Against Faith

I have some serious problems with the notion of faith as it has informed much of Christian thought, and in fact consider it to be one of the worst intellectual inheritances which we have. In short, faith is downright irrational and prevents people from acting along with reality.

Of course, many will disagree with me. They will provide all sorts of analogies for how religious faith fits in with how we live the rest of our lives and how it is a valid means of finding truth. Rather than simply say that I don't like faith, I figured that I would lay out in detail my arguments. So this post is going to be a bit long, yet still probably too condensed; I can go on about specific points as necessary in comments.

To begin with, though, what is faith? I take faith here to be (a) a belief, (b) beyond observed evidence to some extent, (c) involving commitment. There are other elements (especially involving a sense of trust and actual action based on held beliefs), but any version of faith which I am criticizing involves these three points at least.

• Analogy from Personal Trust: Religious faith is unlike faith in another person. When I trust another person, I already have two things at my disposal. First, I know that other person exists. Second, I usually already have evidence to support my trust. If I let someone drive my car, I have some reason to believe that they are decent drivers and will not abscond with my vehicle. I do not hand my car keys to strangers. To claim that religious faith (for example, that God exists and acts in a particular way, according to the dictates of some religious group) is like faith in a person fails the first criterion and is sketchy about the second - for every example of God's "goodness," there are people starving to death, tortured, and held under oppressive regimes which they will never escape. I would never let out my car to a person who crashes every tenth time they drive, let alone every other time! But at any rate, whatever one makes of the latter point, it makes absolutely no sense to have faith in a person when I don't already know that said person exists. (I also take it that believing "God exists" is different from believing "God as represented something like how this particular group says exists", at least for the purposes of this kind of faith.)
• Analogy from Marriage Commitment: Another analogy stems from marriage. The idea goes that committing oneself to a spouse is like committing to a religion. And if one holds that different religious paths are somewhat on par, this might be a valid analogy. In this case, I am merely a religious bachelor, and we have no disagreements over religious truth. However, many people from whom I hear this believe that there is one true religion. I do not have "one true spouse." I would choose to marry a person simply because things work with that person; there is no truth or falsehood behind the choice, merely various degrees of practicality. But in the case of religion, there are incompatible truth claims. I would be committing myself to a belief, holding it to be true come what may, and this is utterly unlike marriage. Whether or not a marriage works involves an act of my will. The truth of a religious belief is beyond my control, as I cannot will God into being or choose to consciously continue on after death.
• Analogy from Love and Evidence: Another example that people sometimes give for faith is also found in romantic relationships. One cannot prove that another person loves them; one must take it on faith. However, despite the lack of proof, there must be clear evidence. If I am dating so-and-so, I should be able to give concrete, unambiguous examples of why I think they love me rather quickly. If I struggle, then there is trouble in the relationship. If I must do what most religious people do and claim that "I know he/she loves me, though I don't understand why he/she does this or that seeming terrible thing," this is a sign that I need to bolt from the relationship ASAP. So religious faith is unlike faith in love because it (a) does not give clear, unambiguous evidence (again, a whole lot of bad stuff happens in the world, at least as much as good), and (b) involves one having to explain away some atrocious stuff, which makes religious believers akin to battered men and women. (I realize this is probably offensive, but how offensive is it to hold that a "loving" God sends creations, which could be reshaped and forgiven, to Hell? Or that said God commands genocide? And if you have to hold to some utterly poppycock notion of love to hold this, how am I wrong? Love doesn't have to be all touchy-feely, but it must be concerned with the actual good of the beloved in some fashion.)
• Faith in Tradition: Of course, one might refocus what the object of faith is. Perhaps it is faith in a line of transmission, with a tradition. But when we examine traditions across the world, we do not see them to be terribly accurate. Within a generation, stories can be added and revised. For one example, off the top of my head: Nelson Mandela in his autobiography talks about how his father stood up to the authorities and lost his chiefly status because of it. However, this event, which happened early in the life of a man still alive, has been shown to be inaccurate, according to court records. And if nothing else, there are competing traditions. Islam has had highly sophisticated ways of tracking traditions from Mohammad's life; why not take their transmission to be more accurate than, say, Christianity's? Or why not accept the traditions handed down by those hunting down the reincarnations of the Dalai Lama? One has faith in ones own tradition; why not in tradition in general then? If one holds to ones own tradition because of historical arguments, these arguments cannot themselves be believed and committed to via faith and require regular analysis and fact-checking, trying to disprove ones hypothesis at least as much as confirm it, at least assuming that one genuinely does care for truth.
• Faith as a Lens: Perhaps one could say along with Augustine, Pascal, C.S. Lewis, and others, that one believes in a religious faith not from evidence seen beforehand, but because such faith allows them to see the world more clearly. The problem here is that many different groups say the same thing. Zen Buddhists will make the same claim. Muslims will hold that their revelation makes the most sense of the world. Ritual magic users say that you have to believe in the rituals, and then you will see that all their beliefs about magic make sense. I personally think that my practical atheism makes much, much more sense of the world than Christianity ever did. So the fact that a given belief makes the most sense out of your own world does not in and of itself mean a whole lot. Study to show yourself approved, and make sure that study includes critical analysis of your own beliefs.
• Faith as Last Resort: This could be because we have to choose between atheism/nihilism/something else supposedly awful, on the one hand, or as a variant of Pascal's Wager: that if we have to choose between possible infinite happiness and possible infinite suffering, we choose the option that might possibly lead to happiness, whether or not it's probable. My issue with these sorts of approaches is that they cut down the possibilities on both sides of the equation. There is no particular reason to think that we must be left with some meaningless nihilism (or that nihilism is therefore such an awful fate); and I for one fail to see why atheism would be so terrible. Nor is there reason to suppose that there is only one option which could lead to happiness. What if we have to choose between two different faiths, each of which will throw us in hell for believing the other? What if we have to choose between our own potential infinite happiness, at the cost of sacrificing what good we could realistically do here in the world by facing up to its shortcomings? The notion of faith as a last resort hinges on there being two categories, one possibly very good and the other being very bad. But there are multiple categories, and the values of each aren't so clear.
• Faith as Psychological Necessity: Finally, maybe someone would hold that there is no rational reason to hold to religious faith, but it is necessary nonetheless. One reason might be that most people have no way of getting at truth through reason and study, and so faith gives them something to hold on to. But that doesn't make faith right or true. This is an argument for better education, not for widespread religion. If the beliefs exist merely as a necessity to appease the masses, why shouldn't we keep revising the widespread beliefs, to better match the present world? A similar reason, one which I hear a lot, is that we need to hold to things of faith in order to find this life worth living, especially when it is difficult, or in order to get out of philosophical skepticism. But again, that does not mean that there is any reason at all to believe that ones articles of faith are true, and I would rather hold courageously to the truth than sedate myself with a security-blanket falsehood. Also, many people get along just fine without believing in God or an afterlife, so there seems to be no reason to believe that faith is even psychologically necessary; one should not confuse their own insecurities with deep-seated needs of the human race. A third closely related reason for faith would be that we crave mystery, which the modern world strips away. Well, perhaps, but that doesn't mean that a set of mysterious beliefs and rituals has an ounce more reality than a good fantasy book, or that our desires tell us anything more than that we desire things.

Note that all of the above holds even if one says that there is some evidence for their beliefs, but we must still make a leap of faith. Any leap at all, any commitment to a belief in how the world exists without constant reference to said world, is problematic. It's this commitment that is the crux of the issue; we make judgments based on imperfect information all the time, but seldom do we commit our lives and souls to the results, and even less often to we claim that this is a beautiful thing rather than an awful, gut-wrenching choice to be avoided if possible. Claims that faith and reason are like two wings of a bird, or otherwise partners, fall into the same category: either that faith has a rational basis (and, as stated above, the fact that it helps you see the world better is insufficient in itself), in which case you are simply trusting reason, or said faith at times asks one to overstep reason, in which case all of my earlier points apply.

At this point, I'm undoubtedly going to get some people claiming that science, or atheism, or an evidence-based approach to life, is itself a "faith" and a "religion." This is utter BS. I think that evolution is correct based on evidence, evidence which continually comes in; the detractors don't have a clue what evolution really states; and I base some things in my life accordingly. If scientists start coming up with contrary evidence, or creationists ever start to understand the material they're working with and put forward cogent arguments, I'll revise my view and my life accordingly. I don't do this, say, in cosmology, where results change frequently. I don't have a commitment to the evidence such that I will hold to it come what may. I don't have some holy book or teachings that I stick to; every piece of information gets decided on its own merit (and when I inevitably fail at this, I consider that a shortcoming and appreciate it being pointed out to me). I don't romanticize my ignorance and make it into a virtue. How is any of this like a faith which valorizes going beyond the evidence, committing oneself to a view and choosing to see something as true independently of the world, and which centers on some received knowledge which often beggars reason without offering explanation?

Another response which I am likely to get is that faith isn't really doing anyone any harm, so why don't I leave it alone? As long as I have to deal with people shoving God down my throat, offering prayers and snide comments about my eventual salvation, it's at least a problem which *I* have to put up with. But more than that, how can we run a society well with an eye to human flourishing if we hold on to a view that refuses to keep asking: how can we do this better? How do things really work? How could things really work? To give an example: when I was in South Africa, I saw car accident rates 7-8 times higher than here in the US. But when someone got into an accident in my village, people did not take this to be a result of poor driving skills, poor roads, or blatant disregard of the rules of the road. They thought that the ancestors or God were displeased and must be appeased. By focusing on boogeymen, they avoid dealing with the real problems. And that makes everyone worse off; if one person decides to be a more careful driver, they cannot get far, because everyone else is still a maniac. Beliefs are social. If you cannot be bothered to look over your beliefs, then that doesn't mean that you get a pass. You influence society by being in it, sharing your thoughts, by your actions, by voting, by raising children under your beliefs. Faith is a social problem, not a private one to be overlooked out of some vague nostalgia or sense of "piety."