This way a reply to a thread you can find at https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=21219785&postID=643575316272638863&page=1

I just did a quick search on the definition of faith and found two of interest:

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

Taking these two definitions together, and adding what I deem to know about the concept of faith already, it seems that faith is 'a confident belief in something where that confidence does not rest on logical proof or material evidence'.

Does this not seem irrational? Normal everyday beliefs are based on giving a positive credence value to a statement i.e. I am more than 50% sure of such and such based on the evidence readily available to me. The only evidence readily available to human beings is logical or material. Why on earth would someone hold a belief that they accept is under-evidenced.

Ok, so maybe people like to go with gut feelings or their sensibilities cloud their judgement to think it’s acceptable to believe something when that belief is under-evidenced. Live and let live: let people have their own beliefs if it doesn't hurt anyone. Problem: religion does hurt people and it is the less fundamental religious middle class that provide a platform to prop up the more extreme fundamentalists.

If something is false but harms no-one then so be it if someone is happy believing it. But if a belief is false and it does, at whatever level, instigate hurt in other human beings, then that belief is not acceptable.

I anticipate that some may object that faith may describe beliefs based not on logical or material truths but on spiritual ones: spiritual evidence that outweighs the logical and material. But what is this spiritual evidence? How can we trust “spiritual” experiences? Surely if I was in a room and thought I saw a flying pink pig that no-one else could see, my first reaction is not to think that everyone else is mistaken but that I am; I would think, because what I am seeing (on one occasion which is not enough to base a strong belief) is out of the ordinary and defies the laws of everything I currently hold to know, that I am hallucinating.

If I ever have a religious experience (actually I used to be religious and thought what I was experiencing was spiritual and divine) I will know (I now know of my feelings then) that it is more likely that the experience is not divine. The overwhelming presence of God that Christians claim to feel is common human chemical functions. When I hear certain pieces of music I may be moved, I may cry, I may be suddenly and overwhelmingly happy. When I have a belief that tells me there is hope against the backdrop of a brutal world and that tells me I am always loved and will never die my brain and body react in the same way as when I hear a moving piece of music. If a belief does not have to be true for someone to believe it then surely it does not have to be true for someone to feel the positive effects of that belief.

Faith is irrational and dangerous. False beliefs that are, even only when misused, dangerous should not be maintained. Belief in God is a false belief. Belief in God is the cause of much pain and destruction. Therefore one should not hold a belief in God.