Faith

Faith is a strange beast, when you think about it.  Theists often describe it as belief without evidence.  Atheists often describe it as belief despite evidence to the contrary.  But really, there’s a little bit more to it than that.  It’s really belief even though you know better.

The way it works is quite interesting, really.  There are mechanisms, built both into the human mind and the concept of faith, to help people keep irrational faiths.  You are promised incredible magic powers, something I think we’d all like to have.  Who wouldn’t want the power to magically produce food to feed the hungry, or a spell to help us out when we’re down on our luck?  That desire to want it to be true is the part built into us that helps us keep irrational faiths.

The mechanism within faith itself is really quite ingenious in its simplicity.  Faith, especially in Christianity, comes with a ton of built in excuses for why it doesn’t work.  A common one is “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord they God”.  In other words, “Yes, you have the magic power to live through drinking poison, but if you drink poison God is going to let you die because you’re being a show off about it.”  There are excuses for why you can’t prove it.

But the most insidious (and, it seems, natural) mechanisms to excuse faith when it doesn’t work is self blame.  If you have faith you can walk on water, move mountains, heal the sick…  Can’t do that?  It’s your own fault.  You don’t have enough faith.  ANY time faith fails to deliver on the promise of magic powers it’s a fault with YOU, not a fault with your BELIEF.  So there can never be a test of the belief itself, only a test of one’s own faith.

There are, of course, other built in excuses for your magic powers fizzling.  God wants something else from you.  It rains on the just and unjust alike (though God does seem willing to give the unjust AIDS or send earthquakes on their decedents).  It’s not in God’s plan.

And, of course, it works better if you’re more prone to believing in supernatural powers, which is why the religious want at your children.  They want to instill this propensity for supernatural nonsense in them at an early age so that they are more likely to keep it in the future.  The younger they are when exposed to supernatural beliefs the more difficult it is to remove these beliefs from them.  The Catholic church knows all too well that the youth are the key to the church’s future.  That’s why they baptize kids as infants.  It is a huge event in the family life, a way for the family to show off their new baby, which every parent wants to do, an experience to tell their children about when they get older with pictures to share and baubles to pass to the child to commemorate the occasion.  It seems important.

As atheists we often think of faith as something stupid people use to excuse themselves from reality, but really there’s a whole lot more to it than that.  There are so many mechanisms in place to force people to keep their faith that, once you get caught up in it, it is very difficult to get out of it.  Faith replaces reason for these people.  Many think that an honest questioning of their faith, never mind actually doubting it, is a mortal sin which will deny them their magic powers should Jesus come back right then, and he’s coming back any minute now…any minute…wait for it…  We often get frustrated at the annoying, circular things Christians say to us which just make no sense whatsoever, but when you get down to it, it’s not their fault.  They MUST believe, they MUST defend, they MUST attack as these are all parts of the faith defense mechanism which they firmly believe their very existence depends on.  Yes, it makes me angry when they do it to me, but when I think about it, it’s really kind of sad.  These people aren't really being the thick-headed idiots they seem to be.  They've just fallen into a mental trap, through no real fault of their own, which is very difficult to escape.  Everything they believe, everything they've been promised, everything they think they desire comes crashing down the moment they start to "see reason".  Often their friends go with it.  It's no wonder they often won't budge and believe whatever ridiculous things they have to in order to keep their faith.