cares about a more peaceful world. (1/2)
Take care not to link truth with moral good and untrue with evil. They’re not the same, no matter how much that may simplify morals for you. (2/2)
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Okay. I see what you’re saying, and if anything, my video only proved that insulting a man’s god does indeed insult them. I’ve thought about it for a bit, and I agree with you. If someone can and wants to believe in an “unie”, if that’s it, it’s kept to himself, not taught as fact, and he leads an accepting and moral lifestyle, there is little to insult about it. He should be allowed to believe in his “unie”. However, he should also recognize that he will receive criticism for it if he brings this belief into public. Just like politics, abortion, gay rights, anything else at all, even one’s face, people are subject to criticism. The difference lies in the ability of the person to recognize that it is criticism, and he shouldn’t feel insulted by criticism. Rather, he should be able to respond to the criticism and either defend his belief and maybe even criticize back. The problem theism faces then is that there is very little if anything at all for them to defend their beliefs with, they feel the need to respond to the criticism, but everything they may try falls short. Then maybe they see a message elsewhere that their god is imaginary; since they may have built a good portion of their lives around a belief in a god, that’s where they feel insulted, angry, etc.
When I post on my blog that I believe god is an imaginary being, invented by the minds of humans long ago to explain that which they could not understand, it is not an attack on any individual believer. When I have debates on campus here from time to time, I never flagrantly call what they’re trying to defend as imaginary or ludicrous. It is fully my intention though for viewers of my blog to read what I write, and whether or not they agree with me, to think. When a theist runs across my blog, my goal is to make them slow down from their Tumblr scrolling and think about what I’m saying for a bit. I want to promote skepticism and reasonable thought.
I admit though that I probably haven’t entirely held to this standard in a few of my posts. Sometimes the pressure of the stress I face at this college makes me really want to rant, and I may end up posting some things that to call “respectable” of everyone would definitely not be true. I’m not perfect, and I’m influenced quite a bit by emotions from time to time. I’ve probably posted things that would have been better left unsaid. I’m not going to run a perfect blog.
Okay, now that I’m done with that, just one last thought. I continue to have a problem with religion. Religion is doctrines added onto the human desire to believe in a god. Religion for the most part is when one defines who god is, what he thinks and wants, what happens after one dies, etc. And, usually, the religion promotes faith (the opposite of skepticism and doubt), indoctrination, and converting and adding people to the believers. In this sense, religion is primitive, enslaving of the mind, and may lead to disastrous results such as 9/11. 9/11 was when people did not reason that they have no evidence that an afterlife even exists, and they ended up killing themselves and thousands of other people because of their indoctrination and firmness of faith. That is something I will fight. I desire peace, yes, and I will not do any physical harm to anyone as much as possible, but so long as I live in a world where violence results directly through religion’s ability to hamper the mind, then no, I’m not going to respect that.
My goal is not to be an anti-theist; my goal is to be anti-violence, anti-hate, anti-faith… anti-religion. I want people to be able to think for themselves and fully love and appreciate life and the universe for what it is, and I see religion as an outstanding obstacle to this end. So, when it comes to words at least, I’m not going to be idle about it.
