a cheap sort of top dressing

[crazilla]

For a few years now i've refined my distaste for religion from a childhood disinterest in the fairy tales of recent millennia (unfair in contrast to my growing appreciation for those of antiquity) to a a refined and scrutinized intolerance for the stunting and controlling role faith (meaning baseless belief) currently plays in human affairs on all

Comments

[patmweav]

Faith has always confused me. I believe in experience based faith, as in faith based on what your intuition and experience with people tells you, but not cultural based faith, like religion. I wouldn't consider myself an atheist because I cannot absolutely say there is no god or gods or anything like that, but can't see it as truth because of a lack of empirical evidence, and I mostly feel like being so specific about the meaning and creation of the universe and the nature of it's creator indicates that these stories are just wild speculation by a few good story tellers. I also agree that it's a little annoying that people believe that in order to be a good person, you need religion to tell you what's right and wrong. I'm not sure if there's a universal right and wrong, but I tend to do what feels right and good, and I believe I am mostly a good person. I also can't stand the all too common religious view of "if you don't believe what we believe, you'll be condemned in the afterlife". Now I don't know if there's an afterlife or not, but any god who would punish good people because they don't believe the right story of the universe, is not a god who is worthy of worship, and sounds less like a god, and more like a brutal dictator who demands allegience.

[crazilla]

Indeed. The three big reasons i usually see for religious faith are upbringing (apparently what you call "cultural based faith"), morality ("you need religion to tell you what's right and wrong") and salvation ("if you don't believe what we believe, you'll be condemned in the afterlife"). Of course, none holds any real sway, and the argumentum ad populum fallacy i brought up before holds more sway than any of these.

I think i can clarify a bit w.r.t. our terms, though: By "faith" i mean the baseless faith inspired by religion; to me, "blind faith" is a somewhat redundant phrase. What you call "experience based faith" i would perhaps call "trust", which is earned rather than taught, or "intuition", a questionable but testable (hence meaningful) type of enhanced awareness.

Finally, "atheism" and "agnosticism" are broader than their popular conceptions; in particular, atheists need not deny the existence of supernature, agnostics can subscribe to religions, and the two terms are not mutually exclusive.