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lprovenSo the BBC want to know what faith means to us.
Here's what I said.
What does faith mean to me? Superstition, credulity, oppression of free thought and freedom of choice.
Faith means believing in things when there is no evidence for them. It means denying the evidence of your own eyes, of your senses. It means building your life on a lie, on a promise that can never be redeemed. It means trusting someone else to tell you how to live your life even when it goes against what you want to do, even if it makes no sense and requires horrible sacrifices. It means giving up your freedom to be yourself on the basis of books of old myths.
Faith is a terrible thing; for the most part, the world would be a better place without it. The world is real. What we experience, the consensus reality around us, is what is real. What certain people with vested interests tell us, that we can't see or hear or touch or taste or smell, when it is unsupported by any evidence at all - that is "faith", and another word for it is "lies". Because when someone tells you something that neither you nor they nor anyone else can show any shred of evidence is real and true, they are saying something that they do not know to be true. And when you say something that you don't know is true, what you are doing is lying.
We only get one life. When we die, it's over; we don't go anywhere, we just cease to exist. This is what everything in the universe shows to be the case. If it is not true, then god is a liar, because the world is filled with evidence that it is true. (This is not dogma. If anyone anywhere can provide any shred of evidence that this is not in fact the case, I will welcome it and will change my mind. As the agnostic proverb goes, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".)
As such, any person, group, organisation, body, book or anything else that tries to tell us otherwise is trying to sell us something. Usually these entities want us to behave in bizarre ways on the promise that after we die something good will happen. And what this means is that billions of people are wasting their lives, blowing their lives, efforts, work, money and more - for nothing. Why for nothing? Because if any iota of this were demonstrable, no faith would be required.
It's a pyramid scheme. It wastes lives, and that is the worst crime there can ever be.
I don't have faith. I am atheist. There is no god or gods; there never has been. All the claims of all religions and all holy people who have ever lived are false. They may not have sought to mislead; they may have merely been misled themselves. Those to whom their god speaks need psychiatric care, not veneration. If you talk to your god, that's praying, but if your god talks to you, that's schizophrenia.
Atheism is not a faith. It is the absence of faith: it is based not on belief, but on the denial and refusal of belief. To know the world through observation and reason, to be rational, that is what it is to be atheist. And the opposite of "rational" is "irrational", and that's what faith is. To irrationally trust myths and word-of-mouth when they conflict with your own observations.
And that is insane.
If we could free the world of religious faith, we could have a saner world, a healthier, happier world, free of ancient cults and rich fat Svengali-figures squatting on their piles of gold and dispensing ersatz wisdom.
Faith? As noted Catholic priest Father Ted said: "Down with that sort of thing!"
Here's what I said.
What does faith mean to me? Superstition, credulity, oppression of free thought and freedom of choice.
Faith means believing in things when there is no evidence for them. It means denying the evidence of your own eyes, of your senses. It means building your life on a lie, on a promise that can never be redeemed. It means trusting someone else to tell you how to live your life even when it goes against what you want to do, even if it makes no sense and requires horrible sacrifices. It means giving up your freedom to be yourself on the basis of books of old myths.
Faith is a terrible thing; for the most part, the world would be a better place without it. The world is real. What we experience, the consensus reality around us, is what is real. What certain people with vested interests tell us, that we can't see or hear or touch or taste or smell, when it is unsupported by any evidence at all - that is "faith", and another word for it is "lies". Because when someone tells you something that neither you nor they nor anyone else can show any shred of evidence is real and true, they are saying something that they do not know to be true. And when you say something that you don't know is true, what you are doing is lying.
We only get one life. When we die, it's over; we don't go anywhere, we just cease to exist. This is what everything in the universe shows to be the case. If it is not true, then god is a liar, because the world is filled with evidence that it is true. (This is not dogma. If anyone anywhere can provide any shred of evidence that this is not in fact the case, I will welcome it and will change my mind. As the agnostic proverb goes, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".)
As such, any person, group, organisation, body, book or anything else that tries to tell us otherwise is trying to sell us something. Usually these entities want us to behave in bizarre ways on the promise that after we die something good will happen. And what this means is that billions of people are wasting their lives, blowing their lives, efforts, work, money and more - for nothing. Why for nothing? Because if any iota of this were demonstrable, no faith would be required.
It's a pyramid scheme. It wastes lives, and that is the worst crime there can ever be.
I don't have faith. I am atheist. There is no god or gods; there never has been. All the claims of all religions and all holy people who have ever lived are false. They may not have sought to mislead; they may have merely been misled themselves. Those to whom their god speaks need psychiatric care, not veneration. If you talk to your god, that's praying, but if your god talks to you, that's schizophrenia.
Atheism is not a faith. It is the absence of faith: it is based not on belief, but on the denial and refusal of belief. To know the world through observation and reason, to be rational, that is what it is to be atheist. And the opposite of "rational" is "irrational", and that's what faith is. To irrationally trust myths and word-of-mouth when they conflict with your own observations.
And that is insane.
If we could free the world of religious faith, we could have a saner world, a healthier, happier world, free of ancient cults and rich fat Svengali-figures squatting on their piles of gold and dispensing ersatz wisdom.
Faith? As noted Catholic priest Father Ted said: "Down with that sort of thing!"
