Mailbag: Faith and Religion

I think that you generalize religion too much. Just because I have faith in God, I don't think that all faith is justified. I have found the right faith. I believe in the one true God. The Bible is a love letter written to human kind. I believe that it is completely true in every way and that it provides me with all of the moral and ethical instruction I need to live the life that God wants me to live.

Of course Kati thinks she has found the right faith - everyone with faith thinks that. That's one of the problems with faith: there is no way for a faith to demonstrate that it is, indeed, the right faith. Every faith is like a nation unto itself, independent and unassailable. Christians have their faith, Hindus have another faith, and even Nazis may have a faith for themselves. Nothing in the content of these faiths can inform an outsider that it is, indeed, the One True Faith.

What does this mean? It allows to rational options. First, people with a faith can refrain from denying the validity of other faiths, even faiths which contradict their own or which they find abhorrent. After all, they have no basis for doing so which does not presuppose the supremacy of their faith and that's just Begging the Question.

Second, they can offer rational critiques of other faiths, holding those faiths up to external standards of reason, logic, and evidence. This is what most choose, but it comes at a cost: doing so entails admitting that faith, by itself, isn't a good enough reason to believe. Instead, a belief must be defensible through reason, logic, and evidence. Basically this means of defending a faith only serves to undermine faith generally. I encourage all faithful people to adopt it.

As for the idea that no ethical instruction outside the Bible is needed... well, a response to that could fill volumes. I suppose if you are a slave-holding polygamist who treats his wives like little more than property, then it is indeed sufficient unto itself. Most adults, however, recognize that the Bible was written at a time when society was different than it is today. There are many ethical issues it doesn't address and many ethical standards it upholds which we have done away with - and for the better, I might add.

I know that faith in God is incredibly intimidating to an intelligent person. People naturally want to have all of the answers, and to discredit anything that they cannot prove. My inability to prove everything is what makes my faith real. The very definition of faith is to believe in something that you cannot prove.

Actually, faith in God doesn't intimidate me - it simply makes me sad to see a human being deliberately abandon reasoned discourse in favor of saying "I just believe it, so there." To be quite honest, I consider it a tacit admission of a faulty position when a person deliberately exempts a belief from logical and reasoned critique. The idea that faith is somehow justified by the fact that the beliefs cannot be proven is a truly Orwellian position to adopt - not to mention intellectually and ethical dangerous. What happens when someone says "My inability to prove that blacks are inferior is what makes my faith in the superiority of the white race real"??

Also, I don't "want to have all the answers" - on the contrary, I'm content with not having all the answers. I'm a limited and fallible human being, so I know I won't have all the answers and am content with that. Granted, having all the answers might be nice in some fashion, but it isn't something I bother desiring. I don't try to discredit theism and Christianity because I can't disprove them; I critique and criticize them because I think they are wrong and someone needs to say so.

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