 
Scary
silent guy with red bible. One of the cadre of good solid xians
menacing Atheist marchers in the Godless American March On Washington
- 11/02/02
The
Failure of Faith
Faith represents the primacy of wishful thinking over reason. It
is a corrupt paradigm and, as such, must necessarily fail in the sense that
the more closely it is examined, the more its contradictions with reality are
exposed and the more it's practitioners are forced into more convoluted and
ridiculous defenses.
Let's Do the Math
For the sake of this exercise, lets allow for a maximum of 1
One True Religion
(OTR).
According to adherents.com,
only 33% of all humans are members of the various xian cults
(I have an almanac that puts the number closer to 25%, but
let's be generous here and include all the bible-based snake handling and chicken
sacrificing xian cults). That means that by conservative estimate, and from
the xian perspective, at least 67% of all humans on the planet
are practicing some form of non-xian
faithcraft. By the self serving xian definition, just over two thirds
of all humans are at variance with what xians insist is the one and only "TRUTH".
By xian definition, whatever "faith" all these people hold could
not possibly be correct.
Now, the largest xian cult is the catholics who account for approx
half of all xians. If you ask a devout catholic, they will tell you that all
non-catholics are incorrect about the things they hold on faith. That is another
one sixth of the people on this planet clinging to an error-based faith. Do
the math and you come up with approximately 17% of those exercising "faith" as
the maximum who can possibly be correct. That is one in six! At best!
For fun, if you do the math
for a Southern Baptist, (who will assure
you with all conviction that everyone else
is going straight to hell, especially the "bloody
papists") faith becomes 0.75% as reliable
as it is for the catholics, or about 0.2% (that's
two tenths of one percent) as reliable as
flipping a coin! Slots
hit more often than that.
In other words, if you follow
xian claims about faith to their logical
conclusion, you will observe two things:
the first is that fundamentalists don't
know dick about math, and secondly that "faith",
at best, is nowhere near as reliable a wild-assed
guess.
Faith Is Not To Be Trusted
In essence faith in locally
popular deities (LPD) is no better than
a hunch and a bad one at that. As a guide for
action, it is stunningly untrustworthy. It is
useful only insofar as it coincides with reality,
in which case faith is entirely unnecessary. As
has been demonstrated mathematically, it is certain
to be wrong in the vast majority of cases, and
in my view, in all cases. In the end, it is far
better policy to make every effort to establish
the facts and to act on knowledge rather than
on ignorance and wild guesses with a demonstrated
mathematical likelihood somewhere in the neighborhood
of winning the lottery.
The more I think about it, the more it sounds like something Satan would
cook up.
Further Ironies of Faith
For all the xians who claim to "know" that their alleged deity exists,
I would point out that they are both incorrect and flirting with eternal damnation
and hellfire.
First, xians abhor and reject any methodology which allows humans
to validate such claims. And as is well understood, they have not a single shred
of evidence to back up such claims, so their use of the word "know" is
both erroneous and false (see Liars
for Jesus).
Secondly, if they have knowledge, they do
not need or have faith. And the bible and all
the professional biblecrafters make quite a big
deal about the necessity and accuracy of faith.
Seems to me that knowledge is held in direct defiance
of scripture.
Of course, that is exactly the kind of contradiction you encounter
when you are dealing with a corrupt paradigm.
|
My Webster's
Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (a big red one,
4 inches thick with those little lettered finger notches on the edge) defines "faith" as
a belief which is not based on proof.
Faith, in my dictionary, is between fairy
tale (an incredible or misleading statement, account,
or belief) and fake (something specious,
deceptive, or fraudulent), false (not true
or correct) and fantasy (imagination especially
when extravagant and unrestrained)
Now, there are some clues.
|
|
