Faith vs. Religion, or Why "Hitler was an atheist" is not an Argument in Favor of Religion

Faith - n. - belief that is not based on proof

Re.li.gion - n. -
a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.

- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved May 14, 2009, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary1.classic.reference.com/browse/religion


Faith and religion are not the same thing. This is an important point, because people tend to talk about them in the same way. As you can see by reading the definitions above, faith is a lot broader than religion. An easy way to lose an argument is to argue against religion without arguing against faith.

If you try, you will not only be ideologically incoherent, but you will kneecap one of your most effective arguments. Namely, that faith leads to undesireable outcomes such as the subjugation of women, crusades, torture, terrorism, and all sorts of horrible things. The problem is that, while faith is the main source of these outcomes, religion is not. Some of the most horrible movements on Earth were secular. Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and a number of other despotic leaders led secular movements. Religion didn't enable these movements; faith did.

Despotic, hateful movements are at their core unreasonable. They generally rely on the proposition that Group A is superior to Group B, and therefor should kill/enslave/rob/hate them. If the populous was using logic and reason, these movements would never take off, because nobody would accept the proposition that one group of people can be objectively superior to another, especially if it's based on something arbitrary like ancestry, geographic location, or skin color. These movements succeed from time to time because they offer the same thing religion offers: comfort. People are comforted by believing that they are better than everyone else, that their society is superior, or that others are to blame for all of their problems. Leaders often must only offer the tiniest shred of unreliable evidence for these propositions, because it's what people want to believe. If people demanded credible evidence, these leaders would never convince anyone. Instead, people believe based on something other than evidence (emotion, desire, effortlessness, etc.), which is the very definition of faith.

Religion is only the problem so far as it integrates and promotes faith. This applies on a much smaller scale as well. For example, Billy might hate gays because the bible says so, while Jimmy might be an atheist, and just hate gays because he gets disgusted when he thinks about them. Both Billy and Jimmy think that being gay is a bad thing without any credible evidence. They simply have faith in the proposition, Billy because he trusts the bible, Jimmy because he trusts his feelings. In terms of their value for discovering objective truth, these approaches are both equally worthless. It makes no sense to distinguish between them because one uses the word "god" and the other doesn't. Irrationality is irrationality, no matter how it's dressed up. And irrationality is the problem.

Religion is clearly an obstacle to understanding the world, and admitting the limits of our knowledge. It is the most visible obstacle because of its nature as a group activity (and these days, a political force). But it does us no good to abandon religion and replace it with an equally irrational way of looking at the world. Faith is what we must avoid.

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Tangential point: if you'll forgive the incestuous quotation, Chris make a point yesterday with which I'd like to associate myself:

I don't hold that everything can be dealt with rationally, because I've been in a relationship. Nor is pure reason an intelligent pursuit. Love and laughter matter, even if they aren't always reasonable. It's just a good idea to recognize those parts of yourself that aren't rational for what they are, rather than believing them to be a valid way to find new knowledge or explain your world.

I advocate logic & reason as the exclusive method to arrive at beliefs which have any chance of being objectively correct. Love & laughter are not beliefs; they are experiences. They should be enjoyed without worrying if such enjoyment is rational, like you would enjoy a good steak, or a piece of art. What makes you happy is a personal choice. We must simply recognize that it is not a way to discover objective truths.