How many pathetic centuries of obfuscation have been wasted avoiding this simple truth. A claim has to be defended, proven, doubted, explained, to be judged either true or false or possible.
The millions of theists, particularly those of the intellectual class, who obfuscate the issue of trust and belief by using a Latinate term, faith, are both unwilling and disinterested in clarifying the issue.
Faith, they say is a higher faculty, or "That's why they call it faith." As if the assertion can avoid any process of logic by it's common acceptance, as if the atheist could be cowed by ad populum (an argument that is said to be true because a lot of people believe it).
And, in fact, that is where faith really comes from, not from the appeal to the authority of the people, but rather to the appeal of some people: Those in Charge.
It use to be the case that there was a group of True Christians who hunted out the many heresies. There was noone to stomp out heresy with a police force or armies, so there were many groups with different Christianities. They listed and condemned the men and woman who deviated from their views.
But, for them, this was a matter of arguments about the state of the world. There was no controversy between science, because they believed the gods were forces that intervened in their world. God was something real, and He kept the world going and punished the people who messed around with him.
But when did Christianity spread? When it became the main authority. The western Roman Empire became the Catholic Church and that's when it became mandatory to believe in god. That's when the repression, the torture, the exploitation, and the wiping out of various cultures took the name of salvation rather than mere conquering.
And it is that same authority that confronts us to today.
Christianity was spread by the impulse to empire, the impulse to conquer. Islam was spread in this way as well. King Ashoka spread buddhism througout the Indian subcontinent and the nearby regions. The Tang emperor adapted it for China, and enforced it on the masses, and the Tibetan rulers adopted it in Tibet.
That is where faith gets it's authority from.
When the Christians, theists, and atheists denounce the strident, arrogant new atheists, like Dawkins and Hitchens, what they really mean is that anyone who could so assuredly and bluntly reject theism, must be arrogant.
But what does that presuppose? That there is something to be humble about. A topic to be humble before.
And just as the ancient Jewish god was akin to the despots of early Egypt or near eastern civilizations, so too is the faith that they refuse to question, and use as a refusal to question anything but why you don't agree with them, so too is this faith a loyalty to belief, a belief that they must believe.
This faith is the faith of the totalitarian state. It says "We shall do whatever it takes to get you to submit, for everyone must submit. And we shall never give up our loyalty to these ideas and lords, for to do so would be do to commit evil."
When you are confronted by the imperative to believe, which has to be reinforced constantly, remember that this is now embedded in our cultures because at one time it was picked up by an army, and made into the state ideology.
The only thing you ever need to do with a factual assertion, like "Jesus was killed and came back to life.", or "David didn't burn in the flames." is discuss whether or not it is true, why it might be true, and what would have to confirm or deny it.
If you say it must be assessed by faith, then you are saying it must be assessed by the second thing that faith refers: inner states of feeling. Assessing a claim by using faith means seeing what you feel about it.
But, between people, feelings must be explained and justified when they contradict.
But Christians don't do that. They say they you've got to have faith, which means they intentionally trust a set of ideas, and commit themselves to changing the mind of everyone, everywhere, while believing that to change their own minds would be a sin, or unholy, and, therefore, unthinkable.
If you say Jesus did something, that is an assertion on your part. If you wan't me to believe, than let's talk about it with the awareness that it might be true, and it might be nonsense, and both of us are completely to change our mights without negative consequences.
If, instead you fall back on faith, and recommend it to me, that what this means, is you are falling back on trust of certain ideas, and you seek to convince me to trust these ideas by telling me to trust.
Look at the following example:
A.Every piece of evidence I have and you have doesn't make the possibility of god very likely.
B. Evidence. Huh huh huh. That's why they call it faith.
And, since faith means a feeling of trust, despite what the apologists and deep thinkers want to maintain, this statement is equal to: I don't have enough evidence to believie in god? That's why they call it belief! Cause you have to blieive it.
And what we end up is with something the person can't understand because they believe it is something that cannot be understood.
And to you the idiot stupid enough to expect things we believe to understandable and subject to confirmation or denial, there is nothing that can be done except to tell you that there is no understanding to be had, only acceptance.
Relgion has been eaten away and replaced to such a great extent in our world, that the modern exponents of religion have no idea that they have inherited a past set of technologies, claims about reality, explanations of weather and illness, and explanations of government.
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