The Ignorance of Faith
Anyone who has read my previous article "A Heathens Journey Away From Religion", would know that I spent most of my teenage life looking for God. It is pretty relevant to tell you I have not found such a figure. The reason for the relevance is the stance I take due to religious ignorance. In my studies, I have had a lot of questions. The toughest of them all come back with the answer “You just have to have faith.” Let us now read the definition of “faith” together. Faith is, “Belief that is not based on proof.” Let’s apply this to situations other then religion. I have faith that if I wash my favorite black t-shirt in bleach, it will clean it. This is obviously wrong because bleach will destroy essentially what the shirt was originally designed to be, but I have faith that it will work. Now the only way to go about proving my point is to wash the shirt in bleach. We all know the outcome. I have faith that my employer will still have me employed in the future so I have no need to save money since I can live comfortably from pay check to pay check. If I do need some extra money, I can simply work overtime. This is a great concept. That was… until they lost one of their biggest contracts. Having faith has just put me into debt. Since I left my finances up to faith, I was not prepared for any other possible outcomes. Lastly, my cars check engine light is on. But it is ok, I have faith it will pass the emissions testing to renew my registration. It has always passed before and I have no reason to think it will fail this time because I have faith. We can all see were this is leading, dictating life choices based on faith alone does not work. Sure you will luck out now and then and your ignorance will still generate good results, but as a precaution, it is always a good idea to be informed before you make a decision. Now let us apply faith to God. I have faith that my inner ear infection will be cured by prayer. I do not need doctor intervention because God is all I need. Needless to say, I had to be rushed to the hospital due to drainage, they found a cyst and through the “miracle” of modern medicine I was able to retain 60 percent hearing in my right ear. The cyst was the size of a quarter and if it would have grown any bigger it would have entered my brain. I also want to note that this situation was not hypothetical like the previous ones. My faith in God almost killed me. This is not a new story. In fact it is something so often that the justice system had to make laws against people opting out of medical care for faith healing when it comes to children. When a law needs to be made to counter the ignorance of faith, it becomes relevant that something needs to change. That change needs to be education. We need to educate the facts to people. Allow people to make decisions based on facts and not faith. The reason I write these articles and fight the “atheist war” is because I care about people. I have no hatred for a being that does not exist, but I have hatred for people allowing others to suffer due to fairy tale dogma.
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