The word “faith” is short and appears innocuous. But it has caused much human misery in history and continues to do so presently. A good first step in addressing this problem is to appreciate that “faith,” like most words, has multiple meanings. The type of faith discussed in this essay will be confined to religious beliefs without supporting logic and evidence. The explanation of how faith developed will be about the Christian religion, but many of the concepts apply to religion in general.

The idea that any conclusion should be reached without evidence is uniquely bizarre. A person who professes belief without evidence in other than a religious context is thought of as a fool. But in the case of religion, turning a fatal logical flaw into a concept that is revered and held in awe is a remarkable achievement.

Faith is the very lifeblood of religion. Faith gives people license to believe in the imaginary world of the supernatural where the dead rise out of their graves and snakes talk. It provides almost impregnable protection for religion against critical inquiry. Faith is the ultimate cop-out. Completely absurd and contradictory beliefs can be justified. If it weren’t for faith, religion could not exist. Doctrine provides the foundation of religion but without faith the doctrine would be meaningless. Lacking faith, we would never have seen the many abuses associated with monotheistic religion throughout history.

But how did such a foolish idea as religious faith ever come to be regarded with such awe and respect?

One of the major factors promoting faith was the Bible. Faith was mentioned only twice in the Old Testament but several hundred times in the New Testament. Jesus reportedly said, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible.” And Paul states that faith is the only way a person can be “saved” when he said, “For by grace are ye saved through faith … not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Nowhere in the Bible does it state that the truth would be revealed through logic and evidence. In fact, it consistently discourages the acquisition of knowledge by these means and instead touts the superiority of knowledge arrived at by faith. The story about Thomas the doubter is a dramatic example of the glorifying of faith. Alone among the disciples, Thomas asked for proof of the extraordinary claim of resurrection, a request that most rational people would consider quite reasonable. Jesus accepted the challenge and provided proof that satisfied Thomas. But then in John 20:29 Christ demolishes the idea of religious skepticism and elevates faith to a profound virtue with this irrational statement: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” With this passage, Christians would hence regard anyone who exhibited skepticism about their religious claims as “a doubting Thomas.” Religious skepticism became a sin.

Tertullian (c.160-c.230), a Roman theologian and Christian, pushed the virtue of faith to its ultimate. He was the son of a centurion and well educated, especially in law. Tertullian is mainly famous for the quote: “It is certain because it is impossible,” often incorrectly quoted as, “I believe it because it is impossible.” In other words, he thought that if a religious belief seemed impossible, that seeming impossibility made it certain. He believed that the more impossible a religious belief seemed, the more it would strengthen a person’s faith.

Christian leaders through the centuries further fortified the idea of the power of faith by continued propaganda. However, as science in the last few centuries began explaining the working of the Universe through natural means and religion began losing every battle with science, faith began taking a beating.

To counteract this negative trend, conservative Christians staged a series of meetings called the “Niagara Conferences.” The people attracted to the cause were generally poor, rural, and not well educated. It was ironic that two rich, urban, well educated oil tycoons, the Stewart brothers, Lyman and Milton, gave the movement its biggest boost. They financed a series of twelve booklets entitled The Fundamentals (1910-1915). In these booklets the five basic fundamentals necessary to be a “true” Christian were publicized, the ones that had been agreed on at the Niagara conferences. These fundamentals included:

(1) The virgin birth of Jesus Christ
(2) The complete inerrancy of the Bible
(3) Christ’s atonement for the sins of man on the cross
(4) The divine status of Christ
(5) The Resurrection and the Second Coming of Christ.

Christian Fundamentalists with their dogmatic claims were now in a position to answer the conclusions reached by scientific (critical) thinking. Since the Fundamentalists’ conclusions were based on an inerrant source, the direct word of God as revealed in the Bible, then henceforth their conclusions would trump any amount of conclusions reached by logic and evidence. And what was it that rendered this Fundamentalist doctrine valid? Faith, of course. Faith and only faith.

And this strategy from a numerical standpoint has been successful. The Christian Fundamentalist denominations, energized by the renewed empowerment of faith, have been the most rapidly growing of all Christian denominations.

This renewed glorification of faith produces major problems for society. Religious claims based on faith cannot be resolved. The citing of an infallible source ends all rational discussion and sets one group in society against another, or is even divisive within a religious group itself.

A few examples show the detrimental effects of faith-based decisions:

Evolution. Despite being one of the most thoroughly documented conclusions in all of science, Christian Fundamentalists return again and again with some version of Creationism. Belief in Creationism is also behind Fundamentalists’ denial of the scientifically well documented “big bang theory.” In effect, they are claiming that the Bible is a scientific textbook. The denial of the scientific evidence can lead to a type of child abuse since their children don’t receive proper scientific educations and are launched into a scientifically-oriented society with a major handicap.

Homosexuality. There is now much scientific evidence that sexual preference is inborn. But those holding faith-based conclusions don’t want to hear any of the scientific information. They want to hear only what the Bible says. Again, they are using the Bible as a pseudo-scientific textbook.

Abortion and Stem Cell Therapy. Whatever one’s conclusions are on these subjects, they should not be based on an embryo having a soul. There is no scientific evidence that a soul exists in an embryo or any other living organism.

Women’s Rights. The Biblical view is the one that those relying on religious faith use as a guideline for the treatment of women. They show little interest in the scientific studies about women.

Science. Although those using faith-based conclusions readily accept the benefits provided by science, they otherwise have an antipathy toward it since scientific conclusions are regularly in conflict with their faith-based ones. They tend to minimize scientific study for themselves and their children.

Church-State Separation. The true believers have faith in the infallibility of their beliefs and see no reason why they shouldn’t impose them on everybody. They are just doing God’s work.

Abstinence-Only Programs for Teenagers. The faith-based conclusion is that premarital sex is sinful and that abstinence-only programs should be promoted using religious zealotry. Recent scientific studies show that these programs simply don’t work.

Although Christian Fundamentalists rely on and glorify faith more than moderate Christian denominations, the latter also base their religious conclusions on faith, but usually with less dogmatism. Nevertheless, moderate Christians also help perpetuate the idea that faith is a valid way to arrive at truth about the material Universe. In doing so, they encourage the extreme views of the Christian Fundamentalists by seldom criticizing these views.

Most faith-based religious conclusions that are detrimental to society involve the material Universe, not what many freethinkers would regard as an imaginary spiritual region. Science with its use of logic and evidence has earned the right to be the sole interpreter of how the material Universe works by always being right in its numerous fights with religion.

Imagine an ideal world where people realize that faith is a bogus way to reach any valid conclusion, even a religious one. Conflicts would only be resolved using logic and evidence. No longer would debates end when a believer slammed a faith-based door in another person’s face. This dream can be realized by explaining to the media and the public the reasons that conclusions based on faith are irrational and detrimental to society.

Related posts:

1. Are Religion and Science Reconciling?
2. Spot the Flaws: Unpacking the Religion Variable
3. The Freedom Wall

Bart Ehrman is a bible scholar who started his career as a conservative evangelical, but eventually became an agnostic. Most of his students and colleagues are believers so he never ridicules Christianity. He just gives a clear, dispassionate account of its historical origins. For me, his polite tone made his critique even more devastating.

For example, here’s his summary of the historical evidence for the miracles of Jesus.

“Our first records of any of Jesus’ public miracles were written thirty-five to sixty-five years after the fact, by people who had not seen any of these things happen, who were basing their stories on oral traditions that had been passed down for decades among people who were trying to convince others to believe in Jesus. And these records are absolutely filled with discrepancies…” (pg. 173)

And how much does he think stories can change when they’ve been told and retold for decades?

“…Did you or your kids ever play the telephone game at a birthday party? … imagine playing telephone… for forty or more years, in different countries, in different contexts, in different languages…” (pg. 147)

“…This is how Christianity spread, year after year, decade after decade, until eventually someone wrote down the stories.” (pg. 146)

And the telephone game didn’t stop when people started writing down the stories. To give just one example, none of the earliest Christian writings referred to Jesus as being divine; this was a later invention. As Ehrman puts it:

“…if Jesus claimed he was divine, it seemed very strange indeed that Mathew, Mark, and Luke all failed to say anything about it. Did they just forget to mention that part?” (pg. 141)

Throughout the book Ehrman traces the evolution of the stories that eventually became the core of Christianity. Besides the divinity of Jesus these include the invention of the trinity, the virgin birth, and the existence of heaven and hell.

I especially enjoyed his description of the different types of Christianity that existed before they were steamrolled by the Roman church. For the sake of brevity I’ll give just two examples, but Ehrman describes many others.

The Marcionites were Christian polytheists. They believed that Jesus and Yahweh were two completely different gods. Yahweh was a vengeful and unforgiving god who had condemned all of humanity, and Jesus was a merciful god who came to earth to save us from Yahweh’s wrath. Unfortunately for the Marcionites the New Testament didn’t exist yet so they couldn’t learn about the insane mental gymnastics of the holy trinity, and how this “solved” the Jesus/Yahweh problem by uniting them into two three gods who were actually the same god. But on the plus side, the Marcionites had their own sacred books and their own apologists who made detailed arguments that proved that they were right.

The early Gnostic Christians were also polytheists. They believed that this world was a cosmic mistake that was created by ignorant and incompetent deities. But a damage-control deity took pity on us and decided to help us out. So he had his spirit take control of a man named Jesus, who he used as a sort of living sock-puppet to communicate secret knowledge that we could use to get out of this mess.

“This might not sound like the kind of Christianity you learned about in Sunday school, but it was very popular in many regions of the early church. Salvation came not by having faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection but by understanding the secret teaching that he revealed.” (pg. 196)

What surprised me was that these were not fringe beliefs – in many parts of the world they were more popular than the kinds of Christianity found in the New Testament. In fact, Ehrman states that whenever archaeologists discover early Christian texts they are always “heretical,” in the sense that they always reflect views that are very different than those in the New Testament. And this strongly implies that at one time the “heretical” forms of Christianity were the norm and not the rare exception.

What happened to all these different forms of Christianity? Well, one particular Christian sect which was particularly well organized and Machiavellian happened to win the struggle for converts in Rome, and…

“…when the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the early fourth century, he converted to this victorious form of faith. When Christianity later became the official religion of the empire, about fifty years after Constantine, it was this form that was accepted by nearly everyone…” (pg. 197)

“…This Roman group… eventually stamped out all its competition, declared itself orthodox, argued that its views really were those of Jesus and the apostles, claimed that it had always been the majority view, and then – as a final coup de grace – rewrote the history of the conflict…” (pg. 214)

So a vast range of different forms of Christianity, which all had their own holy books, which they all claimed were quoting Jesus and his apostles, were basically just made to disappear. And a small percentage of Christian writings, which were no more “authentic” than the others, were given a stamp of approval and became what we now call the “New Testament.” It didn’t matter that most of the texts in the New Testament were either forgeries or anonymous works that were attributed to the apostles purely to deceive people into viewing them as being more authoritative than they actually were.

Ehrman stresses repeatedly that the vast majority of bible scholars hold this view of the history of Christianity, and it is taught in most bible colleges and seminaries. So why is it that so few people in the predominantly Christian US know about it? Ehrman answers simply, “your guess is as good as mine.” (pg. 137)

Related posts:

1. Was Jesus a Stone Mason?
2. Jesus in the Football Huddle
3. Book Review – Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, & the Battle for America’s Soul

In September of this year, I will have been practicing law in Orlando for twenty years. In the course of my career, I have gone from being single with no kids to married with two, from prosecuting to defending criminals, and from belief to unbelief. One consistent thread that runs throughout is my dealing with the believing public.

Other than physical illness, legal problems are for many the worst ordeal of their lives, especially in the criminal arena. I’ve represented people who were on the brink of ultimate disaster, watching their lives unravel, their dreams dashed and their future sink away into oblivion. Many waited for months in the county jail to hear their fate. Overcrowded, poorly fed and under constant stress, most could not stand to look the devil in the eye until the last possible minute, sometimes with the jury standing just outside the courtroom door.

Many relied on their faith to get them through. Some concluded that they had to pay for their sins and were willing to accept their punishment. But many more believed that their saviour would come through in the end and pull them from the fire. Clutching their Bible in their shackled hands like a lucky rabbit’s foot, they would confidently step off the cliff.

That frequently left me in the position of having to figure out how to get irrational people to make rational decisions. Despite what most people think, criminal defense lawyers are not usually focused on the very unrealistic goal of getting their clients off completely. The vast majority of the time, we are concerned with battling excessive charges and getting a fair sentence for the crime the client actually committed. Once we can get the case fairly charged and a reasonable sentence recommended, it becomes our task to convince the client to accept it and avoid the risk of trial and a greatly enhanced sentence. Having to overcome superstitious beliefs makes that task much harder.

I grew up a churchgoer and have studied the Bible extensively. I largely credit being a lawyer with training me to think rationally and value evidence. But my training in scriptures has aided me many times in getting clients to make the right decision within their own religious framework. Maybe I’m copping out, but I just can’t bring myself to challenge people’s religious beliefs when they are incarcerated and it’s the only thing holding them together.

What I tell people, and I’m talking only about Christians, is that their faith does not promise them material success in this world, but in the next. All the Apostles and many thousands more Christians in the first century C.E. were tortured and murdered for their faith. I tell them they cannot expect to avoid their fate on earth if even the Apostles were not spared. They don’t like the argument, but they have no response for it. Usually it works.

It feels hypocritical sometimes. It does not, however, feel as bad as failing to convince someone to make the right choice and watching as they dash themselves upon the rocks.

No related posts.

If you ever want to blow your mind, I suggest attempting to read the Bible as an unbiased, critical thinker.  My guess is that smoke will start pouring out your ears before you make it halfway through Leviticus. To save you some of the effort, and the risk to your sanity, I’ll periodically post some nuggets I have encountered in my reads of the Bible.  Today I present five “bloopers”–both trite and significant–contained in a god’s allegedly perfect book.

1) When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because your people have sinned against you. (1 Kings 8:35, New International Version)

So that is why Death Valley is so dry. The people who don’t live there are sinners. And the Bible god apparently loves all those secular liberals in western Oregon and Washington states, for they are yearly blessed with abundant rain. Which is ironic. For not-believing in him is the biggest sin. Without that first, fundamental belief, he has no authority. Back to the weather: according to the 2004-2005 Statistical Abstract of the United States, Oregon was dead last in the number of Christian Adherents (30.1%), while Washington came in at 48th of the 50 states (31.8%).  No area of Oklahoma gets the rainfall the western Northwest does, yet it has twice the number of Christians.

And Israel–the land of his chosen people–is a desert wasteland. Go figure.

The author of the Bible (a.k.a. God . . . ghostwriters notwithstanding) had little understanding of the weather. According to the Bible, not only are rain, hail, and snow sent from the heavens, but they are stored there as well. Additionally, the Bible god does not simply make the weather, he sends messages to people via his cold fronts and high pressure systems. In fact, during this most recent decade he sent an angel named Katrina. Some think.

2) Therefore I am against you and against your streams, and I will make the land of Egypt a ruin and a desolate waste. (Ezekiel 29:10)

The Contemporary English Version words the passage this way: Now I am turning against you and your river. Your nation will be nothing but an empty wasteland. Even under extreme drought conditions, as have been documented, the Nile never stops flowing.  Additionally, archeologists know that although Egypt’s population has grown and shrunk over the millennia, it was never devoid of people. In other words, the Bible god threatened a punishment that didn’t come to pass. At least in any fashion that would reflect the work of an almighty agent.

3) Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail? (Job 38:22)

Here is how the Message Bible puts it: Have you ever traveled to where snow is made, seen the vault where hail is stockpiled? And the Contemporary English Version: Have you been to the places where I keep snow and hail? The meteorological sciences did not exist in the time of ancient Israel. Thus the Bible writers did not know, as elementary school students do today, that rain, snow, and hail are part of a cycle of the evaporation and condensation of the Earth’s water. Do we attempt to disguise the ignorance contained in the Bible by claiming that these passages are metaphorical? That the lord did a bit ‘o poetry jam?

Once believers play the “this-verse-must-be-interpreted-metaphorically” card, the entire Bible becomes vulnerable to doubt. Maybe Mary was a virgin . . . metaphorically speaking. And maybe it was just a metaphor that Jesus rose from the dead post-crucifixion. And maybe after death followers go not to a grave in the dirt but up to the airy stratosphere. Let’s call it “heaven.”  Metaphor?

4) The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”  They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. (Psalms 14:1)

Wrong.  Totally wrong. Atheists commit crimes in no greater numbers than believers in a god. Our divorce rate is no greater. Etc. Interestingly, in contemporary Christian America, three of the most philanthropic individuals–people expressing their compassion for strangers in need through charitable deeds–are non-believers: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Charles Branson. Through his foundation Bill Gates is saving thousand of lives in Africa. Man that guy is vile.

5) In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun . . . . It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat. (Psalms 19:4 – 6)

Not until a few hundred years ago did humanity discover that the world is not flat. And, gasp, the Earth is not at the center of creation. The Bible god was in no way ahead of his time. Thus his two-dimensional understanding of cosmology. So to speak. The Contemporary English version expresses the same verse with these words: It [the sun] travels all the way across the sky.

The Message Bible engages in a huge act of dishonesty. Here is how you will find the passage in its pages: God makes a huge dome for the sun-a superdome! . . .  That’s how God’s Word vaults across the skies from sunrise to sunset, Melting ice, scorching deserts, warming hearts to faith. So the Bible god’s words, rather than the sun, rise and set. Yeah, that makes sense.  Believers should thank their god for his abundance of metaphors.

Numerous other verses in the Bible repeat the theme of the flat Earth. If the Bible god is up there in heaven, you would think he would notice that the Earth isn’t flat. And it spins.

Because there is no perfect god in heaven, preachers continue to spin what is in the Bible.

No related posts.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, who is a Baptist minister, stated “I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do – to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

This statement should be of serious concern to every thinking, patriotic American and anyone who values freedom.

Mr. Huckabee, asked during one of the debates if he believed in the Bible, said he thought the Bible was the inerrant word of God. My question to him is just what part of the Constitution would he like to amend using the standards God supports and sanctions in the Holy Bible?

Perhaps he would like to bring back slavery, which is rampant throughout the Bible with no objection from the Lord.  Maybe he would like to see torture sanctioned. According to a recent Pew poll on the “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorized by the Bush/Cheney administration, the majority of Christians have no problem with torture. But most people know that when you torture someone, they will confess to or say just about anything and truth is not necessarily the outcome. Think of the Inquisition, witch hunts, and burning heretics at the stake.

By amending the Constitution, Mr. Huckabee could make abortion a crime, even though “abortion” is not mentioned in the Bible. Pro lifers cite Exodus 21:22-25 to justify their stance, but this passage actually says that if a man strikes his pregnant wife, causing her “fruit to depart,” the wife can punish the husband. But if the wife dies, he gets the death penalty. The punishment is for killing the woman not the child. The Bible has chapters and verses filled with God authorizing the killing of men, women, and children. (See 2 Kings 2:23-24, 1 Samuel 15:3, Deuteronomy 2:34, Isaiah 13:16 to name a few.) No matter how one interprets or justifies these passages, the Bible does not appear to be pro life.

As for homosexuality, in Leviticus 20:13 the penalty is death for both parties. However, the death penalty also applies to adultery (Leviticus 20:10). The two verses on homosexuality appear to be paramount to Christians, who think they know what constitutes a loving marriage (between a man and a woman) and healthy family values. Their definition of what and whom a marriage and family consist of is just as antiquated as the person/s who wrote Leviticus. The basis for their value system is also ironic since currently 50% of all marriages between men and women end in divorce.

How would adulterers feel, I wonder, if society treated them the same as homosexuals? There would be those who would justify killing them because the Bible said it was what they deserve. It is we the people who see just how insane this is and have begun to rectify the erroneous situation by introducing governmental hate bills.

Moreover, for all the ministers like Mr. Huckabee who are concerned about not being able to rant about the “abomination” of homosexuality, think about this. Priests and pedophiles and other adult deviants are raping young children as I write this. If Christian ministers want to express outrage or do something about the lives of ‘living’ children, let these people be their sermon. Consenting adult homosexuals don’t hurt anyone.

Then there’s the issue of women. Women in many societies have come a long way, but equality between the sexes is still not fully realized. Women’s status is debased in much of the Bible. They are blamed for the original sin and are held in contempt. “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee,” God says to woman in Genesis 3:13. Would Mr. Huckabee and his Christian friends mandate women to be subservient to their husbands?

In short, I can’t imagine what Mr. Huckabee has in mind for amending the Constitution. God is very deliberately not mentioned in that document. The men who drafted it were not affirming or applying Christian or God’s standards when they wrote it. What kind of committee would be formed for Mr. Huckabee’s amendment undertaking and who would be on it? How would those who disagreed with or disobeyed their amendments be punished? Stoned to death or discriminated against and relegated to the fringes of society as many still are today who disagree with religious dogma and orthodoxy?

We do not get our morality from any holy book or religious dogma. “We the people” use reason, logic, and critical thinking when distinguishing right from wrong. There are those who do the right thing “in the name of God” and those who do not believe in God who do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Much immorality has occurred throughout history “in the name of God.” Belief in God is still the basis for many atrocities today. The more pious a country is and the more it intermingles its religion with its government, the more oppressive and dangerous it is for its citizens. Hopefully more and more people will come to realize this. The US Constitution must remain secular, as the framers intended.

Related posts:

1. Book Review – Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them)
2. Faith: Religion’s Achilles Heel

When considering ancient stories of miracles, we have to keep in mind the problem of translation and revision. For instance, many scholars believe that the word people have translated through the ages as “carpenter” may have been mistranslated. “Laborer” is probably more accurate. (See, for one, Gospel Truth by Russell Shorto). For all we know, Jesus and his pa, Joseph, were stone-masons, which is an equally likely interpretation. In a desert region where stone was a primary building material, this makes as much sense as carpenter. These are not abstract terms, and yet their interpretation is far from clear. Carpenter, stone-mason; resurrected, remembered — what’s the difference?

The alleged resurrection of Jesus is of course the essential Christian miracle story. It alone propelled the character of Jesus into godhood. Without the resurrection, there is no Christianity, no Easter chocolates.  Well, maybe we’d still have the colorful, edible treats borrowed from pagan springtime fertility rituals.  But crucifix sales would certainly be much different today.

As for the “truth” of the resurrection of Jesus, how do we know it really happened? Any video footage? Any unbiased observers? Nope. People today claim to know it through the years-after-the-facts writings of few loyal followers. That was how the faith gained a foothold and grew. One gospel version of the resurrection story tells of this experience of Mary Magdalene: At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus (John, 20:14).

Maybe Jesus was neither a carpenter nor a stone-mason, but a UPS driver, and the uniform threw her off. We’ll never know.

Is an ancient collection of stories variously translated (and in many instances mistranslated, no doubt), a good source for basing one’s understand of reality upon?

I, for one, don’t think so.

Related posts:

1. Book Review – Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them)
2. Jesus in the Football Huddle
3. Faith: Religion’s Achilles Heel