The Immorality of Faith
Contrary to the claims of Jesus and his contemporary followers, it should not be automatically assumed that "believing without seeing" is a high moral virtue. William K. Clifford wrote perhaps the most direct and most well-known explanation of not only why faith is not moral, but may in fact be very immoral. In his final analysis, "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." He uses the example of a shipowner who sends out a group of pilgrims on a voyage with a ship he knows to be in bad shape, but which he nevertheless chooses, for no reason, to believe is perfectly safe and seaworthy. Ignoring the evidence he has, he makes a choice and convinces himself that everyone is safe.
Even if the pilgrims make it safely, there is no question that the owner was very immoral in what he did. Lacking rational or epistemological justifications for his belief, he also lacked moral justifications. That he simply wished it to be true, and that everyone certainly would be better of if it were true, could in no way excuse what he did. Even if he honestly has the best of intentions every step of the way, no one can claim that he is morally blameless. Theism suffers from the same problems, since it has no better epistemic foundation. The point then is that regardless of one's intentions and regardless of the eventual outcome, it is immoral to just believe anything without rational grounds simply because one wishes it to be true.
Habits of Unreasonableness
In an earlier article, I argued that a morally significant atheism is one which is based upon a "habit of reasonableness." Simply being an atheist isn't enough, since being an atheist with an irrational basis is no better than theism with an irrational basis. Unfortunately, there also exists the possibility of developing a "habit of unreasonableness" - something much easier when one deliberately begins to reject reason. A person who does not make an effort to cultivate a habit of being skeptical and critical may fall into this, and it can certainly happen to someone who makes a deliberate choice to believe something without reason and simply because they wish it to be true.
Once you start to accept something without rational grounds, you run the risk of adopting more and more such beliefs - after all, if one isn't bad, why would others be bad? The end result, of course, is that you end up being a gullible fool. Most people don't want to be gullible fools - and that is good, since it is much more likely to harm than help us. Not only are people less likely to believe anything you tell them, but others are also more likely to try and take advantage of you.
Whose Faith?
Another crucial question which must be regularly asked is: whose faith, exactly, are we talking about? When a Christian or any other theist attempts to defend faith as being somehow justified or reasonable or simply OK, they are usually just defending their own faith in something particular. There are two ways to do this: they can either defend the idea of having faith in principle, or they can defend their particular faith with its particular content.
If they defend faith in general, then they find themselves in the unenviable position of defending all faiths, any faith, and faith in absolutely everything that a human being could possibly have faith about.
Each religious group which explicitly relies upon the use of faith to defend its ideology fosters among adherents the idea that theirs is some revelation direct from a god. This effectively produces a sort of "egocentric spirituality," whereby other religious groups are dismissed as mistaken at best. But if it is true that one group can justifiably claim to have accurate knowledge of some god, how can we possibly know? They would have the rest of us simply agree with them, accepting the same sort of faith which they possess. Unfortunately, they are incapable of offering substantive reasons for adopting their faith rather than some other.
Even liberal believers who have faith in a liberal god that wouldn't harm a fly suffer from these problems. Although their god is certainly much more appealing to the humanist sense of morality and justice, that alone does not in any way make it the slightest bit more likely to exist than the fire-and-brimstone god of fundamentalists, anxious to condemn to hell just about everyone. Faith in a nice god is no more rational than faith in an evil god, despite the nicer demeanor of the believers.
The problem only gets worse when we take into account all of the beliefs which humans do or even can believe in based upon faith. Belief in both Allah and Thor can be based upon the same appeals to faith - but then neither is any more reasonable than the other. People are perfectly capable of believing that some other racial group is inferior and sub-human based upon appeals to faith - but is their belief suddenly made more respectable and reasonable? Not in the slightest. Such racism can only be judged right or wrong by looking at empirical evidence and the internal logical consistence/coherency of the claims - faith is totally irrelevant.
Faith & Cults
These issues become particularly urgent as the millennium approaches. Although I really don't believe that the mere turning of a few numbers on an arbitrarily marked calendar bodes ill for the future of humanity, a significant number of people have taken leave of their senses over this. A wide variety of cults are proliferating across the globe, and a hefty percentage of the millennial doomsday-cults are Christian in orientation. They are convinced, in different ways, that the End is Near - and some are especially dangerous because they are ready and willing to help the End get here.
Most people, theist and atheist, agree that such cultists do not have very rational beliefs - but the unfortunate fact is that even the most extreme cultists are not significantly less rational than the most liberal theist. The content of beliefs varies greatly, and fervor with which those beliefs are held can also differ quite a bit. But in the end, none of the groups really has a leg up on the others.
Again, the point needs to be made that a belief is not made suddenly rational simply because we wish it to be true or that it would be nice if it were true. Similarly, a belief is not made suddenly false simply because we don't like it and wish it were false. If we want something to be true or false, either it is up to us to make it that way, or we have to simply live with the fact that reality isn't quite the way we want it.
Faith cannot validate a belief. A person who says that they have faith in a belief is no more rational or reasonable than a person who says that they simply believe for no reason whatsoever - indeed, there is hardly any difference between the two. A person who appeals to faith to justify their theism is making no more sense than a person who appeals to faith to justify racism or phrenology. If faith can justify one, it can equally justify them all. But if faith cannot justify them all, and one is made more reasonable by some other quality, then faith is made irrelevant.
Oddly enough, many theists will suddenly appeal to reason to show how things like racism or cults are not reasonable beliefs - but as long as they use faith to cling to their own theology, their critiques of other faith-based beliefs are meaningless, if not also hypocritical.
Faith & Consistency
Particularly interesting is that people will insist on the value, even sanctity, of their faith when it comes their religious beliefs, but they wouldn't dream of using it when it comes to other matters in their lives. How many of these people think that it is admirable to use "faith" when choosing the best car for their family, rather than taking a rational look at all the safety features and positive/negative qualities of different models? How many people believe that it is morally just to use "faith" when choosing the best house for their family, rather than investigating important issues like local taxes and crime? How many people will obstinately argue that a person should just have "faith" in the advertising they see on the television and use that as a guide for all their purchasing decisions, rather than skeptically examining the claims being made?
I think that in all of the above examples, we'll find that the numbers are very small. It is true that people will fall for advertising claims anyway, without doing enough research - but we are all human and must expect that we'll fail at times. But the key point to remember is that such things are regarded as errors or failures, and that they are not held up as exemplary behavior. At the same time, theists like to explain how important the issue of their god is - presumably, the decision about whether or not to believe in a god - and which god to actually believe in - is a great deal more important than which car to drive or which telephone company to use.
So why would anyone advocate using lower standards when making the decision about a god rather than about a car? If faith is so good that it gives you access to true knowledge about a god, then it should be useful when deciding what car to drive. But if it isn't even good enough to help you figure out which telephone company is best, then it can't be of much use when deciding what god to follow.
Faith & Culture
It's amazing to me that cultural and political leaders are actually making calls to have more of this type of religious ideology brought into our schools and into government in an attempt to reduce violence and promote good citizenship. Well, now that I think of it, perhaps it isn't so amazing after all. It is often in the best interests of leaders to promote faith rather than freethinking among followers - if successful, the leader may have a better chance of imposing policies without being questioned. Freethinking can be dangerous to leaders, tradition and status quo, since it causes people to seriously question what they are being told and what they are expected to do.
So when you hear someone calling for more "faith" in the lives of people (and after events in Colorado, we are hearing it more and more), it would be a good idea to stop and ask why they might be doing it. Is it possible that they don't want their policy suggestions to be critically examined? Could it be true that they expect their religion to solve anything, but are afraid of what would be found if that religion were critically examined? And what kind of leaders do we have when they promote less, rather than more, skeptical inquiry among citizens?
Not leaders that I could trust, that's for sure. Any leader who wants me to believe things without rational examination and without appeals to rational standards of judgment is not a leader worth following. In that direction lies tyranny and slavery.
Don't miss the other section:
Part 1: Faith & Reason
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