F2J,
To have faith in God requires a willingness to believe in one greater than yourself. That shows humility. Humility is a virtue, is it not?
Actually, to insist that you are right and others are wrong, when all the evidence is against you, is the very opposite of humility.
"Faith" is in many ways the last line of defence for the true believer. These defence lines goes through many stages from the cocksure assertions that their religious beliefs is proven beyond doubt, so common among JWs and other fundamentalists, all the way down to saying "we gotta have faith."
Rhetorically, a reference to "faith" finds resonnance with most believers. But what, exactly, is "faith"? In Greek, and indeed many modern languages, there is no distinction between "belief" and "faith." English has retained this archaic word for belief, and today it is reserved for religious beliefs. So, in effect saying that "you need faith" is equivalent to saying "you need to believe." This begs the question: why, pray tell, do people need belief? What makes faith a credible or desirable quality? Does this mean that anything and everything should be believed, or is this limited to some ideas only?
I think most people, even the most ardently religious, will agree that there are forms of belief that are not desirable. Christians will say that faith in Allah or Vishnu, or ancient deities like Zevs, Odin or Ba'al, is not only undesirable but outright evil. And in the same way, believers in Allah may argue that faith in the Christian God is highly undesirable. And most people today will agree that belief in the tenets of certain totalitarian philosophies, like Nazism, is extremely undesirable and evil.
So what makes faith in God, or even the particular God of Christuianity, a positive quality? By answering "you need to have faith" or along such lines, you simply assert that the belief is correct, without any supporting arguments whatsoever. You could just as well support belief in Ba'al, Nazism or invisible green unicorns, using the same slogan.
Why does the word "faith" have such a good sound in the western hemisphere? Obviously, because through centuries of Christian propaganda, this word has been reverred as the highest of virtues.
When Christianity was new, this new religion met with opposition and skepticism. Claiming that an executed criminal had been resurrected and was indeed Divine, was obviously beyond what many would accept. While we should not exeggarate the skepitcal climate of the day, it is not a stretch to assume that many people asked the Christians for some evidence supporting this extraordinary claim. Christians had no such things. So, as part of their preaching, they argued that being skeptical, being a doubter, was inheritently sinfull, and that faith -- indeed, blind faith -- was the noblest of virtues.
So, what happened was that a religion made gullability the highest of virtues. And this continues to this day. Only, this obvious fact is hidden behind the word "faith."
One amazing example of how doubt was villified, we find in the story about Thomas the doubter. Apparently alone among the disciplies, Thomas proclaimed that he needed more than the claims of more or less hysterical believers to accept this extraordinary claim. He would, he proclaimed, believe if he received evidence. Would not any sane person have reacted in the same way? And indeed, in this story, Jesus accepts the challenge, and proves to Thomas's satisfaction that he is the resurrected Christ. Alas, here we find Jesus (John 20:29) ruining the whole story by making an outragously stupid conclusion: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
In other words, the Jesus of John blessed blind superstitious faith and repudiated sound skepticism.
No doubt this literary product was created as an attempt to answer those who did not accept these supernatural claims, and especially to discourage any form of critical thinking among Christians.
And indeed, this rejection of rational thinking has been a hallmark of Christianity ever since. Luckily, or we would certainly not have anything resembling civilization today, the stranglehold of faith over reason has been fought back and greatly reduced.
Yet, we still hear people assert that "we must have faith."
- Jan
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The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.
