Deconstructing Faith
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One of the more entertaining things about your average Christian is how clamor on and on about their deeply held sacred beliefs and their place in eternity, yet there are so few who have even an ounce of true faith.
Fueled by their deep religious insecurity and an incessant intellect-saving need to prove that what they believe is true, Christians conveniently forget what faith really means. So before we continue I would encourage you to read up on faith and accept and admit what it is and what it requires.
Faith /fāTH/
Noun:
- Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
- Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
Synonyms:
belief – trust – confidence – credence – credit
Faith is binary. You either have it, or you don’t. It’s not a sliding scale that you can tune in and out of to suit your desiring and proclivities. Mostly though, it is unwavering and resolute (i.e. complete trust or confidence) and entirely lacking in confirmation in favor of that complete trust (i.e. based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof).
Faith, by it’s very definition, necessarily requires ABSENCE OF PROOF. Therefore, it becomes clear that faith and knowledge are mutually exclusive.
If you’re incapable of seeing this you’re a clueless idiot, and if you’re unwilling to accept it you’re a disingenuous jackass. We all know what faith is, so abandon all the duplicitous pretense. You can’t downgrade or redefine the word because of what’s to follow.
Pissing All Over Yourself
Faith is the ultimate pillar of religion. Once you marginalize faith by trying to prove it true, whatever doctrine you embrace comes crashing down like a house whose bearing wall has been demolished.
Therefore, anyone who tries to prove that their religious doctrine is true accomplishes two and only two things:
- They demonstrate their lack of any true faith.
- The destroy the very and entire foundation of their religion.
Show Me What You’ve Got
Take a minute or two to think of a moment or event in your life when you took a leap of religious faith and trusted in god [or whom or whatever] to the exclusion of what the known world told you. (If you never had such an experience then you’re not qualified to defend the position. Go have a beer and watch Seinfeld because you’re done here.)
Okay, so you’ve taken a leap of faith. Fucking fantastic. Now answer this question with a simple yes or no. If you knew based on observable proof what the outcome would be (be it favorable or not) prior to taking that leap, would it still have been considered a leap of faith?
Don’t bother answering. I’m going to answer for you because there’s only one intellectually honest response. The answer of course is no. Embrace your internal conflict because you have no way out. Kick and scream like the petulant child you are, but there’s no way around this stunning fact:
You can’t have faith in what’s proven to a known certainty.
What God Wants of You
Simple question: Does god want you to have faith in him?
Answer: Yes.
Fine. I’ll stipulate the yes. And god would never undermine himself. He can’t possibly give you absolute proof because faith would then not only be unnecessary, but it would be logically incoherent and impossible. (Again, by definition, knowledge and faith are mutually exclusive.)
Now add to this the undeniable fact that faith is predicated on the absence of proof.
You Don’t Need No Stinking Proof
Do you believe that the bible is literal and inerrant? (FYI, it gets me hard if you don’t.) But if you do, sit down and shut up. You’re done. All you need to do, all you must do, and all you can do is have faith. And if you can’t stand on that faith and that faith alone, then it’s already dead and you have no business calling yourself a Christian.
Admit why you do what you do. Confess that you try to prove that what you believe is true because deep down inside you feel like a fool, but it’s hard to look like a fool if everyone else believes the same nonsense.
Relax. It’s not like we don’t all know this. Denying that which is so patently obvious only serves to cheapen what little respect we have left for your intellect and honesty.