The Harm of Faith

Christopher Hitchens once called faith the most over-rated virtue. Voltaire described it as what is beyond the power of reason to believe. Personally, I find it to be one of the most destructive forces in the modern world, and yet so many consider it benign.

So what is faith? If all things can be broken down philosophically into beliefs, and knowledge being beliefs of considerable certitude, then where does faith lie? It would seem when one has a belief which is not justified by reason, logic, or evidence, then perhaps we call that faith. Still, there are so many beliefs which are adjusted, altered or dropped due to new evidence.

That is because Faith is a belief that one REFUSES to give up regardless of the evidence against it.  As Nietzsche put it: "Faith: not wanting to know what is true." Faith is the ultimate weapon of religions and is isolated to one thing - God.

You see, despite how loosely the word is used in our every day vernacular, most of those examples are misapplied. Faith and trust are two different things, and since trust relies on experience and evidence, it is most often what people mean. You do not have faith in your spouse, you have trust. The same goes, for that matter, for doctors, the military, technology, transportation, etc... These are all things you have had a lifetime of experience with, and have come to trust them.

If someone has faith in their love, but then the relationship goes wrong, one would be considered crazy to still pursue the relationship with the same vigor afterwards. We often use faith to describe a sense of optimism we might have, however it is not to be confused with the faith of religion.

In a world where we are pushing so hard to improve education, to increase critical thinking skills, we find ourselves shocked by some of the zanier aspects of society and what they are willing to believe, but that does not concern me as much as the troves of people in the US who are simultaneously encouraged to apply skepticism,critical thinking, and faith in god.

So long as society thinks it is OK to believe in something for no reason at all, we will continue to be plagued by ideas which hold us down from progress. Climate change denial, creationism, job-creators, traditions, avoiding vaccines due to paranoia, alternative medicines, trickle-down economics, and so many more are simply held in place because some think it is OK to believe something despite the lack of evidence, or because of a poor application of logic.

Aron Ra described faith as the ultimate test of gullibility, to see how much you are willing to believe with the slightest evidence. So the question is, on the topic of faith, why is there anything encouraged to be believed without sufficient reason?