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Sunday, October 24, 2010

What is FAITH?

October 18th, 2010

I like Voltaire's idea on Faith: “Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.” However it could also fit the definition of Miracle for me. I like very much your thought that "the strength of the belief comes from the strength of the wish rather than the strength of evidence". Having been born Catholic, although I think this is true for most Christian religions, it was very clever for them to have made us believe that Faith was actually a "good" thing to have, something that you should pursue, something very hard to attain, so hard in fact that you had to ask God for it, that only the most righteous and best people could actually receive this most gracious state of mind. So, now it turns out that the actual dumbness of Reason, i.e, Faith, has actually become a good thing for Christians. I mean, imagine if they would actually take their Faith to work. It would go something like this: Imagine if you will a Christian car dealer explaining to his irritated boss why he gave a car loan to a borrower who had the following history: in the last 20 years he had owned 10 cars, only the 5th one he re-paid successfully, the other 9 were repossessed because he didn't make the payments. Non-Christian Clue: Horrible Borrower-Do not give him the Loan. Christian answer: I had Faith he was going to make the payments based on that one time he had made them successfully (I ignored the 90% of the borrower's history). This scenario reminds me of all Christians who have Faith in God because that one time they "believed" God helped them get something after they prayed, but quickly ignore the vast majority of times when he completely ignored them. NOW, that's Faith, the complete lack of Reasoning, finally achieved after many years of going against his better judgment, finally achieving and receiving God's Grace. But to this Christian's boss, he would  just be one dumb unemployed MF :-) Of course Christians do not apply the same lack of Reasoning to their daily lives, although I would argue that eventually this lack of Reasoning in religion does deteriorate their ability to Reason well in other non-religious settings, but it sure is ironic as hell that they do not notice this double standard, or why won’t they apply the same reasoning tools they use at work and apply them at Church?

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