Is Faith Harmless?

Oook!, in another thread, asserts:

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People should be able to believe whatever they want to believe, as long as it doesn't impose on anybody else. If people want to believe in invisible ninjas that's their look out. If people want to believe that the evidence for God is presented every time somebody publishes a paper in Cell, fine by me.

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My belief is that the existence of God is irrelevant to how you treat people, and how we interpret evidence. It may not be a million miles away from your beliefs, but I just can't discount the possibility.

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In the post-9/11 world, we have a right to be more critical of the religious beliefs of others, especially as they pertain to the believer's sacred mission on Earth. Even bigots reserve the right to believe themselves superior to other races or classes, insofar as they realize that there are anti-discrimination laws that have to be obeyed in civil society. However, religious believers can declare that "the Lord hath made folly of the wisdom of this world," and decide to disregard secular evidence or authority in order to fulfill the will of their God.We're living in a world where religious belief is increasingly intolerant and apocalyptic, and the weapons available to the believers are ever more destructive. We're beset by people in our own nation and around the world who not only believe in a vengeful God who commands their obedience, but also feel that violence is the best way to serve this deity. There is little hope of appealing to the rational faculties of such people, since they have been taught that faith is stronger than knowledge.Most view these psychopaths as merely the lunatic fringe of the faithful, separate from the majority of believers who hold their faith in a reasonable and critical manner. However, the apparatus of religion feeds and reinforces this mindset and its attendant behavior. The believer that condemns abortion as genocide has no right to deny the responsibility he bears for the violent behavior of a faithful avenger who decides to shoot people at a family planning clinic. Believers who accept their Scripture as the word of the Almighty must bear the blame for violence perpetrated by those who obey its message of hatred against non-believers.The mindset of faith, especially faith in invisible deities and rewards in the afterlife, is not conducive to critical thinking or responsible discourse. I assert that a person's faith is indeed relevant to his ability or willingness to treat people with tolerance and goodwill, and certainly affects the importance he places on empirical evidence.regards,
Esteban Hambre

Gilgamesh writes:

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Within the realms of their faith, there is little to no critical thinking or responsible discourse. And this can involve critically important social aspects of their lives, like politics and science, so depending upon the nature of their faith, they may be valueless contributors to society.

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Excellent point. There seems to be an effort to separate the faith of fanatics and moderate believers, as if the unreflective nature of faith could somehow be responsible for the broadening of cognitive horizons. "Moderate" believers are those who have allowed the modern world to intrude on their perspective, at the expense of their faith. Their faith itself had absolutely nothing to do with their ability to recognize the validity of modern science and the beliefs of others. It's only their skill at compartmentalizing that allows them to pay lip service to undeniable realities on the one hand, and assert that their faith should still be immune to criticism on the other.regards,
Esteban Hambre

Mike says,

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We all accept the reality of the present age

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Oh, sure, Mike, that's why the verse "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" is the defining cant of 21st century believers. If people believe that there are big magic beings who feel human emotions, that these beings reproduce and sacrifice their young, that people who believe in these things never die, and that there's a magic place waiting for these believers, I think it's safe to say that this adds up to less-than-complete acknowledgement of currently understood realities. And this shortcoming carries over into the way they understand society and the world, their responsibilities as citizens, and the sometimes counter-intuitive disciplines of science and math.My point about believers (and you seem to agree) is that your beliefs are somehow considered above criticism. Your deity can take on any form convenient for you, and elude any conceivable argument or attempt to make belief in the concept rational and realistic. You quote your holy books as if we're supposed to accept the wisdom as given, but then you conveniently 'interpret' any part of scripture that is obviously mistaken, outdated, or appalling in its bigotry. Worst of all, you deny responsibility for the 'fanatics' who are simply taking the words and spirit of such obscurantism to its predictably horrible end.If believers are harmless, Mike, it's only those who have put the myths in the cognitive time capsule where they belong. However, there are far too many who reinforce and implicitly condone the crimes of the fanatics by making faith answerable to no earthly authority. By choosing to denigrate critical thinking and celebrate irrationalism, you're loading the guns for the fanatics.regards,
Esteban Hambre

Mike asks,

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How am I loading the guns for the fanatics if I disassociate myself [from] them?

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Because you're insisting that God's reason is higher than man's, that scripturally-based religious belief should be absolutely immune from rational discourse, and that unbelievers are people with "bizarre morals." Now when the believer wreaks God's vengeance (following the command of Deuteronomy 13:7) on the people who he thinks are trying to sway him from his faith through their cynical rationalism, believers like you deny responsibility for the violence. Your characterization of skepticism as "intolerance" is typical: should we be tolerant of every claim, regardless of how irrational or outrageous it is, merely because the claimant believes it strongly?

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For us to believe that we "don't know it all" is highly rational in my book

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Except that you believe you do know it all, just on a "higher" level than we know anything else about our lives, our world, and our universe. It's wrong of you to claim that you're merely exercizing reasonable doubt about empiricism being the be-all and end-all of knowledge. You're claiming that what you know through personal revelation is just as valid as what the rest of us know through the painstaking historical process of empirical evidential inquiry. You believe strongly in a being and an afterlife for which there exists not a shred of conventional evidence. You criticize any attempt to cast the light of human reason on your beliefs as being motivated by cruelty and insensitivity.Arguing for total freedom of belief is like arguing that my neighbor upstairs should be allowed to own radioactive elements in any quantity, because only their misuse could result in the irradiation or destruction of the entire neighborhood. I'm arguing that since faith never claims to be rational, responsible, or realistic, that it essentially is a pernicious and harmful concept.regards,
Esteban Hambre