A Case Against Faith

I couldn't agree more.

Try debating with someone who has faith. It’s the equivalent of a child putting his hands over his ears and shouting loudly that he can’t hear you until you give up and walk away.

Try debating with someone who has faith. As soon as you make a logical case, their argument suddenly doesn’t need any evidence behind it – because your opponent has faith. They are unassailable and completely immune to anything you say, no matter how much sense it makes – a sign of a poor argument to any logician – because they have faith. And your meagre logic can’t begin to approach faith.

It is truly astonishing and indeed dumbfounding to me how one can reject logic as superfluous, just like it completely dumbfounds me how one can simply skip the process of justifying a belief and replace it with faith. Consider for a minute what faith means: it means belief without evidence. Belief without evidence. The absurdity of such a statement is dwarfed only be the fact that it is accepted.

It is important to note that faith is only invoked in religious contexts. Faith is hardly consulted when deciding whether to bet one’s life savings on a horse that has a million to one chance of winning a race. In this case, feeble logic is good enough. Let’s assume that you want to fly and have built wings to achieve this. You have done all the calculations and you are pretty sure that the wings are incapable of supporting your weight and you would fall crashing to the ground. Do you decide to do something logical like improve your wings or abandon your quest, or do you shrug your shoulders, invoke faith, and take a plunge? The answer is obvious; but when asked to justify a belief in God, suddenly, this logic that has already saved you your life’s savings and your life becomes redundant; and instead faith, the invincible trump card of theism, kicks in, as soon as there is nothing at stake. This is inconsistent and incoherent, and does not encourage open-minded debate.

Speaking of debate, here is an extract[1] from a Christian apologetics site:

Matt: I believe God exists. I have faith that he exists.
Atheist: Proof?
Matt: I have none.

Yet Matt, the apologist, still believes in God. Admittedly he does go on to say that there is evidence, but not 100% coherent evidence – and then he says what I object so vividly to: although the evidence is incomplete, faith will allow him to go from the insufficient premises to the conclusion. What kind of debating is this? A debate in which logic is eliminated is not a debate. As soon as your opponent in a debate needs faith to compensate for their lack of evidence with faith, then you have won the argument: for no argument can be won by the use of anything but knowledge. A debate involving just faith and no logic would look a bit like this:

A: “x is true; y is untrue.”
B: “You’re wrong: y is true; x is untrue.”
A: “Prove it.”
B: “I don’t need to. You prove it.”
A: “I don’t need to.”

At this point, A and B get their clubs out and start beating each other over the head, because they couldn’t resolve their differences with anything but violence – which is exactly what has been happening, and still is, for a few millennia. Because no debate is possible, the only way of convincing the other is by beating him over the head with your club. It is this dogma over who has the best imaginary friend – with neither A nor B realizing that none of these friends exist – which has brought us the crusades, the protestant and catholic conflict in England during the 1600s, which continues even today in Northern Ireland, suicide bombings on London transport, the gunpowder plot, the witch hunts, the inquisition, the Indian partition, the Israeli-Palestinian wars, the Serb-Croat Muslim massacres and honour killings. Those who recognize that coherent logic must justify belief do not do this. Those who are receptive to logic and have an open mind don’t fly airplanes into buildings. That’s what the guy whose faith says that 72 virgins are waiting for him does.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Faith’s longevity in existence is explained by its integral role in the functionality of religion; it is the sputtering and coughing engine behind religion. A religion which embodies faith within it is not obliged to justify anything, and they can therefore keep their followers. And if this isn’t brainwashing enough, consider how much it has been beaten into people’s heads for centuries from all angles and directions – and they go one step further. If their followers even dare to question the religion, even in their thoughts, they risk conviction of thought-crime from their allegedly omnibenevolent God and they are denied entrance to heaven: “whosoever believeth in [Christ] should not perish, but have everlasting life”[2];which inversely means that doubting Christ means not entering heaven. The combination of propaganda and fear tactics is a powerful cocktail – just look at how effective it is: people are still putting their hands over their ears and shouting loudly that they can’t hear you when you challenge them to come out of their comfort zone.

I present a challenge to all Christians: renounce your faith, step out of this comfort zone of yours, lay down your shield, even temporarily, and focus instead on questioning everything to see what is logical. Only believe what can be proved with complete and coherent evidence. If you really stick to the challenge, and if you really do question everything you hear and read, I can almost guarantee you, will come to realize that most of the stuff that you hear in church and what people talk about is not reasonable. I sense the skeptical accusations of a hidden atheist agenda here – which is good, because already you question everything, so I will bid you take into consideration that I do accept that there are a few – not many, but a few – lucid arguments for the existence of God, or at least some points that atheism cannot adequately explain; and even if you choose to stand behind one of these to defend and retain your former faith, I am content: for in doing so, you have relinquished this childish notion of belief without evidence or logic, and now follow the evidence wherever you interpret it leading.

Ponder this challenge of mine, and you will find that the only case in which you will reject my challenge is if you truly doubt and insist on clinging to your religion – if you are certain that you are correct, you will not mind challenging your belief; however if you are uncertain but genuinely want to believe you are correct, you will fear that you might be wrong, and will have nowhere to go. I hope that, no matter where you stand, you will accept, for if you can truly remove all bias from your mind and follow the logic where it goes, you will realize that you are not going into a barren place with no joy; in fact, quite the contrary. You will find how truly rejuvenating and indeed enlightening it is to acknowledge the fact that evidence, logic and reason is the only thing that can justify a belief.

I have in this article done all I can to prove why faith should be abandoned. You have a choice, reader with faith, as you finish this article: you can either accept my challenge and question what you must not question, to force it to conform to the logic by which everything else abides, and to see if it truly does work as it is claimed without having to lean on that invisible crutch that is faith. The alternative is to maintain the mental metaphorical position you are currently in: hands over your ears, shouting loudly that you can’t hear me, until I give up and walk away, leaving you to perpetuate your blind belief in your delusion.

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[1] An Atheist Says He Knows There Is No God — Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry

[2] John 3:16