When I first chose the title for this post, it was done to provoke both sides of the theistic fence into response. I got that response here, in the comments, and through some emails.

Some folks got what I was trying to do, but many did not. Mostly atheists. I fear that I was quite unsuccessful in backing up the provoking title with what I was thinking. And perhaps my thoughts have changed somewhat since then. But, what I was really trying to point out, is that it seems sometimes atheists are the rational thinkers and the grown-ups in the room when it comes to social responsibility. I was sparked to this topic by the behavior of some Christians I’d observed being very ugly and hate-filled for their fellow man -a trait many would claim to be contrary to the core teachings of their alleged messiah. And I think many atheists do a better job of displaying compassion and concern for our fellow man than do so many who claim to be driven toward “living a good Christian life.”

We more often do it without a need for status among peers (though that is definitely a driving factor many other times). We don’t have a congregation of peers to impress. We aren’t coerced by pastors and ministers to tithe, go on missions, etc. We give when it’s needed as it’s needed. Oh, not all of us. And not all of the time. But I think it happens far more often than not. And when it does happen, it’s far more honest and genuine than the superficial, albeit useful charity of the religious.

But when it comes to ugly, Christians -good, kind Christians- are down-right nasty. Perhaps when you believe your actions are divinely approved or that you can simply get forgiveness and it’s all good, behaving nasty is just easier.

I’ve been on hiatus, so I’ll have to go back and read this post again to see if I still hold the same opinions. But I do remember that when I wrote of atheists being more Christian than Christians, I was referring to our ability to turn the other cheek, do unto others as you would have them to unto you, be tolerant of others in spite of their differences from ourselves, seek to give genuine charity to those in genuine need, etc. My wife and I have always supported various charities. A couple of them Christian, believe it or not (one in particular is a small, local church that gives clothing away on their front lawn once a month, regardless of your beliefs and they don’t ask for anything but donations of clothes, time, and money if you can). I donate also to organizations like the local Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers/Sisters, The International Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, etc. Not consistently and not all at once, but when the mood strikes and the money can be spared.

But, most of all, I don’t hesitate to offer charity to neighbors in need. Regardless of their beliefs. They’re people trying to make it in the world like anyone else. And occasionally they find themselves in pickles that range in size from small to large. Giving a bottle of water to our community’s maintenance man on a summer day is no small gesture in Texas. Offering to a gas can for a single mom late for work can mean the difference of a day’s wage. Patching up the skinned knee of the kid across the street can offer the tiniest sense of security to his dad while he’s at work.

Being neighborly transcends belief. Or it should.

But then, true humility and tolerance are not really part of the theist world. Only”they” are saved from hell. Even others nominally of the same faith are not because of trivial differences in theology. It’s arrogance and pride that permits them to state that “you’re going to hell” to anyone that disagrees with their concept of a “loving god”. So loving a god that it will condemn to an eternity of torture anyone that does not exactly conform to an arbitrary set of rules, no matter how good a person they have been in their lives?

Is it any surprise that more christians approve of torture as an interrogation technique than any other group?

Is it any surprise that theists are regarded with contempt and derision by rational thinkers?

Most of the problems of the world are, and always have been, caused by religion. For example, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, 9/11, and family planning clinic bombing in the USA. Then there were the crusades, the inquisition, witch burnings, and the dark ages. Get the idea?

Humanity will never truly be free until the black yoke of religion is lifted by the clear light of truth and rational thinking.

There are some exceptionally stupid atheists, but this is not a use of “faith” that most atheists objects to. It’s really not worth reading the rest of this post.

You can continue to analyze your own ignorant and uninformed caricatures, or you can go find out what atheists actually have to say.

Your call.

The problem I see is that we have a perfectly good words for rationally proportionate beliefs and for rationally proportionate trust and rationally proportionate loyalty. We can call these things “justified beliefs” or reasonable confidence or earned trust, etc. The problem is that if we do not distinguish rationally justified belief with a totally different word from belief that willfully refuses to heed rational counter-evidence or insists on believing beyond what is warranted by evidence, then what we have no distinction in our language between such bad beliefs and justified beliefs. They both get lumped in as “beliefs” and as “faith” and people start talking like all beliefs and all faith are equal since they’re all not 100% certain knowledge.

So, the language would be far clearer if every time people told atheists “you have faith” just because we, inevitably have some beliefs that are not 100% justified, we could simply say, “no, we do not have ‘faith’, we have beliefs proportioned to our evidence which makes them justified beliefs and likely knowledge. We are specifically opposed to believing more strongly than evidence warrants and especially to believing against clear counter-evidence and especially to believing in claimed authorities who have no demonstrated special access to knowledge about the matters on which they are supposed authorities. What we do is therefore a totally different thing from what you do, stop lumping us together and trying to create the appearance of an equivalence where there is none.”

Fighting for the word, drumming it in that faith is this vice of believing too much or against the evidence and that atheists at least reject on principle doing this whereas the faithful on principle support it. Even if given atheists slip into faith-based thinking about any number of topics (including religion!) at least it’s not on purpose, at least it’s not characterized as a virtue! At least it’s only implicit and accidental and something the consistent atheist would avoid doing if called on it.

These differences need to be clarified and the best way to clarify them is by disambiguating the senses of words so that they don’t seduce people to false equivalences.

In sum, Dawkins is wrong.

None of that is faith unless you have more confidence in science and your team than is warranted.

I agree with nearly everything you said except that that we cannot define trust in proper scientific method as “faith.” Perhaps I’m leaning too much on Richard Dawkins, who said, “there’s nothing wrong with having faith in proper scientific method [1],” but I’ve always held that there are two definitions of faith that are often equivocated. One definition includes a blind faith, in which one believes in a premise or outcome without any good reason; the other is a proper faith in which one has trust in a premise or outcome for good reason, such as repeated observation, testing, probability of the legitimacy of an authority (eg. advice from a surgeon versus a witch doctor), etc.

I would definitely agree, however, that blind faith -that faith that has no good reason or benefit of experience, is a type of faith that is irrational and ill-placed. The religious believe that the words of their religious leaders are trustworthy authorities, but these authorities haven’t any genuine qualifications in the way a surgeon might. The weight of a Ph.D. in medicine is far, far heavier than that of a Ph.D in “theology,” which is really a Ph.D. in nothing. Therefore, faith in such an authority is misplaced and blind. Faith in biblical mythology to make profound statements about the universe is likewise misplaced and blind.

But faith in a doctor, scientist, or one’s own tested observations is well-placed. Still potentially wrong, but a trust that has far more probability of being correct since it involves, at some level, testing and observation.

Still, I try to stay away from easily equivocated terms like “faith” where I can. But it was unavoidable in the context of the post above. Thanks for commenting! I haven’t yet read your “Disambiguating Faith” series, but I’ve bookmarked it for future reading. Perhaps I’ll come away with a different opinion.

1. Dawins, Richard (1991). Ep 1: Waking Up in the Universe – Growing Up in the Universe. The Royal Christmas Lectures, start watching at about 53:30 for his discussion on “faith in proper scientific method.”

I know ‘faith’ is a virtue that many if not most atheists quickly dismiss, but the more I ponder it, the more I find some reason to have faith. For instance, I have faith in the ability of science to provide quality explanations for the universe around me. I have faith in my team as a unit to achieve our goals at my job. And I have faith in my fellow man to ultimately come through and do what’s right.

None of that is faith unless you have more confidence in science and your team than is warranted. As long as you are apportioning your belief to the degree of your evidence, you do not have faith but rational belief, even knowledge. There is overwhelming evidence that science has the ability to explain large portions of our experience. In fact, we can know positively that it already has. To affirm this is not faith, it is to accept known facts. To have reasonable confidence that based on its past track record it will continue to provide more answers in the future is not faith either but a reasonable inference that tools efficient for solving previous problems will be efficient for solving future problems of similar kinds.

That’s a perfectly rational belief too, one which can be based strictly on the evidence and believed to the degree that the evidence warrants.

Faith would involve trusting science or trusting your team beyond what they warrant based on past performance and proper assessment of their general capabilities.

You even went out of your way to express proper respect for the limits of scientific explanatory power, which tells me you do not expect more from it than you know is reasonable, which tells me you do not deliberately believe beyond evidence and have faith in it.