What was said is what is important, not who said it, although if you are
famous you are more likely to be heard. Mark Twain and I agree pretty
much on the nature of faith -- that it is belief in what you want to
believe rather than belief in what we have good reason to believe.
I don't suppose in most cases such faith does much harm, and sometimes it it is helpful, but sometimes it does harm.
Roman Catholics, and probably others, teach us that faith is an act of
grace from God, that we are given it, and some are not, kinda
arbitrarily. Most Protestants take a slightly different tack and say
that we need but ask for it and it will be given.
I think that it is intellectual dishonesty: wanting something
(especially things we've been indoctrinated with) to be true and using
these teachings to allow ourselves to believe them in spite of their
inherent irrationality -- even making a virtue of the irrationality. I
think we are born with an instinct to believe what the group believes,
and in early societies this instinct served those groups who adhered
because of it, but natural selection is not interested in truth but in
survival and reproduction. Hence when we doubt we feel fear and guilt
-- the instinct's way of getting its way -- and when we give in and
believe we feel joy and peace. It's all subtle biology overcoming or
rational nature and is what keeps unbelievably unbelievable religions
going.
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