The Fallacy of Faith

From Atheist Republic

My Merriam-Webster defined faith as "believing in something for which there is no proof."  In the Bible, Jesus said, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain 'move from here to there,' and it would move." [Matthew 17:20 NIV] Conflating the two quotes, we get something like this:  "If you believe in something that has no proof, even a little bit, then you can say to this mountain ...” and so on, a sentence that might make the listener believe that the speaker needs a good psychiatrist and maybe a long course of some psychotropic drug. Mostly the sentence just doesn’t make any sense. Suggesting that there is some kind of magic in believing hard enough that a thing can be done, will somehow make it possible is Harry Potter thinking. (So is praying. Believing that if you pray hard enough you can speak telepathically to your imaginary friend in the sky is magical thinking.) Under any other circumstance than religion, such behavior would get you locked up as a delusional personality in the best case, or as a schizophrenic in the worst.

Faith is Suppressive

Faith suppresses creativity and innovation by saying that anything created by the god is, ipso facto, perfect, and not disprovable. This belief stifles scientific research, because the Why and How of things are unnecessary. It is only necessary to believe through faith that the god made it perfect.

The human brain is a wonderfully complex net of parallel computers. It took many eons to evolve from its earliest form to the three-pound lump of grey matter that is the average human brain today. With a storage capacity of 2,500 terabytes,(1) it’s the largest single hard drive ever developed. The brain has about 150 trillion synapses,(2)which means 150 trillion data points, and an effective running speed of 200 million billion calculations per second.(3)  It’s the largest neural net computer ever conceived. Scientists are not even close to building an artificial neural net of that size, much less that complexity.(4)

Many of these “clock cycles” (the comparisons are not perfect – neurons fire as needed, not on a cyclic basis) are used for keeping the human body working, but a large portion of the brain is used for cognitive skills, problem-solving, reading, creativity, emotion and mood.(5) Right now, your temporal lobe is firing heavily while reading this article. I am, while writing it, firing away in my inferior frontal gyrus.

All this brain talk illustrates that what little we know about the human brain has been deduced from evidence derived through long and meticulous experimentation. By not having faith, and by assuming a god did not create the brain but that it evolved from earlier forms over the eons, scientists have been able to slowly ferret out some of the Hows and even a few of the Whys of the formation and function of its complexity. These experiments would not have been done, certainly not to the extent that they have been, if faith had guided humans to feel satisfied with the brain’s godly perfection.

It is very likely, in fact, that the church would have made the practice illegal, if history is any indicator. Galileo Galilei, whose achievements include the improvement of the telescope, confirmation of the phases of Venus, discovery of the four largest moons of Jupiter, the Father of Physics, the Father of Modern Science, was nevertheless tried by the Holy Office of Pope Urban VIII and found guilty of being “vehemently suspect of heresy.”(6)  He was forced to recant publicly (but not privately) and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. Such is the life of a scientist under a faith-based theocracy.

Faith is Dangerous

Faith is one of the most dangerous concepts in the modern world. It requires the believer to believe in something that has absolutely no basis in evidence or fact. It asks the believer to believe simply because someone or something has told him or her that it is true. If it said in a “holy” book somewhere that the earth is flat (as it does) then the fundamentalist believers of that book are bound to believe it. The Bible, arguably, says it, so my grandfather believed it; the Quran, arguably, says it, so some Muslims believe it.

The distressingly dangerous point is that most people are all too willing to take things on faith. They do it all the time. One only has to delve even slightly into the UFO community to find that most things are taken on faith. That is, most accepted "truths" are anecdotal, based entirely on what someone has said. Even “photographic evidence” is anecdotal because someone interprets what those unexplained lights in the sky are, and that is what is believed. It's the same with all things supernatural, and it's the same with religion. The Bible is entirely anecdotal. The unknown writers of a book (and they are mostly unknown) say, "These things happened," and we are meant to believe them, much like we are meant to believe UFO reporters. We are meant to pattern our lives after them through faith that what they say is the truth. Nevermind any hard evidence. Nevermind any proof that any god exists. Nevermind any proof that Jesus was a real historical person. What is said is sufficient. Believers will tell you that this is evidence, but “evidence” like this, were it in anything but a “holy” book, wouldn’t even be admissible in a court of law. It is purely hearsay.

People who are inculcated into religion are potentially placing themselves in a very precarious position. Otherwise rational people have been persuaded to commit murderous acts against themselves and others for outrageous afterlife rewards: because someone told them that if they did so they would join a group of perfect beings in a spaceship,(7) or that some “holy man” could resurrect them because he told them he could.(8) As we have seen with Al Qaida, ISIL, and many, many others, faith as an ideology has led to mass murder and killings over and over in history, and in our lifetimes. If the god had not promised an afterlife, religion would not be what it is today, indeed, if it was anything at all.

“One cannot comprehend the suicidal zealot apart from the self-sacrificing saint – not because the two share a moral equivalence, but rather because the internal logic and social foundations of religious extremism are much the same, whether the extremists’ goals are good, bad, or deadly.”
-- Laurence R. Iannaccone, “Religious Extremism, the Good, the Bad, the Deadly” (9)

The Fallacy of Daily Faith

Now back to what my father said. He said that every time you sit in a chair, you have faith that the chair will hold you up; that it won't collapse under you. So, consequently, you can't avoid demonstrating faith in your life every day. About this, like so many other things in his life, he was wrong.

What is the opposite of faith?  Though many people see them as equal terms, in one sense, the opposite of faith is trust. If faith is believing in something without proof, trust is believing in something because proof exists. It’s what we mean when we say that trust is earned. We earn trust by establishing evidence for that trust.

Here’s my take on my father's chair example. I don't sit in a chair with confidence because I have faith that it will hold me up; I sit in it because I trust that it will hold my weight. I base that trust on three factors that constitute hard evidence:

1. I understand the concept of "chair."  I intuitively understand that the structure of the chair is designed to be sat in. I know that it will have three or four legs, sufficiently connected to a platform on which I will sit, with a back that is of a style that will hold my weight when I lean against it;
2. I examine the chair as I approach it to see if it is broken or otherwise unfit to sit in. Are the legs too thin?  Is it rickety?  Is a crossbar broken or missing?  Is the seat firmly attached?
3. As I sit, I further test the chair, verifying my trust, to see if it is adequate to hold my weight.

That evidence leads me to trust the chair. Faith is not involved. This simple example is repeated again and again concerning everything we do throughout each of our days and lives. We live by trust, not by faith. Even the faithful.

That is, we live by trust in everyday matters. Where the system breaks down is when we attempt to live by faith in matters supernatural. When we attempt to believe in UFOs, or ghosts, or a god; that necessitates faith. Now, UFOs and ghosts are usually innocuous and rarely lead to death. But a god, well, that’s another story, for another time.

References:

1. http://io9.com/if-your-brain-were-a-computer-how-much-storage-space-w-50...
2. http://www.dana.org/News/Details.aspx?id=43512
3. https://www.ualberta.ca/~chrisw/howfast.html
   To be sure, a slow-ish computer is many times faster than an individual neuron. A 1 GHz microprocessor is about 5 million times faster. The brain gets its amazing speed because it has so many neurons, like little microprocessors, networked together – a sort of neural net, though the comparison is not perfect.
4. That doesn’t mean that scientists are not close to developing true artificial intelligence (AI). They are just using different designs. Ray Kurzweil estimates that a fully AI computer will be possible by 2029.
   http://www.kurzweilai.net/ask-ray-how-do-you-gauge-if-strong-ai-is-a-few...
5. http://www.md-health.com/Parts-Of-The-Brain-And-Function.html
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
7. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2120869/Heavens-Gate-cult-commit...
8. http://tribune.com.pk/story/763684/too-trusting-pir-kills-follower-for-m...
9. http://econweb.ucsd.edu

Has atheism killed more people than religion?

From Atheist Republic 

Faced with the violence condoned and encouraged by organized religion, some believers are eager to point out that atheists are equally violent, if not more. In fact, some suggest that atheism is at the root of the worst atrocities in recent history, like the regime of Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong.

While it’s true that Stalin and Mao were corrupt leaders who denounced religion among their people, suggesting that their depravity was caused by atheism or that their behavior was at all indicative of atheism as a whole simply does not follow. Similarly, the idea that atheism is somehow uniquely responsible for despotism is clearly false. History is filled with examples of the religious whose beliefs were directly responsible for murder and violence (1). Yet such direct relationship has not been seen with secular tyrants. If anything, non-religious dictators themselves act more like religious zealots, elevating themselves as deities in the cult of personality they’ve developed.

Atheism Has No Doctrines

The violence within Christianity or Islam can often be traced back to the teachings of those religions because it is embedded in the ideology of the religions themselves (2). Even though war and violence in the name of God are often motivated by non-religious ambitions, such as political and territorial gain, religions in such cases are often used as an excuse for justifying such acts, disguising their intentions as holy and recruiting armies of people who would not have been willing to risk their lives for purely secular causes (3). People throughout history have been martyred and sacrificed in the name of religion, and holy wars have been fought over the tenets of those religions.

The same cannot be said of atheism for the simple fact that atheism is not a religion. Atheism is a lack of belief in deities. It has no governing dogmatic principles, no rule book and no core ideology. Comparing atheism to religion is like comparing apples and oranges. It’s more helpful to compare atheism to theism, which is simply belief in a deity. While some theists also hold fundamentalist beliefs, just believing that some god exists is not enough to cause wars and violence based on the belief alone. How many wars have been caused by deism? You’d need some additional dogmatic beliefs in order for that happen. 


No one commits mass murder in the name of theism or atheism alone. Additional dogmatic principles are needed to justify such grisly outcomes. In the case of theism, religions like Christianity and Islam provide such dogma, creating convenient excuses. Secular totalitarian regimes and religion share this dogmatic element: a belief that a set of ideas are true because an authority figure says so and that questioning those ideas can lead to serious or even deadly consequences.

Therefore, it’s not reasonable to say that atheism condones or promotes violence or that tyrants have killed in the name of atheism. Such actions or any other action, both good and bad, do not and cannot speak for atheism in general, as no two atheists necessarily hold any of the same beliefs or convictions about the world. The only thing held in common between all atheists is a lack of belief in deities.

This means that some atheists are undoubtedly unkind, aggressive and violent. It also means that some atheists are kind, friendly and peaceful. Any type of person can be an atheist, just as any type of person can be not interested in golf. Just because some non-golfers are jerks doesn’t make not golfing bad any more than atheism can be blamed for the behavior of a handful of atheists. If you’re trying to make a decision about whether you believe in God based on how a certain non-believer you know acts, you’re using flawed reasoning. For the same reason, not all religious people are bad or cruel individuals, yet the practice of violence and war is deeply imbedded in many religious ideologies. It is, therefore, best to examine your views about God or other religious beliefs by evaluating the evidence provided for such claims, not based on the behavior of people who do or do not accept it as truth.

The Cult of Personality

It’s true that the tyrannical communist regimes of Mao and Stalin were opposed to religion, with religious belief discouraged and punished under their rule. This had less to do with atheism and more to do with the threat of religion as competition with their own tyrannical plans. Totalitarian regimes are built on dogma and fear, not freedom of speech and inquiry. In this way, they greatly resemble religion. In effect, these leaders essentially created religions and inserted themselves at the top as new deities. As Sam Harris put it, “The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions.” These cults of personality are not derived from atheism, and it is hard to see how one could argue that their activities were representative of atheists as a whole. Indeed, many free, irreligious nations, such as Denmark and Sweden (4), are among the most peaceful and prosperous countries in the world (5). The point, however, is not to say that atheism necessarily causes people to be happier or more prosperous. What is clear, however, is that atheism does not lead to violence, tyranny or genocide any more than religiosity guarantees a peaceful and prosperous nation.

The world’s religions have rules and holy books that tell their followers what’s wrong or right and how to behave. Thus, it is reasonable to hold a religion accountable for the message that it preaches. There are no holy atheist scriptures, no atheist pope and no atheist rituals, tenets, creeds, code or authority. Atheism cannot be held accountable for the activities of atheists in the same way that religion can be judged by its doctrine because atheism has no doctrines. 


Tropes

A list of apologist tropes

Trope 1: All Scripture is to be understood in the context of other Scripture

If a verse doesn't say what you want it to mean, find another verse which does, even if it's a contradiction.

Trope 2: Christianity invented the Golden Rule

Nope.

Matthew 22:39 is better than the Golden Rule
It's a version of the Golden Rule. "Philosophically, The Golden Rule involves a person perceiving their neighbor also as "I" or "self"

Trope 3: Democracy can only succeed if the majority of the population are religious.

Not according to the evidence. 

The regimes that took power after the French/Russian revolutions were violent because of atheism.

No, they were violent because they were totalitarian.
Russian Revolution explained
French Revolution explained

The American Revolution was not violent like the French revolution, because of Christianity

That's a faulty comparison because the situations were very different.

Atheist authoritarian regimes are always bad

Authoritarian regimes are always bad, regardless of the adjective.

Trope 4: The concept of a multiverse was invented by atheists in order to counter the fine tuning argument.

Wrong on both counts.  But even if it was, that wouldn't make it wrong.

Trope 5: Inductive arguments qualify as evidence for the existence of God

No they don't. An inductive argument isn't evidence.  Induction differs from deductive proof or demonstration not only in induction's failure to preserve truth (true premises may lead inductively to false conclusions) but also in failing of monotonicity: adding true premises to a sound induction may make it unsound. In any case, I have yet to see an inductive argument for God that isn't weak or flawed..

Sub-trope 5.1: No distinction between speculation, hypotheses, theories and facts

The lack of understanding of what those terms mean results in statements such as "the supernatural is a fact!" or "The resurrection is not a hypothesis!" and so on.

Trope 6:  Moral Relativism is a bad thing

It is neither good nor bad. It's just a fact of life.

Trope 7: Science requires faith in the same way that religion does. 

No it doesn't, but this is a common apologist argument based on a false equivocation of the different meanings of the word "faith". One meaning is belief without evidence (e.g. God), another meaning is confidence based on evidence (e.g. evolution).

Trope 8: Atheism is the default alternative to Christianity

When a negative aspect of Christianity is mentioned, an apologist may respond with a negative criticism of atheism.  This is pointless for two reasons: The person criticising Christianity is not necessarily advocating atheism; and two wrongs don't make a right

Trope 9: The Bible is the basis of morality

It isn't.

Classic apologist quote: "Christians have a much greater motivation to solve the world's problems--and all other problems--than you do!"

No they don't.

Trope 10: If someone doubts a claim that God exists, that person has the burden of proof. 

No they don't.

Trope 11: Quotations provide evidence to support an argument

Nope.