Ok, I’ll do this. I’ll write publicly about my thoughts on faith and belief. Life is short. I wasn’t reluctant to write more on this topic because of fear of offending. I was afraid that my remarks could hurt me down the road in a way I don’t expect. One day, if not already, it will be possible, I believe, to plug a screenname like davesleepswcats into a website and have advanced algorithms determine the owner’s actual identity. I mean, regardless of what types of precautions one takes to hide one’s identity, one need only drop a few accidental clues for a determined individual or algorithm to uncover it. Furthermore, one’s real name could be plugged in to reveal all of the various profiles he’s created over the years. I don’t think we’re at this point yet, I believe we’ll get there. So what I fear is trying to apply for a job a decade from now and not getting the job because an employer uncovers my old blog and sees that I have no respect for his religious beliefs.

But life is short. Paranoia keeps us from living our lives as we yearn to far too often. I’ll take this risk.

So I read The End of Faith by Sam Harris, and while I have never felt particularly insecure in being agnostic, I now feel it’s important to talk about why I’m agnostic. I think it’s important for me to speak of my contempt for religion. Agnostics are quiet, I think. At least I don’t know of much of a public agnostic movement in this country. I don’t think we ought to be quiet. It might be impossible, but religion as we know it will need to be radically transformed, if not eliminated, if the human race is to have much of a future. Faith has contributed to much of the horrific violence that has plagued humans for thousands of years. I’m not going to go through examples. This is just a fact. People argue that genocides like the Holocaust were not spearheaded by religious men. True, perhaps, but…Harris has a really good rebuttal for this, but I don’t remember it…. I’m not writing an editorial for the paper; I’m just blogging, and I’m the first to admit when my arguments are flawed or incomplete. Harris has an afterword in the edition I read in which he responds to all of the common criticisms he received. I was satisfied with his responses. Religion can be a powerful force for good, for bringing people together and helping others, but religion certainly isn’t necessary for benevolence and generosity to prosper.

No one truly knows what happens to you after you die, but that billions of people think they know is a source of so much that is wrong in the world. We demand evidence when sending someone to prison, committing troops to war (arguably), accepting a medical diagnosis, or believing a weather forecast. We don’t just learn that 2+2=4. We are taught concepts about the physical world that allow to understand why 2+2=4, and then we later accept as fact that 94834+84829=179663, and it’s not because we counted out 179663 M&Ms. But religious beliefs are accepted as fact without this evidence. They require one to believe that all that needs to be known about the world is contained in a book that the Creator authored. There is no evidence that an almighty deity wrote a book. It’s just believed because generations have passed this hearsay on for generations. Yes, but that’s what faith is, belief without evidence; billions of people alive today profess to faith-based knowledge. Yes, but over the last several thousand years, scientific evidence has debunked beliefs that were held by millions for thousands of years. We no longer give credence to the belief in the gods of the Greeks or the Romans or the Egyptians. We don’t believe you can save a soul from Satan by burning a body alive at the stake. We don’t believe that diseases are caused by demons, because we now know about bacteria and germs and viruses. But a vast amount of our scientific knowledge has only been discovered in the past couple of centuries. Isn’t reasonable to suspect that Christianity will ultimately go the way of the worship of Zeus? How is a person alive in 2006 better able to know that acceptance of Jesus is the path to salvation compared to a person alive in 2006 B.C., who prayed to a god to bring rain to grow the crops? In 2006 A.D., there are still people praying to a god for rain. Are they biologically inferior to Christians? Probably not. But they still believe that evil spirits are making the villagers sick; how silly! Why? Because we know scientifically that the bacteria in their drinking water is making them sick. But we ourselves didn’t know this 500 years ago. So why do we still see a book that’s been through thousands of different interpretations, edits, and revisions as the Truth?

That’s just a stream-of-consciousness bit of writing. There are far more articulate passages to be read than what I have written. If you’re skilled at debate, you’ll probably win if you disagree with me, or even if you feel like playing devil’s advocate. I’m not a good debater. I’m still quite ignorant about religions and what defines agnostics and atheists. Even though he probably agreed with most of my points, some ass in the agnostic LJ community I’m in enjoys tearing apart my semantic choices. I really don’t enjoy philosophy, but perhaps I need to study it some to be capable of elevating my level of discourse. I don’t know.

So I feel strongly about this stuff now. I used to regret that I didn’t have faith in my life. I’d see all of the benefits of faith–comfort in the face of adversity, community, a framework for moral and ethical conduct–and I’d want all of those things. I still do want all of those things, but I don’t think faith is necessary. For individuals, I appreciate it what it means in their lives. But for society, as a whole, I think faith is quite dangerous and responsible for far more injury than happiness.