From: "FANTASYFOE"
Subject: Faith Versus Skepticism
Without regard to whether or not it makes some god happy one way or the other, which, as a matter of common sense, has the most potential to keep someone out of trouble -- unquestioning faith in some inherently doubtful claim, or being highly skeptical of such a claim?
This doesn't come anywhere close to "Hate Mail," but this message raises some really interesting and important issues so I wanted to include it here for more people to read. FF is asking a fundamental question that divides believers from nonbelievers, namely the relative value of faith over skepticism.
Now, no one employs one to the exclusion of the other. There's no defender of faith who never exercises any skepticism and there is no defender of skepticism who never has any faith of any sort. The question then is not so much "which do we choose" but, as FF makes it clear, "which do we focus upon when it comes to doubtful claims."
Religious claims, including the fundamental claim that a god exists, are doubtful. The mere fact that so many people have believed so many mutually incompatible religious doctrines alone means that there should be some doubt as to which, if any, are right. There is more reason to say that religious ideologies are doubtful than to say that political ideologies are doubtful.
So, given that there should be some doubt as to whether any particular religion is true and whether any gods exist, which is more likely to lead us to something true: being skeptical of such claims or having unquestioning faith in those claims? I would go with the former - and I can't think of any real arguments that could even begin to defend the latter.
Even most Christians seem to have the good sense to be skeptical of doubtful non-Christian claims. Why, then, do they believe doubtful Christian claims on the basis of unquestioning faith as though such faith is somehow virtuous? What possible virtue could some god see in such faith? What possible evil could some god see in being skeptical of something that deserves skepticism?
As I briefly mention above and have written about more than once elsewhere, it's not as if theists and various religious believer don't know how to be skeptical and never exercise skepticism. On the contrary, they manage to do it all the time when it comes to issues like politics or consumer choices. Perhaps they aren't always as skeptical as they should be, but they display more skepticism than they seem to when it comes to their own religion.
Why is that? If religion is so important, one should conclude that skepticism is perhaps even more important there than when it comes to evaluating the claims of a politician or soda commercial. Religious faith, whether blind and unquestioning or not, isn't treated as a virtue when it comes to whom you vote for or which soda you buy, so why is it a virtue in one's religion?
If there is a god, what value could it derive from faith that would make it preferable to skepticism? Why would a faithful believer be preferable to a skeptical nonbeliever?
For instance, a non-Mormon Christian has no problem seeing the story about Joseph Smith's "golden plates" being conveniently taken to heaven by an angel as clear evidence of fraud. Obviously, Smith didn't want his plates examined. It makes perfect sense to them that Smith merely came up with this ruse to avoid being exposed as a hoaxer. But, you have the very similar story about when the alleged resurrection of Jesus was publicly proclaimed, and Jesus was, like Smith's plates, also conveniently up in heaven (thus no need to produce the only body which would have mattered: the resurrected body); and Christians absolutely can't see that as evidence of fraud. Instead, they have this fantasy that God somehow holds it to there credit that they had "faith" in something so suspicious.
Righteousness by faith; righteousness by gullibility -- is there any real difference?
So long as the "faith" people rely upon would be unacceptable in other fields of inquiry, like for example science, then it seems to me that there isn't any real difference between "righteousness by faith" and "righteousness by gullibility." The only way for "faith" to rise above gullibility and not be inferior to basic skepticism is for it be conceived in a way that would allow for its application in a wide variety of fields, not simply religion.
Otherwise, it simply looks like a convenient excuse to avoid asking hard questions that could lead to unpleasant conclusions about something that a person has a lot of emotional investment tied up in.
Note: This message originally appeared in the Agnosticism / Atheism forum. Read the whole thread. More selections from the Agnosticism / Atheism Mailbag...
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