Faith Based Reasoning

There's a funny thing about faith. It seems that the holder of it is never aware of the massive leaps in logic that they must make to reach a faith-based conclusion.

I don't think faith is evil, nor is it unnecessary. We all take a lot of things on faith like the idea that our cars will continue to work, our parachutes will open and the laws of gravity will not spontaneously reverse and fling us all into a cold, dark oblivion of death.

 

Pictured above: Racism.

So faith can be perfectly fine, indeed normal. But Faith-based reasoning is the real problem in the world. It extends itself not just to religion, but really to anything that anybody REALLY wants to be true. If you want to believe that unicorns exist for example, then you can find something that proves it to you. You just have to look hard enough. Is that one too silly for you? What if you wanted to do away with all food and drink and show the world that you can live entirely off of light alone? That's completely real. They have a prophet who claims she has lived on 300 calories a day since 1996.  That's 14 years on what amounts to about 5 and a half oreos a day. She's not a strict breatharian, to be fair but that same amount of calories did this to Portia De Rossi.

Nevertheless, people believe in this nonsense without bothering to so much as ask a question like "How does this work?" Instead, they simply trust, or rather put their faith in a smooth talking prophet and then they starve themselves to death next to a lake in Scotland and leave behind grieving family members. It's a tragic fucking thing, really. That's the most common defense of faith based reasoning. You simply didn't have enough faith.

How much faith is in a mustard seed anyway? It must be a tremendously misleading amount because no mountains have been moved around as far as I know. Unless they kept it a secret. Or maybe the faith was misplaced, or mis-asked, or maybe the mountain mover wasn't listening or maybe he changed the rules and is waiting for you to figure that out or maybe he didn't like your request and is waiting for you to ask for something he already likes.

Any of these things are perfectly reasonable explanations when you start with a premise that is unfalsifiable, and untestable.

Mustard Seed sized faith is still big enough to move a goal post.

Bertrand Russell theorized (ironically) that there could be a teapot orbiting the sun somewhere between the Earth and Mars.

"Why, what nonsense!" I hear you vehemently cry, sure enough of your cosmology to know that no such teapot exists. "Where is this teapot, I want to see it!" You further exclaim, perhaps oblivious to the fact that this is just an analogy. Well, you didn't let me finish. This teapot is really, really, really small. Like way smaller than a marble or even a pea. It's so small in fact, that it cannot be perceived by any of our most modern and effective telescopes.

"Well, you just made it up, so that doesn't count" you say, finally coming around.

Here's the thing though, if I wrote it down in a letter to someone. Then wrote another 65 letters and collected them into a book and then buried it in my super awesome time capsule for 2,000 years, then released it to the world. Not only would that, apparently, lend it absolute credibility, but it would also make you a heretic worthy of the inquisition just for doubting it.

Bertrand Russell doing his classic Old Man impersonation.

The list of faith based nonsense goes on and on, and by its very nature, is literally an infinite list, a list with no end. Any possible thing you can imagine would find its way here. Invisible Pink Unicorns, Flying Spaghetti Monsters, Russell's teapots, breatharianism, chocolate stomping wombats that spin the world with sarcasm, an invisible man who creates galaxies with words, a human who can save us from a fiery place we didn't even know existed until he told us about it, crystals that interact with immeasurable energies, magnets that heal you, vibrations that...well, you get the idea.

Why is it that faith blinds the faithful so? It seems almost cruel. If unicorns, breatharians and teapots are stupid and silly, then in what way is religion any better? What tools, what credibility does it have that these others do not? If you're knee jerk answer is "God says" then you seem to have missed the point.