The dangers of Faith, by ragarth
A cobbled together essay on the dangers of faith and the problems it poses in my code of ethics.
I recently codified the ethics that I live by, and in them I set up a group of rules that serve to encourage diversity of opinion and belief within the constraints of not interfering with this for others and for not harming others. Since before writing this out I have begun to suffer from a certain schism of beliefs, a conflict between my stated opinions on belief-diversity and a rising tide of conflict resultant from it. The source of this schism is the idea of faith, and the distinct dangers it poses in all it's forms: From benign faith acceptable within my code of ethics to extremist faith that leads to suicide bombers.
Cracking open my Webster's New World Dictionary, I find this definition of faith: "Unquestioning Belief, specif. in God" and this is dangerous. To believe in something without question is to put that belief beyond rational discourse, critical analysis, and evidential dispute; this is akin to taking an idea and sticking it within the event horizon of a black-hole-- It's beyond reason or evidence yet it cannot be dislodged from belief. Faith is the non-sequitur of rationality, nothing validates it yet it's presumed true, and by this premise of being assumed true without any form of underlying support and refusal to accept anything to the contrary, all assumptions and premise based upon it are equally as bunkered against refutation or evidence. To get to the point, a belief beyond any form of rational or evidential doubt has it's validity artificially inflated beyond which the facts or logic should have it.
This allocation of arguments into the bomb-shelter of faith poses a distinct danger, it provides no mechanism by which anything can be untrusted to faith. If faith is an artificial inflation of the validity of an argument, then I could use faith as an excuse to strap on a bomb, walk into town, and blow up a group of people. If I were a person in power, I could use faith as an excuse to start a war, to storm another country and rape, pillage and destroy its people. Nothing about faith prevents its use as an argument against these atrocities, yet some faithful choose to decry them when they happen and we call these people religious moderates. The difference between a moderate and an extremist is one of only degrees of faith. The moderate does not consider slaughter, genocide, rape, and unprovoked martyrdom to be within the realm of faith while the extremist does, yet there is nothing preventing the acquisition of these extremist beliefs by the moderates. For this reason, one could consider a religious moderate to be an extremist who just hasn't gone all the way yet- an embryonic mass murderer so to say. Without anything to put a check upon the realm of faith, future acquisition of ideas into the black-hole of faith is perfectly reasonable, that faithful mass growing and sucking in ideas until it finally reaches critical and so a moderate becomes an extremist. This is evidential- when the twin towers were destroyed many 'moderate' Muslims were celebrating in the streets; so if moderate faith is nothing more than embryonic extremism, then faith in all forms is potentially deadly in a world where every day it becomes easier for a single individual to slaughter dozens, hundreds, and soon millions through the march of technology. Even if a heretofore unmasked mechanism for keeping some ideas out of the realm of faith exists, some ideas are benign on an individual scale, yet deadly on a large scale. Imagine if a religion cropped up that required its members to drop a dollop of mercury on the ground. A single drop by a single person is not critically deadly, but hundreds within a city would quickly begin wreaking havoc upon that city.
In my code of ethics, moderate faith is perfectly acceptable- it's not evangelistic nor advocating the taking away of human rights. In this way a strict adherence to my morals will allow the existence of the faithful among us, but by extension this ensures some people within society consider some ideas to be beyond empiricism and logic. As stated above, this creates a loophole in my ethics in which extremism can come to pass even in the most idealized version of society and so no utopia, no post-human bliss can exist so long as faith remains as a ticking time bomb within the populace. This means that my ethics are flawed, that a perfect acceptance of belief in all forms balanced with the right to free thought is not valid and is in and of itself dangerous to society. The very idea of this sickens me, but yet I cannot look at the facts and refute this without putting my ethics themselves within the realm of faith. Only when this loophole is closed can I claim a right to advance my moral code, and only when this loophole is closed can I hope to begin work towards my hopes and dreams for humanity. I have 8 years to figure it out, wish me luck.
I recently codified the ethics that I live by, and in them I set up a group of rules that serve to encourage diversity of opinion and belief within the constraints of not interfering with this for others and for not harming others. Since before writing this out I have begun to suffer from a certain schism of beliefs, a conflict between my stated opinions on belief-diversity and a rising tide of conflict resultant from it. The source of this schism is the idea of faith, and the distinct dangers it poses in all it's forms: From benign faith acceptable within my code of ethics to extremist faith that leads to suicide bombers.
Cracking open my Webster's New World Dictionary, I find this definition of faith: "Unquestioning Belief, specif. in God" and this is dangerous. To believe in something without question is to put that belief beyond rational discourse, critical analysis, and evidential dispute; this is akin to taking an idea and sticking it within the event horizon of a black-hole-- It's beyond reason or evidence yet it cannot be dislodged from belief. Faith is the non-sequitur of rationality, nothing validates it yet it's presumed true, and by this premise of being assumed true without any form of underlying support and refusal to accept anything to the contrary, all assumptions and premise based upon it are equally as bunkered against refutation or evidence. To get to the point, a belief beyond any form of rational or evidential doubt has it's validity artificially inflated beyond which the facts or logic should have it.
This allocation of arguments into the bomb-shelter of faith poses a distinct danger, it provides no mechanism by which anything can be untrusted to faith. If faith is an artificial inflation of the validity of an argument, then I could use faith as an excuse to strap on a bomb, walk into town, and blow up a group of people. If I were a person in power, I could use faith as an excuse to start a war, to storm another country and rape, pillage and destroy its people. Nothing about faith prevents its use as an argument against these atrocities, yet some faithful choose to decry them when they happen and we call these people religious moderates. The difference between a moderate and an extremist is one of only degrees of faith. The moderate does not consider slaughter, genocide, rape, and unprovoked martyrdom to be within the realm of faith while the extremist does, yet there is nothing preventing the acquisition of these extremist beliefs by the moderates. For this reason, one could consider a religious moderate to be an extremist who just hasn't gone all the way yet- an embryonic mass murderer so to say. Without anything to put a check upon the realm of faith, future acquisition of ideas into the black-hole of faith is perfectly reasonable, that faithful mass growing and sucking in ideas until it finally reaches critical and so a moderate becomes an extremist. This is evidential- when the twin towers were destroyed many 'moderate' Muslims were celebrating in the streets; so if moderate faith is nothing more than embryonic extremism, then faith in all forms is potentially deadly in a world where every day it becomes easier for a single individual to slaughter dozens, hundreds, and soon millions through the march of technology. Even if a heretofore unmasked mechanism for keeping some ideas out of the realm of faith exists, some ideas are benign on an individual scale, yet deadly on a large scale. Imagine if a religion cropped up that required its members to drop a dollop of mercury on the ground. A single drop by a single person is not critically deadly, but hundreds within a city would quickly begin wreaking havoc upon that city.
In my code of ethics, moderate faith is perfectly acceptable- it's not evangelistic nor advocating the taking away of human rights. In this way a strict adherence to my morals will allow the existence of the faithful among us, but by extension this ensures some people within society consider some ideas to be beyond empiricism and logic. As stated above, this creates a loophole in my ethics in which extremism can come to pass even in the most idealized version of society and so no utopia, no post-human bliss can exist so long as faith remains as a ticking time bomb within the populace. This means that my ethics are flawed, that a perfect acceptance of belief in all forms balanced with the right to free thought is not valid and is in and of itself dangerous to society. The very idea of this sickens me, but yet I cannot look at the facts and refute this without putting my ethics themselves within the realm of faith. Only when this loophole is closed can I claim a right to advance my moral code, and only when this loophole is closed can I hope to begin work towards my hopes and dreams for humanity. I have 8 years to figure it out, wish me luck.