"Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. ... Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated."
-Christopher Hitchens
Quote Source: The Telegraph
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This is very true and there is so much that makes faith overrated, starting with giving up our freedom to question BS.
I've always felt this way, but I still hear people telling me all of the time that faith is a good thing, and that I'm far too cynical for my age. To me, faith, believing something without adequate reason or proof, seems like stupidity. Thinking on it, I really can't see a situation, beyond the quick limbic instinct which everyone from lizards on up have, where faith would be a valuable adaptive quality, even for social animals like humans.
I see faith as a possible reliever of anxiety but not really useful otherwise.
It is astounding how faith rips us away from reality (reasoning). I agree with zaphod about faith relieving anxiety. I feel it can be positive for those seeking better health, a placebo really.
Ironically, I find this one to be the most thought provoking of any other quotes here. Faith can get people through a lot of things and it takes over when the mind has given up trying.
Agreed Matty, it can get people through things they otherwise would not make it through but In my opinion rarely. I find sleep to be just as effective, actually come to think about sleep helps to deal with anxiety as well and with nearly as good of result but when you need to be awake and quell your anxiety to get through the day and keep plugging away when you have little hope and odd are stacked against you I guess faith can help you through to the end regardless of how it eventually will end for you. I think people relate faith to be faith in God way to easily.
Comparing sleep to faith? Come on Zaph, you know better than that! Sleep is much more important! Then I think coffee comes in next! :)
Faith is truly the surrender of reason because it makes people do really stupid things that so much defy reason. Like the story of a man in my community that went into a lion Cage with a bible having faith that the lion will not attack him... Yeah the lion had its lunch that day