First, let me define what I mean by faith. I am speaking of
religious faith, the belief without sufficient evidence to do
so. Belief in the effectiveness of prayer, belief in the
exsistence of God. I am not speaking of you having faith (or
trust) in your mother, or brother or spouse. You have
overwhelming evidence those people exist! I mean faith that
god exists!
Now why isn't religious faith a virtue? This should be
obvious. Having religious faith allows a person to believe in
ANYTHING AT ALL. Let me repeat that. Anything.
At. All. We as a society should not applaud
people for throwing reason out the window to believe in whatever
they want. For example, is it virtuous to
believe that blowing up yourself and others will lead to
paradise? No. But why does a person believe this?
Because they have faith in Allah. This completely unsupported
belief leads a person to hold many other ridiculous (and dangerous)
beliefs, like martyrdom. It is also not virtuous to believe
that prayer will heal your dying son instead of modern
medicine. Children, whose illnesses were easily manageable,
have died because of their parents' faith.
Now some of you religious folk are probably shaking your
heads. "Those people are misguided, they misinterpreted
their religion. I am not like them!" Your
complaint doesn't change anything and you ARE like them.
Since faith does not require real evidence, or reason, you are in
the same boat as them. How do you denounce their
actions if faith is a virtue? They believe what they
want to believe, without evidence (they have faith), and you
believe what you want to believe, without evidence (and you have
faith). If faith is a virtue, then you cannot
challenge their faith based position. You know this
is true, for even if you use (woefully inadequate) evidence to
support your position, you always, ALWAYS when pressed, fall back
onto your faith. Just as the martyrs do.
YOUR belief that faith is good supports actions you deplore.
And even worse, your own faith makes it impossible for you to
logically argue against these actions. Faith is not a virtue.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
FAITH IS NOT A VIRTUE
user
- Let’s talk: Comment (33) | Blog
- Email to a Friend
- Print this Page
Syndication:
From the Community…
-
Posted by Sun Sep 6, 2009 8:45am PDT
Report AbuseHello MD, long time no chat. Anyway, I'll be coming out with a blog in the near future, and I think that you might enjoy it. I know, you are shocked that I am giving you an open invitation. It is a prelude to a much larger discussion, which will take place this winter. It will be about all forms of Religion. Since you seem to have a yearning for Religious answers, I feel that it might be one that you would be interested in. I have no intentions of slinging garbage at you, and I hope that you will return the favor. I'll probably put it up Tuesday.
-
Posted by Sun Sep 6, 2009 12:52pm PDT
Report AbuseKutter, I show up rather infrequently on here nowadays, but I will check out your thread when I have time.
Any chance that you'll comment on the substance of my post? I purposely took a very strong stance here, so there has to be something for you to say right?
-
Posted by Mon Sep 7, 2009 5:46am PDT
Report AbuseI will be more than happy to respond, but my day is very busy today. I don't want to just throw some generic sentences together. I will devote some quality input, but it probably will not be until tomorrow.
-
Posted by Mon Sep 7, 2009 9:45am PDT
Report AbuseIt's a corner stone... Like the 3 in One.
Can you say virtue was ever NOT in his plans?
And history shows most all faiths have killed for their god in one form or another, That's a fact of life..
Should " killing an infidel" Apply in this day and age? NO!
We should never digress.. But embellish the good attributes on any set religion.
-
Posted by Tue Sep 8, 2009 3:01pm PDT
Report AbuseMac, I really appreciate all of your input today. I promise to return the favor.
BTW, why did you change your name?
-
Posted by Tue Sep 8, 2009 3:08pm PDT
Report AbuseI've read several articles about your current post. Faith is trust, and virtue is all about "good". Virtue being a noun, so normal people have Faith in the good of things. You have to believe in something before you can trust it. Criminal minds believe in things, but it does not make it a virtue. Faith can be construed on many levels, but it should always be used for good. So, with that said, faith isn't always good, but it was set up to be good, which makes it a virtue.
-
Posted by Tue Sep 8, 2009 3:09pm PDT
Report AbuseI promise to spend more time this winter on getting your blogs out there, but be ready for a debate....LOL. Have a great night!
-
Posted by Tue Sep 8, 2009 5:54pm PDT
Report AbuseMac Daddy is a terribly silly and stupid name to have. I suppose I could have shortened it just to Mac, that would have been simpler eh? Maybe I'll switch to that, even though it will further complicate things, at least for the short term.
-
Posted by Wed Sep 9, 2009 11:12am PDT
Report Abuse"Faith is trust, and virtue is all about "good". Virtue being a noun, so normal people have Faith in the good of things. You have to believe in something before you can trust it."
True, there are multiple definitions of faith. I can trust/have faith that my friends and family will help me out if I get hit by a car. But that's not what my blog is about. I'm talking about when people have religious faith. As in they believe in the existence of a particular God, on faith (you don't believe your friends and family exist on faith, you have evidence they exist right?). Their faith is in the *existence* of a being itself. When people believe in things like that, without evidence to back it up, that's a problem.
-
Posted by Wed Sep 9, 2009 6:50pm PDT
Report AbuseHey!
I'm going to have to disagree with you that believing in a God is different than believing in a person. You argue that you "have undisputed evidence those people exist!", but John Nash thought the people he saw and interacted with and befriended and worked for existed for years--before learning that he was schizophrenic and those people were very realistic hallucinations. We can see, touch, hear, smell, taste other people, but we our senses can be fooled. Thus, we do not have undisputed evidence.
That is, of course, an extreme example. But most of the time when people talk about faith in other people, they don't mean their existence; they mean that they can trust those people. But they have no absolute proof that this is true. For example, if a woman start a new relationship, she may believe that she can trust her new beau, she may have faith that he is trustworthy, but she cannot absolutely know that he will never cheat on her; she cannot know that he won't lose his job and start drinking; and she can't be absolutely sure that he is not a serial killer who will murder her, chop her up, and shove her down the disposale (been watching alot of Criminal Minds lately). She chooses to believe it.
leave your comment
You must sign in to post a comment