Faithcraft

Scary Guy with Bible - GAMOW 2002

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.

Essays

Faithcraft