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Faith

Entry 301, on 2006-03-21 at 21:50:37 (Rating 4, Comments)

I have just completed listening to a podcast by "the Infidel Guy" where he interviewed the famous defender of evolution, Richard Dawkins. He started the discussion by talking about the merits of faith. What he said matched my own opinion quite closely so I thought it might be a good subject for this blog. Most of what I'm going to say here reflects both Dawkin's and my opinion.

In almost every country people are brought up to respect faith and accept it without question. Its like we are told to have faith in faith - that must be the ultimate circular reasoning. Its like saying: why should I base my beliefs on faith? Just have faith that faith is the right approach. Does that make sense? Of course not.

I often hear comments like "she's a great person, she has so much faith", or "I really admire his strong faith", but if we analyse these statements are they really justified? I don't think so. In fact I would argue for the complete opposite attitude. Ignore the baseless cultural propaganda and examine faith without prejudice. Would it not be better to say "this person is an idiot, they have faith in a belief system which has been shown to be wrong years ago", or "she is too lazy to think for herself so she just accepts on faith what others tell her", or "his faith is so strong that he has turned into a dangerous fanatic".

I think my attitude is justified. Many people have faith in a belief system, especially a religion, simply because they were told to believe it and have just never though it out for themselves. Does that deserve respect? And people who can't see the weakness in their own beliefs are often both unrealistic and dangerous. Anyone who cannot accept the possibility that they are wrong is just out of touch with reality. That doesn't deserve respect either. And before you accuse scientists of suffering from the same problem, just remember that scientific theories are constantly being challenged and tested. One of the greatest contributions a scientist can make is to disprove a well accepted theory. That's definitely not how religion works.

So the next time someone says something like "doesn't Bob have great faith". I'll say "Yes, he is a complete idiot, isn't he. Are you trying to embarrass him by pointing this out to everyone?" If more skeptics and rationalists treat comments about faith this way perhaps we can change this idea about it being a good thing and encourage more people to be free thinkers.

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