Faith

Faith is short for faithfulness, to be faithful to some person, principle or thing. There is reasonable faith and unreasonable faith. Reasonable faith is a consequence. I choose to remain faithful to my country because of the principles expressed in it's foundational documents. If I were a citizen of Stalinist Russia, the story would be different. A *reasonable person* remains faithful to another as a consequence of faithfulness being deserved and earned. A person who remains faithful to someone who cheats them is a fool and fools are not reasonable, no matter what they may think. It is not a virtue to remain faithful to someone who has not earned it. 

Unreasonable faith is a preclusion and an excuse for close-mindedness. It's an excuse to unceremoniously dismiss without reflection. It's an excuse to dismiss scientific vetting and to embrace absurd ancient myths instead. 

Here's the way a friend of mine described religious faith in a public message board recently. 

"Let me help you understand faith a little better.  A handyman knocks on your door and says he will repair your roof for $10,000.  He claims it's really a $20,000 job but if you pay him 80% in cash up front he'll do it for only $10,000.  You have faith in this handyman so you give him $8,000 in cash.

 

You never see him again.  

But you think he'll be coming back to fix your roof. That's faith. But you keep waiting and telling yourself it's merely a matter of having enough faith.  So you keep waiting and waiting while nothing happens.  So you believe with even greater conviction that the handyman will return to save your roof.  You even start making excuses for the handyman and why he hasn't returned yet. You have great faith but your roof hasn't been fixed. Reality is that your roof didn't leak.  You thought you were going to get a good deal. You still think you'll get a good deal once the handyman returns to fix your roof. You have convinced yourself that he will return, you're absolutely positive of it.  Otherwise you'd have to admit you are just a fool.  That's faith. It's the deception you tell yourself so that you won't appear to be a fool. To everyone but you and the other fools who also prepaid the handyman for fixing their roofs. The irony is that you really are a fool. But you have the handyman book and it says that only those who say there are no handymen are fools! That makes you feel better. You're still out the eight grand."

~ Lord of the Munch

I couldn't agree more. Religious faith is afterlife insurance. In context of the three desert dogmas, it's a con-job where the "mark" is desperate and greedy, 'key characteristics for a mark. After all, con-marks want what is not deserved, and any Christian would only be too happy to tell you that they did not deserve an innocent person being nailed to planks to "save" them. They would be only too happy to tell you that they really deserve to burn in hell, and are only saved by the unearned and undeserved "grace and mercy" offered by a would be salesman (and slave collector). 

Lucis Ferre