Where Faith Goes Wrong

By Mark Morgan

Maybe the question is not that we can live a life without faith. Maybe the question is, why should we? Faith (as opposed to the faithful) seems harmless enough. Let's just say, sure, we rely on the evidence to guide us, but we can still hold onto our faith. But there are some problems with relying on faith. Faith gets in the way of our thinking processes, our reason. Bad, bad, bad. Worse, there are some things that faith strives to explain that, when you leave out your faith, become unnecessary to explain. You can make better decisions without faith. In the end, anything that interferes with our reason ultimately interferes with the thing we do the best.

The Problem of Relying on Faith

Relying on faith gets us in the habit of making bad decisions. Bad, important decisions. Take a hot-button topic sure to get me on somebody's enemies list: gay marriage. What is wrong with gay marriage? Is there any empirical evidence that gays will harm society by settling down and getting married? No. And as someone recently pointed out to me, you'd think society could only benefit by allowing gays to marry. Your stereotyped image of a gay or lesbian person is probably some furtive, unstable person who has never been in a normal relationship and is obviously emotionally unstable. Hollywood has helped you cement this image. But have you ever wondered, if gay life is like that (I don't have any idea), what could be the reason? Sure, there's an easy answer: being gay is bad. I have another: kick your dog often enough, and he gets mean. Tell gay people that they're unnatural and obscene (language from an infamous Oregon ballot measure), and yeah, they might grow up a little less mainstream than the kids told they're the chosen of God.

So gay people getting married, settling down in the community, and acting just the same as mainstream Americans can only serve to stabilize your community. Nobody lives on the margins, and the problems from the margins don't enter into your neighborhood. (Think of what good a Habitat for Humanity home can do for a neighborhood: one family with pride in their house can completely change the nature of the whole street.)

I'll pick on the Christians, but the problems of faith thinking is universal.The Bible has lots of places where it says that being gay is bad. So some Christians are completely immune to arguments in favor of gay marriage. God says it is bad, and by gumption, that's good enough for me. You liberal Satanist lackey. (And I've been called worse, while they were at it.)

Author's update: March 2000 California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 22, officially unrecognizing any same-sex marriage in another state, and banning them in California. I have yet to hear a good explanation for this one. The sanctity of marriage has three parts: the religious part, the social part, and the society part. The religious part is up to each religion, and I don't care what you do. But gay and lesbian people deserve to have the social part of marriage (everybody in the community knows that these two people are committed to each other) and the society part of marriage, the legal rights and privileges that come with marriage. Keep your darn religion closed to others; but my society should feature a diversity of people. Yet another way that Oregonians are superior to Californians--at least our hate measures don't become law. Faith thinking has diminished all of us. End

Follow this path often enough, and you corrupt every action you do. Or, hey, let's play "The Pointless Accusations of Evil game": in Nazi, Germany, they got so good at relying on their faith (in this case, faith in Naziism) that they shot children and gassed helpless old men. Faith thinking got them out of the habit of good decision-making

The Problem of Evil

Some things you just can't explain. Is it better to rely on your faith? No. Because your faith will lead you in circles when it's better to just go out there and deal with life the way it is. Take the Problem of Evil as an instructive example. Time to pick on the Christians again. But read this remembering that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of philosophical knots I could have tried to untie; this is just the one I know the best.

That said, I've heard the following justifications for evil in a world ruled by a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent:

There is no good without evil. Because God designed the universe that way. He is omnipotent--he could have designed the universe such that it featured good without evil.
Original sin. So, not only am I being punished for Adam and Eve's actions--I might have committed sins, granted--but my baby cousin (who has committed no sins) is being punished by being subjected to the evils of disease. (This is based on the notion that disease, death, and misery were the punishment that Adam and Eve received for disobeying God.) Me, you might justify. But how can an infinitely benevolent God punish a sinless child, who has never done anything? Surely God could have arranged it so that those who have not committed any sin don't suffer evil.
There is no free will without evil. Unfortunately, many of the evils I face have nothing to do with my choices or the choices of others. If a tornado wipes out the food supply for my village and we all starve to death, it is a random act that nothing I could do could prevent. My free will, and the free will of others, did not play any part in this. If evil is necessary for free will, why did God create a universe with random evils in it? The tornado is not evil. But, the tornado postdates the introduction of evil into the world. Random destruction is the result of the Fall, isn't it? There were no tornadoes in Eden, killing at random. So by the doctrine of Original Sin, the existence of tornadoes is Adam and Eve's fault and we all have to suffer for their mistake. But I can make the argument without resorting to Original Sin. If the tornado is just a natural phenomena, God allows death and destruction to happen for no reason whatsoever. Someone, explain to me again why an infinitely benevolent God would create a universe with random, purposeless death in it?
We can't challenge God because we can't understand God's motives.

And then we reach the end of the argument. We can't really use faith to explain anything or decide anything. It's not just endemic to Christians; it applies to all faiths. The minute we try to use faith-based reasoning to understand philosophical issues like evil, the argument ends with "I have faith that there's an answer." The problem of evil is just one of the paradoxes created by trying to explain things with faith. All you can say, using faith, is "I have faith." Beyond that, you'll drive off a cliff. And it gets you in the habit of making your decisions based on a bad decision-making model. So as a decision-making or philosophical tool, faith fails, in dangerous ways. It gets us in the habit of turning off our brain. It becomes the equivalent of saying "I don't know, and that is enough information to decide." Bad, bad, bad idea.

(return to The Morgan Dilemna)

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