Post
by Panoptic Blur » Apr 12th, 2012, 16:39
I am an atheist because I do not find the application of faith to be persuasive in my understanding of the world.
The world around me is filled with phenomena that I personally do not understand and cannot personally explain, but each explanation I receive from somebody else must stand the test of facts. Scientific theory proceeds on the basis that it reconciles the facts available - but it is strictly provisional. A scientific theory remains valid as long as the facts support it: once the body of evidence turns against a theory, it loses its validity.
Faith is the opposite in many respects.
Firstly, by definition, it is a belief held in the absence of evidence. This is understandable in many cases - some things are currently impossible to prove with absolute certainty. However, faith exists as a working solution for a lack of evidence - and once evidence or a fact record becomes available, faith by definition is no longer applicable. For example: early humans, with no explanation for the sunrise and sunset, nevertheless planted their crops and went about their business in the faith that the sun would rise the next day. In the absence of a compelling reason for this, their faith was understandable - whether it was explained by a divine chariot of a sun god, or what have you. Later, as knowledge accumulated about the solar system, the combined evidence rendered this sort of faith not only wrong, but also irrelevant.
To extrapolate slightly from the above basis of faith, an auxiliary function of faith is its maintenance of theories in defiance of after-arising data. I consider this function to be one of the most counterproductive effects of a religion. Whereas the validity of a scientific theory survives only until the evidence disproves it, a faith tends to instill in its followers an axiomatic belief that perversely endures even in the face of (and sometimes because of) robust contradictory evidence. Extrapolated far enough, faith can lead people to perform all manner of irrational, unproductive activity with absolutely no evidence to support it aside from their own personal subjective convictions.
Note that I'm not singling out religion as the only way a person (or an entire people) can be misled by blind faith. Political demagoguery, personal deceptions, and simple individual self-delusion also are historically proven paths to irrational behavior lacking a factual basis. Religion is relevant to this discussion insofar as it answers the question "why are you an atheist?" - but it is merely one vector among many of social institutions that owe more to faith than to facts.
These are my central premises and the reason why I am an atheist. It is not even an opposition to a concept of a "God" or fault-finding with tracts of holy books, or such like - the analysis doesn't even need to rise that far. Does the religion require faith? Would its central tenets collapse in the absence of faith? Do the theories of the religion reconcile with scientific facts on record, or does it exist in opposition to them?
"All right, I'm going to ask you a series of questions. Just relax and answer them as simply as you can."
