Young Australian Skeptics

It seems almost every freaking week now I am reading about another asinine, foolish, backward, half-​​witted, idiotic and imbecilic couple who allow their child to die by praying for the child’s illness instead of seeking proper medical attention. Monday the trial of Carl and Raylene Worthington began after their 15-​​month-​​old daughter Ava, died of pneumonia, the couple were apparently using prayer to cure their daughter’s illness. Pneumonia is such a treatable infection yet this baby dies because her parent’s think an invisible being acts and influences their lives to such a degree that their child is invincible to what most other babies would almost certainly die from. These people continue to use faith as a defense in court and for what they believe even when their faith is completely contrary to the evidence, I have had people make the ludicrous assumption faith is a virtue, i.e. on the same plane as rightness and probity.

I like to use an illustration which shows how evidence destroys the need for faith (I have used it before in previous posts), the old story about Abraham and Isaac. We all know how it goes by now but the twist is this, what if Abraham, on his way over to sacrifice his son Isaac, stumbled across some evidence (whatever it might be) proving that Yahveh would intervene and Isaac would be safe? Would Abraham still need to have faith in God and that his son will be okay? No sir! He now knows what will happen and so he is no longer acting on faith, faith is no longer even an option!

I guess evidence is a problem when it comes to the historicity of people, places and events and this is why no historian will ever claim they know what did and didn’t happen, all they can say is in all probability that something did (or didn’t) happen. But at least the historian is being honest and admits anything after that is purely a belief with no reason. The Principle of Analogy covers much of this belief with ‘no reason’, what people take on faith and I believe provides a solid argument against the type of thinking which allows one to argue as follows; ‘our faith is so strong we know God will intervene and anyone who disagrees is wrong because they lack faith’. The Principle of Analogy can be applied to anything involving faith such as miracles, so called historical events and even the degree God intervenes in people’s lives. I can not help but wonder, surely these people get an enormous amount of disconfirming evidence everyday like the psychic who begins by asking the clients ‘what is your name?‘

The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God (He 11:6) and one can only be saved by faith (Ep 2:8) so a believer is forced and then locked into this position of disregarding evidence in favor of faith. That is just absurd but Billions of people fall for it! It doesn’t stop there, the Bible explains if you do not have faith then whatever you do can be classed as a sin (Rom 14:23). I am not referring to all the types of faith, just the so called ‘saving faith’ that religious people purport to have. All the Biblical faith amounts to is this intrinsic flaw in logic, ignorance = knowledge (Heb 1:1) yet, in my opinion, faith somehow flies under most people radar. If faith is a virtue, then why do we still have innocent children dying on the back of stupidity from people like Leilani Neumann? There are serious issues with faith that I feel are not scrutinized closely enough; I believe faith is a serious weak point in any belief system.

Tags: Logic, Pseudoscience, Woo

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 3:30 am and is filed under Firefly, Logic, Magic, Pseudoscience, Religion, Skeptic, The Pseudo Scientists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.