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Quote Originally Posted by Askthepizzaguy View Post
It doesn't matter to me what the Bible says, it's not about religion, the question isn't about whether it's better to believe in something or not... religion or no religion should not, in either case, cause stupidity within people or irrationality in judgment. FAITH is the issue, not religion. The Bible could teach one plus one equals five and it still wouldn't cause people to basically kill their children because they believe that God will heal them, even though he clearly will not. That requires faith.

The difference being, I can believe in God (or disbelieve in God), but if I have faith that he will do something (or that I can do something); some wacky idea that I came up with by myself, that is taking a leap of faith. Religion involves a set of beliefs, usually involving those not supported by evidence and also involving the supernatural (if there is such a thing), but that's not always the case. Faith is unwavering belief in spite of evidence, or with a lack of evidence, in something. Whatever that thing is; be it religious theory or scientific theory or political theory, or any other kind of theory; and the belief is unquestioning. Unquestioning belief, ("blind faith") is dangerous and this is why. Because if you never question your beliefs then you might as well disconnect your brain because you've rendered it useless.

Blind faith also appears to be redundant, because what is faith unless it is blind to facts and deaf to evidence? Faith requires no evidence and it also requires one to sometimes ignore evidence. Hence the entire Faith versus Reason debate I had earlier with Rhyfelwyr, where I exhaustively demonstrated using example and logic and by definition, how dangerous faith is and how different it is from belief and from religion. Faith does not need to be religious, and it doesn't just mean belief. It means unwavering belief, stubborn belief, irrational belief, extreme belief. That's why we have to define certain things as faith, because we ALL have opinions and beliefs of some kind, and what differentiates rational opinions which can be altered or reasoned with and stubborn opinions which can never be altered, is faith, which opposes reason.

Acting on faith is almost by definition acting without reason or against reason. And what happens is people get hurt or they die when they ignore their own common sense. Acting on faith is dangerous. That's even intuitively obvious, because what is faith without risking being wrong? If we risk nothing by taking a leap of faith, then why is it so courageous (or stupid)?


Yawn. So you spent 500 words or so saying blind faith is stupid, using extreme definitions of faith.

And what the Bible says doesn't matter? Please - you started this as another one of your petulant attacks on Christianity. If these people had faith in the Bible, and believed in the Bible and Christianity, they would have known not to put the Lord to the test.

In short, you're using idiots to argue against having faith.

CR