Faith is, in my opinion, corrosive, divisive and an enemy of rationality - it profoundly hinders our ability to think critically. It corrupts our morality, devalues the life of the here and now and prevents us from reaching our potential as human beings. And to see the influence of faith at work on the mind of an individual, especially upon someone to whom I am close, makes me not only sad and frustrated, but also furious. I am aware that I will have to provide full justification for these claims, which are guaranteed to provoke anger in any person of faith who reads them, perhaps even some non-theists as well, but having previously been a committed Catholic for eighteen years, I believe I am qualified to have made them.
This first post for me represents the final stage in my de-conversion, although it was watching the programme, 'The Big Questions', on the BBC that led me to finally put my thoughts into words. The programme included various discussions between the guest speakers and audience of Muslim, Christian and Jewish believers, including the ethics of abortion, but it was the debate concerning the final question of contention, 'Does heaven exist that?' that inspired me to write this. The viewers were presented with an Islamic idea of heaven, complete with rivers of wine and the promise of never-ending orgiastic dissipation in the company of women not wearing Burkhas. It just screamed out to the viewer that this particular brand of Valhalla was written by men for men. Next we were presented with a Christian paradise, which we were told was devoid of family members and instead just a one to one with Jesus for the rest of eternity. Over the course of the debate more versions of heaven were proposed by the faithful, all of them based on faith alone, and all just as scornful and dismissive of the other faiths as each other. The irony of this brought me to genuine laughter. The final proposition - that the bigger the leap of faith, the braver the believer, and therefore the more respect due to them - perfectly summed up the irrationality of the faith mentality. I was left wondering how, in the twenty-first century, we were having a debate over something which, to all intents and purposes, stems from a fear of the dark.
This leads me on to what I see as the reason behind the survival of the three monotheistic religions to this day. This infantile fear of the dark, of the unknown, of mortality. Until we can rid ourselves of this childish fear, we will not appreciate how precious our lives in the here and now truly are. This fear induces believers to embrace the servility of faith, we are so terrified that this world is all there is, that we will willingly sacrifice our rationality in favour of blind superstition, and hang on to any promise of immortality, however unfounded. I believe that our ability to think critically is our most valuable quality as humans, and to suspend it in this way denies our potential for developing the independence of the mind. We become sheep, - that is to say we embrace an unthinking mentality. We turn faith into a virtue. Christians are taught that the less questioning they are, the purer their faith. As Jesus purportedly said to 'doubting' Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." In other words, don't question, don't doubt, or, to be more colloquial, "shut up and believe what I tell you, however far-fetched, because otherwise there will be no immortality for you!"
Furthermore, faith encourages believers to be breathtakingly solipsistic and arrogant. They are compelled to believe that in an expanding universe, estimated at being 13 billion years old, in one galaxy out billions, on a 4 billion year old planet, where 99% of all life forms there are now extinct, one species, which has only been around for 100,000 years at most, are the reason behind all this existing. And, as Christopher Hitchens has said, for 97,000 of those years, God was content merely to watch us in all our primitive glory, before finally intervening via a vicious, vicarious blood sacrifice in the Bronze Age Middle East.
This blood sacrifice, the scapegoating of Jesus for our 'sins', is an example of how faith distorts our morality. Who in their right mind would support the torture and crucifixion of an innocent man, to atone for sins we have not just committed already, but are yet to commit. To anyone free of the influence of this doctrine, this is obscene. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, why did he not just forgive our sins, instead of creating this morbid spectacle. But faith blinds followers to the horror of this. After all, why should they be horrified, some willingly eat Christ's body and drink his blood every week. Although naturally the Pope is against children dressing up as Vampires at Halloween.
I'm going to stop here, as I'm probably in danger of having my privilege as a blog contributor withdrawn for being too strident. Yeah, I think I'll just tip toe away...
