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.

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“It is humanity’s unique blessing and peculiar curse to be the only species on Earth, as far as we know, that worries so obsessively and at such great expense about where we came from and why we’re here.” (Epilogue, pg. 339)

Pulitizer Prize winning journalist Edward Humes is a consummate storyteller. In Monkey Girl, he paints a vivid picture of everyone involved in the 2005 court case, Kitzmiller. vs. Dover Area School District, showing how the U.S. divide between evolution and Intelligent Design dramatically played out in one small Pennsylvania town.  Along the way, he sets the trial’s story in the context of the historical evolution-creationism debate in this country.

The thinking (or lack thereof) and incompetent behavior of the creationist members of the Dover School Board borders on ludicrous. It’s apparent they cared less for the public education of their students than for standing up for a “man who died on a cross 2000 years ago.” Humes writes a page-turner as he traces their bungling skullduggery in trying to get Intelligent Design taught in the school’s biology class.

Perhaps the most disturbing facts that emerged from the trial were the chain of events that clearly showed how School Board members who call themselves believers lied to try to impose their religious beliefs on others, then lied under oath to try to cover it up.

It’s also uncomfortable to watch how the School Board pitted Christian against Christian in their zeal to have their way. Board members, parents, and students who favored the separation of Church and State were publicly criticized for not being Christian enough, or for being atheists. At the trial’s end, when the presiding judge, a Conservative Bush appointee, ruled that Intelligent Design is not science, the creationist Board and its supporters accused him of being a liberal judicial activist for defending the Constitution.

The Dover trial is a sad reminder of how many US citizens are unaware of what the US Constitution means. The men who forged that document had a profound understanding of the importance of the separation of church and state, based on experience, not conjecture. Their founding of our new country grew directly out of the anguish and turmoil of centuries of European religious wars in which persecution often meant lengthy incarceration or death.

Unfortunately for the US, it seems the battle to discredit evolution and replace it with creationism is not over. We can only hope that concerned citizens like those in Dover, PA, will continue to speak out and take legal means where necessary and judges like John E. Jones will continue to rule fairly to protect our Constitutional rights.

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Many people will tell you that a god must exist — just look around!  There’s all this incredible stuff, and where there is incredible stuff, there must be an incredible-stuff maker.

In more sober wording, the argument goes, “There must be a creator because life on earth appears designed.  And not just designed, but intelligently designed.”

If not intelligent design, all Christians, to one degree or another, are believers in “intentional design.”  They have to be.  The Christian god must have intentionally designed the Earth and biological life for humans to appear.  Without humans there would be no passion play.  The whole death and resurrection of the messiah would not have been the same if the “most evolved” species had been dolphins.  At least I don’t think so.  Without Jesus, four limbs and a cross, no Christianity.

Take the Christ out of Christianity and what have you got?

A creator god with omniscient intention is an “intelligent designer” by another name.  How intelligently has our universe been designed?  The female spotted hyena, whose blood flows with a hearty dose of testosterone, has hermaphroditic sexual genitalia.  Her clitoris is a penis-like structure she must give birth through.  Intelligent design?  An omnipotent creator would have had to slap-dash this design together, as if working with what already was and then modifying it according to what works in the short-term.  A god could do anything.  What was this god thinking when he designed the hyena? Intoxicated design, maybe.

An additionally disturbing fact about the female spotted hyena is that she is the alpha of her kind.  She is bigger and stronger than the relatively submissive males.  The male hyena was fashioned from a rib of the female.

And what of human hermaphrodites (the inter-sexed), more of whom enter the world each day?  Certainly none of them become that way by exercising their free will.  One in three thousand births
results in a child with ambiguous genitalia.  This is not something a human decides to do.  A god done it.  And he done messed up.

Baboon males will yank on each other’s penises as a sign of greeting.  Baboons are “just” animals, so their behavior would have to fall under design.  Had I designed baboons I would have never thought of that.  Very creative.  There is a species of pig whose cuspids grow so long they pierce their own upper jaw.  If the pigs live long enough, the teeth will eventually penetrate their skulls and kill them.
Then there’s the fly that injects its offspring into a cricket.   The fly larvae eat the cricket alive from inside out, which is cruelty to arthropods.

Intelligent design?  How do you explain mushrooms with mold growing on them?  Why both a white rhino and a black rhino?  What purpose can one fill that the other can’t?  The word “design” implies purpose.  Why so many species of bee?  Wouldn’t one all-purpose bee fit the bill?  And mosquitoes? . . . Those should never have gotten beyond the research-and-development stage.

Why do we have both apples and pears?  Why not 100 completely different fruit, as different as, say, a watermelon and a raspberry, in contrast with as different as a banana and a plantain?  There are a lot of redundant elements in the intelligently designed universe.  We’ve got mosquitos that suck blood, ticks that suck blood, and we’ve got leaches, too.  We’ve got birds that fly, insects that fly, mammals that fly, and fish that nearly fly.  Consider the poor rabbit.  This animal is on the dinner menu of coyotes, fox, bear, weasels, owls, hawks, and humans.  Apparently that is why god made bunnies hornier than toads.  Speaking of which, there are a whole bunch of species of toad in North America alone.  Why so many toads?  Was the creator god redundant, or did an ancestral population of toad encounter environmental selective pressures and different breeding success and thus give rise to new forms, etc., etc.?

If a Christian does believe in evolution, in the least their god must have guided the whole messy affair.  For, along with Jesus, we were made in this god’s image, whether or not we needed braces to straighten our teeth.

As you have probably noticed, human beings have armpit hair (unless it is shaved).  What’s the purpose of armpit hair?  To keep us warmer?  No.  When nearing physical maturity it grows to make us smellier.  The hair holds bod oils and the bacteria that live and breed in them, giving rise to body odor.  We may not perceive functionality in body odor today, but that doesn’t mask the question of the intelligently-designed purpose of B.O.  Rather, it highlights it.  Interestingly, despite that fact that our sense of smell is not nearly as keen as our sight or hearing, the olfactory bulb in the human brain – odor detection H.Q., if you will – is the only sensory organ with a nerve-signal output that bypasses the “switch-board” thalamus and goes directly to the emotional command-and-control area of the brain.  Why?

Our species is presently much more sight-oriented than smell.  While chimpanzees rely heavily on body odors to identify one another, humans use facial and vocal features.  But apparently that was not the case in the distant past.  This neatly explains armpit hair and the special case of the olfactory bulb.  Intelligent design does not.

And on and on I could go.  But I won’t.  Instead, I’ll end two simple questions: 1) Did Jesus have armpit hair?  2) Why?

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