I put this in debate because I also want to hear the opposition.
MY position is that faith is always bad.
A question came across "what about faith to help you through a hard time or through death yourself?"
The only responses I can come up with is that... -truth is always #1.
-it causes false hope and you can have real hope in other ways.
-as far as in death if you believe something better comes after you're more likely to give up so you can go to the better place.
Subscription Note:
Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.
Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.
Totally agree with everything you've said. In addition, faith can blind you to beneficial options, such as trying new medical treatments for a serious disease. I also think it gives people a cop out to behave poorly, because they can always ask forgiveness, and still be rewarded in the afterlife if they have faith.
Its called faith because its not knowledge - CH
Not having knowledge where knowledge exists is bad but doesn't make you bad.
There is no situation where lack of knowledge provides a better understanding in life but knowing less is comforting to many. Being stupid is like being dead, its only others who suffer as the saying goes.
Not having faith isn't the end of religion its the beginning of living.
I positively embrace and celebrate having no faith or belief.
I don't even say I believe anything to be honest.
Either I know or I do not.
Simple really.
As usual the religious play their sad little word games to deflect away from the simplicity of no evidence.
Faith is the single most dishonest stance someone can take on any subject!
I agree with what's been said wholeheartedly. Faith is an excuse to believe something when there is no proper reason or evidence to believe it. Nothing boils my piss more than apologists trying to claim not having faith requires faith,, or that everyone has faith, or best of all that science requires faith, when science is the very antithesis of faith based belief.
I have no faith in anything, and I neither need nor want it. The things I accept as true are held as true precisely because the evidence supports that belief, and is commensurate to the claim. It goes without saying I don't accept the idea that human consciousness can ever maintain 100% certainty in anything as this is epistemologically impossible, and therefore even those facts that are beyond any reasonable doubt, still remain tentative. This presents no cognitive dissonance for me, as I view how sure we can be about the truth of any claim or idea as a scale that increases with the amount of empirical evidence that can be demonstrated to support it.
I agree. Religions ruin everything
I would say that religious faith is wrong, which is what is being referred to in the comments above. It is one thing to have faith that is supported by evidence and experience (such as that a bridge will not fall down while you cross it) and one that is based on superstition or intuition such as faith there's a god who acts like an invisible friend.
One should only believe anything to the extent the belief is supported by reason and evidence. Belief or faith should be a matter of degree. Nothing is 'sacred'. There are simply things considered important for various reasons and to various degrees. Religionists tend to see religious faith as absolute, unquestionable or indispensable. Evidence suggests it is just superstition, intuition and ignorance.
If you mean faith in mythological supernatural beings, I agree with you entirely.
But it's also possible to have faith in people. We can never know for sure what's happening in other people's minds, but we assume that we're loved by our parents, lovers, spouses, children, etc. That's a good and necessary kind of faith, even though the pain is deep when it's betrayed.