NON-FICTION: Further notes on the Force of Faith

The dominant religions of our world cannot exist apart from continuously reinforced ingorance, fear of the outsiders, condemnation of the world available to us through free enquiry, and pressure to believe, starting at youth.

The majority of people in the world who adhere to Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have been introduced to their faith primarily by the awesome power of their parents.

The parents bring the child it's first role model, hierarchical system, and instructions on how to think.  The parents are the witnesses to the validity of faith.  They immerse the child in presumptions that need not be independently verified by the child.  The child's belief in any nonsense that the parent spouts, such as the tooth fairy or Santa Claus is easily taken for granted by the child.  And when the child doubts these presumptions, he or she is inclined to obey the parents admonitions against doubting.  And when this doubt is portrayed to the child as fundamentally dangerous, fundamentally bad, and straight up evil, the child will invest great amounts of energy into suppressing this doubt and reworking his or her thinking in order to conform with these doubtful presumptions.

More than just parents are needed, however, to reinforce the suspicious presumptions.  The child of a lone nut or cult member must be kept  away from other kids in the neighborhood as much as possible, lest the child be corrupted by other views, and led astray by the desire to fit in to his or her peer group.  And the child of a Christian living in a Christian neighborhood, or living in a country where Christianity is prevalent, still must be guarded, against the non-Christian elements of society, which tempt the child all it's life.  This defense of the child's inculcation into an indefensible world view is not something the parent can do alone.  It takes the whole neighborhood.  It takes a group effort.

In addition, then to the force of the parents in inculcating faith, we further need the constant reinforcement of the wider group.  Uncles, aunts, neighbors, grandparents, teachers and principals need to scare the child away from doubting doubtful assertions of miracles and magic. When the child of strong faith enters into a world where that faith is not taken for granted, it hardly survives.  In an environment where assertions of god, battles between gods, resurrection, original sin, the illusory character of the self, contracts between a god and certain ethnic groups, or the communication between god and certain historical figures are generally tolerated, but often looked down upon for their irrationality or dismissal of the need for evidence, there is little hope for the full retention of the faith of one's childhood.

In such situations, the hope of faith lies in fear and incoherence.  The parent and other authorities attach a strict fear of punishment, rejection, and hopelessness to the questionable doctrines they force onto children.

When the time comes that the child's reasoning contradicts the myths of his parents and community, the threats against non-believers come into play.  You're life will be meaningless, if you sustain thought processes that invalidate your faith.  You will be lost, afloat in the universe in a sea of chaos.  You will go to hell, where everything you fear will be inflicted upon you ceaselessly.  You will be a savage, a non-human, at the mercy of your base desires.

And, for children who reject this intimidation, a personal use may be fashioned out of the anti-definition, anti-verification doctrines of god that have been forced on them.

For these children, the entry into adolescence and adulthood may bring the realization that a positive internal experience of the other can be a source of comfort and power.

When we are alone in ourselves, there is that sense of otherness, perhaps it really is some independent entity, or perhaps it is just the corresponding brain mechanism that allows us to latch onto our parents at birth, or maybe it is some creation inspired by our sociality, or tendency to reach out to others in times of distress, to beg for help from the people available to us.  But it is there in me, and I assume that it is there in many people.  I have other presences in me too, some I call myself and some I reject.  Some are paranoid, petty and violent, and some allow me to conform to a standard of behavior that I believe in.

When we are alone in ourselves, we are never alone.  Our selves are a jumble of tendencies and drives and noise and processes.  The anomalous nature of the god that we are forbidden from categorizing, defining, analysing, editing, correcting, or facing with cold logic becomes something ever more capable of survival for it's vagueness.  And it is in this form that it survives within a great deal of adults, especially those in communities where no particular relgious dogma is enforced by the state, peer-pressure, or the clergy. 

If you arm a child with tools of reasoning, evidence, testing, verification, and indepedendence of thought, you need not fear too much that the child will be turned toward Catholicism, Mormonism, or the Moonie cult.

But to go the other way, to arm the child with fear of disbelief in your own particular dogma, to constantly reinforce this fear with the participation of the greater community, and to erase from the child's mind any possibility of other beliefs is the true calling and goal of the fellowship of belief, be it in Saudi Arabia, 14th century Europe, Hindu Nationalist areas in India, the former theocracy of Tibet, the former theocracy of China, the former theocracy of Japan, or the desired theocracy of fundamentalist Christians in the U.S.A.

In the secular forums they speak for equal time, such as in the attempt to combat evolution by theists in my own country.  In societies generated by plurality and a belief in the goodness of equality among different peoples, they demand fairness and respect, such as in the case of moderate Muslims during the Danish cartoon incident.

But in their realms, at Jesus Camp, in the countries where Isalmic clergy holds power superior or comparable to the state, and in other contexts where religion dominates, they let go of the secular appeals to respect, fairness, and tolerance.  In their own worlds, they are free to ban, to kill heretics, to burn books, smash cd's, intimidate their children, subjugate woman, subjugate the poor, punish the victim, and generally deny the tenets of toleration, reason, discussion, evidence, and doubt.

After hundreds of years in Western Civilization of certain factions and camps fighting for ever greater inclusiveness, fairness, and better living for an ever greater portion of society, these Faithful, once again, are reacting against freedom and tolerance.

They fight against the system by appealing to the rules they spit upon.  Christians who deny evidence, deny even the possibility of testing their central beliefs, argue for open-minded science, and embracing a plurality of beliefs.  Their open mindedness extends only to those of their theories that have been rejected by scientists, and their plurality extends to and ends with their singular view of the world and our place in it.  They fight against free speech by utilizing their rights to protest and publish.  Muslims in Britain protest against the system that refuses to condemn them for their beliefs, and they do so in the hopes that they can spread Islam throughout the world, silencing and eliminating secular government and the reviled embrace of pluralism.

All this they call faith.  There is no major, peace loving, fellow-human loving, beuatiful paen to humanity type of Faith around today that was not spread by force, by the threat of death, or some other punishment.

And when idiots promote their religion by appealing to the prevalence of religion, they are also endorsing the continued coercing of children into belief that is the endeavor of many of their co-religionists and a vital issue in their theology.

It is only in the modern times of rejection of religion that they embrace toleration of other religions.  It is only because we skeptics, we heretics, we godless killjoys have had so much influence that religious leaders tentatively accept a society where our rights are protected.  But, for the most part, those leaders only accept this secular society insofar as it serves the end of spreading their own dogma.  For the dominance of the dogma is the general aim of religious leaders.  Not a simple recognition of rights and practices, regardless of personal belief, but obedience to their chosen dogmas.  Just as they were coerced into belief, so must others be coerced into the true belief, either by attacking evolution, democracy, and rational thought, or by attacking the people that don't agree with them, such as non-Muslisms, non-Christians,communists, abortion doctors, apostates, and, of course, the gays.

There will always be plenty of people ready to accept their own beliefs as something that others need not accept.  There will always be people who prefer good social ties and equitable relationships over adherence to unprovable dogma.  But these people don't get to be religous leaders very often, and if they do happen to attain influence, like Marting Luther King, they are slandered and reviled as untrue to their faith.

The religous leaders that hold out, espeicially when simply keeping one's religion to oneself is so banal, are the ones who have a fight, who stand out against the general society in their nonsensical intepretations of their religion (usually they claim to need no interpretation, which is impossible.)

These are the people that threaten our freedom, the progress of our civilizations, and the enjoyment of our lives.

Faith, one of the most revered artifacts of humanity, is nothing more than repetition of dogma backed by the towering authority of the parent, the threat of exclusion from one's community, the threat of physical harm, the internal threat of betraying the only truth one feels validated in accepting, and the kings and armies of history. 

The reverence for faith is a reverence misunderstood and obfuscated by those who profess it.  It is a feeling of obedience and loyalty made into a faculty in it's own right, that no one can find and that no one ought even to look for.