Don't hold out much hope for the future. As long as there is fear, people will reach for hope and conmen will offer faith.

@Betty Excellent point. Fear is the flip side of the same bad penny! Fear very often leads to hate, and even the author of the New Testament gospel of John recognized that an antidote is love: "There is no fear in love." We often fear that which we don't know or understand, and you're absolutely right, this fear is exploited by those who would keep us ignorant and afraid in order to serve their own ends. So it would seem then that a precursor condition for the antidote to be effective is knowledge and understanding--attributes that faith discredits.

For folks who were raised in evangelical, or fundamentalist homes, or have only seen their antics on TV, the idea of faith may understandably look absurd. But that view is not representative of the whole of religious thought, or indeed, the deepest core.

There are times in every person’s life when critical decisions must urgently be made, but adequate knowledge for making those decisions simply isn’t available from any source, including science.

There are times when every person must lean on the faith that the best knowledge they have will get them through, even without certainty, including faith in scientific conjecture that hasn’t been tested.

There are also times when children, or anyone with lesser knowledge or experience should properly have faith in their elders’ or experienced superiors’ advice until they can have the verifying experiences for themselves. Science can provide knowledge, but not wisdom.

Faith is deserved trust - not undeserved trust.

Also, biology knows that evolution honors what works ahead of what is immediately rationally discernible. Minimally CounterIntuitive concepts (MCI concepts) are scientifically known to be more memorable, and therefore more culturally stable than strictly factual narratives. The whole point of scientific investigation is that what appears true to the ordinary, reasonable person is not guaranteed to be true.

An animal that moves with false confidence may have an advantage over the animal who freezes for lack of certain knowledge.

@skado And therein lies the primary misconception and misunderstanding regarding the word ‘faith.’ People sometimes use the word faith incorrectly, and completely misunderstand the primary definition. Faith is gullibly believing something without evidence or against evidence. It is not confidence, as we might place in the pilot flying our aircraft or the surgeon about to operate on us. It is not trust, as we might place in a close friend or intimate partner. Faith is not based on any demonstrable evidence or cognitive experience. Faith is fully undeserved.

@p-nullifidian
I understand that’s your definition, and maybe lots of other people’s. But your experiences are not the defining limit of other people’s experience.

@skado Fair enough, if you prefer not to accept my premise regarding the misapplication of the word faith, perhaps we may agree that the English language sometimes suffers from a limited vocabulary? And yet, just because one word is used to describe a range of emotions shouldn’t prevent us from being able to make explicit distinctions, agreed?

Consider the word ‘love,’ which we use for a lot of different relationships and feelings. When we say we love a particular food, place or sports team, we know that feeling is entirely different from the love we may feel for a person. And when we say that we love our siblings and family members, it’s different (hopefully!) than the love we feel toward a sexual partner or a soulmate. So just as we can intuit these distinctions for the emotions of love, we can discern the difference between well placed confidence and misguided and/or unwarranted hope.

@p-nullifidian
Of course that’s true, but that’s not the issue here. The issue is that you are claiming that the word faith, when used in the religious context, necessarily indicates gullibility, and never anything else.

I’ve checked three dictionaries and none of them mention gullibility, or any synonym of gullibility. You say not only that gullibility is part of the picture, but that it’s the only part of the picture, when in fact, it’s no part of the picture at all.

Your view is not only not supportable from the linguistic perspective, it’s also not the exclusive truth about the concept of faith in a religious context. Yes, gullible people exist in all walks of life - religion is no exception. But there are many religious views as to the meaning of faith, and none of them recommend gullibility.

You are speaking from your personal perspective, and you are not wrong that many people are gullible and many people take advantage of that gullibility. But that is not the primary, or even any definition of faith, even in the religious context.

@skado Although my dictionary’s second definition states that faith is “belief that is not based on proof,” what I am asserting here is clearly not an adherence to a standard linguistic definition, but rather recognizing a peculiar state of mind. And that state of mind is credulity or willing gullibility.

I am clearly not the first person to recognize this simple fact: religious faith requires a reliance not on our reason but on surrendering our will. Proverbs tells us to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not to rely on our own understanding. But as Benjamin Franklin recognized, “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”

You say that religion doesn’t recommend gullibility, but the Bible says that unless you have the faith of a little child you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And when were we most susceptible and easily fooled (i.e., gullible)? I have argued that religious faith is an attitude, or frame of mind, one that views doubt and skepticism as corrupting. To doubt is to question, and without the ability to question accepted truths, ideas and religious tenets, how much progress would have been lost on humanity?

I decry the attitude of religious faith not simply because I was once ensnared by its seductive simplicity, but because of the deleterious effect it has on humanity as a whole. This kind of faith, this way of thinking, is at the root of so many ills including the return of strongmen leaders, the resurgence of fascism, the entrenchment of science deniers, and the growth industry of conspiracy theorists. Of course the faithful will deny all of this, but then that’s why they’re called the faithful. As Mark Twain wryly observed, “Having faith is believing in something you just know ain’t true.”

@p-nullifidian
The only issue I have with what you're saying is that you are applying it to "religion" instead of where it belongs - with fundamentalism. Not all religious people are fundamentalists. What I'm saying is, there are many types and flavors of religious faith, and they are not all fundamentalist or literalist.

Seductive simplicity exists everywhere, not just inside the church. You may have just traded one simple faith for another. There is nothing simple about the field of religious faith. To state categorically that "faith" is gullibility demonstrates a lack of awareness of the many ways that word has been used inside a religious context for centuries.

By the time I was twelve I began questioning, and by 14 I had figured out literal belief was not founded in reality. And even though I was raised Christian, my parents and their extended families were not the gullible type of believers of which you speak.

What you are worried about exists, and is very much a concern, but it is not religious faith that is the problem. It is fundamentalism and ignorance that are the culprit. And the worst part of misidentifying the guilty is not simply that the innocent are punished, but that the real perpetrator goes free.

@skado First of all, thank you for your thoughtful and non-judgmental posts and replies. I believe you’re correct that to accuse all religions and their adherents of having religious faith, is to paint with too broad a brush. My apologies for generalizing. As atheist author Sam Harris has pointed out, the term ‘religion’ is like the term ‘sports’ in that each includes a wide and disparate variety of members. As Harris quipped, “the only thing in common between the sports of badminton and kickboxing is breathing,” or words to that effect.

But it isn’t fundamentalism that is problematic, in my opinion. Fundamentalism is relatively easy to discern, and for that matter, to dismiss. Rather, it is religious orthodoxy, which can be defined as conforming to the approved form of any doctrine, philosophy, ideology, etc. or conforming to beliefs, attitudes, or modes of conduct that are generally approved. Fundamentalism is at the extreme right of the religious spectrum, whereas orthodoxy occupies a larger middle portion. Orthodoxy requires certain fundamental beliefs, but does not necessarily require the same actions that fundamentalism would demand.

Meanwhile, a significant group of members of many religions are what we might call the laissez-faire. These folks can’t be bothered with strife and conflict and so they fail to involve themselves in the pressing issues of the day. They sit in their pews and pay their dues as the offering plate goes by, but they do not call out the extremes. They don’t want to ‘make waves.’ The apostle Paul describes these people as members of the church of Laodicea, and because they are lukewarm (neither hot nor cold) they will, according to Paul, be spewed out from the mouth of God.

The problem, as I see it, is that whether a churchgoer is a fundamentalist, orthodox or extremely liberal, most still accept doctrines and dogma that are at odds with, not only other religions, but scientific understanding itself. We know, for example, that an immaculate conception is not possible; we know that the physics required to stop the earth in its rotation for a day so that a general can kill more enemies never could’ve happened; we know that people (zombies even) do not rise from the dead. In other words we know that miracles, whether described in the Bible or by modern day believers, simply do not occur.

And what exactly is a miracle? It is a divine intervention and break in the chain of cause and affect. We have, for centuries, attempted to discern, if not prove, that such miracles actually exist. However, we have not been successful in locating the fingerprint of God. And yet, the faithful remain undeterred—such is the attitude of faith, to believe in miracles.

So as long as people continue to hold on to orthodox religion with its fairytales, miracles and doctrines—even if they aren’t self-avowed fundamentalists—organized religions (most, but not all) will continue to negatively impact the political, emotional and scientific space.