Does anyone in here agree/disagree with what is said in The Faith Paradox? I’m interested in reading the feedback of others.
http://www.churchofreality.org/wisdom/the_faith_paradox/
[i]
The Faith Paradox
Believing without Proof
Faith Based Salvation
Many religions, especially Christians, believe that you are saved by faith. In fact that is the only criteria. If you don’t have faith then you don’t get into Heaven, end of story. It doesn’t matter how good you are or what works you did - it all rests on faith. So if faith is so important, then what is it?
If Salvation is based on faith, and if faith is believing without proof, then proving God is real undermines salvation.
Faith means to believe in something without evidence or proof. Using the term in the Christian sense, faith is required. You have to make a commitment to accept statements as true without evidence or proof. In fact, that is God’s test to see if you can believe in him without any reason other than trust in the authority of the church and it’s holy books. And you are prohibited from doubting, questioning, scrutinizing, or putting the object of faith to the test. Once something that relies on faith is proven, then it becomes science. If everything were proven, then there would be nothing left that is real to have faith in.
The requirement of faith puts an interesting twist in the rules. If faith were optional, then it wouldn’t matter how you believed in something. But when the test of salvation is based not on what you believe in, but how you believe in it, i.e. faith, then if you don’t believe in it by that method, you burn in Hell forever. Based on this, science can not lead you to God because if you get to God through science then you don’t have faith and you got there the wrong way. There isn’t anything in the Bible that indicates that you are saved through scientific discovery. It’s about faith, and only faith.
But Faith in What?
The test of salvation is faith. You are required to believe through faith and not through science. But what are you required to have faith in? There are tens of thousands of choices out there to put your faith in, but what if you pick the wrong one? Will you go to Hell if you pick the wrong one? Most definitely you will.
One Sunday afternoon as you are sitting on your porch, a Jehovah’s Witness and a member of the Assembly of God walk up to you at the same time to convert you to their religion. Both of them claim to be Bible believing Christians who are out to save your soul so that you might enter the Kingdom of Heaven, to live forever in eternal paradise. However, it is soon apparent that these religions are mutually exclusive, each claiming the other is the road to hell. Perhaps there are 10 different religions represented as other Christians start gathering. Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Messianic Jews, Baptists, Moonies, and throw in a Muslim, all of them claiming that all the others are false beliefs and that unless you make the correct choice, your soul is forever lost. But the one thing they have in common is that you must believe through faith.
So - how do you choose? How do you decide which one is right?
Obviously you can’t start out by using reason because if you use science and logic then you will surely pick the wrong one. If the belief is scientifically provable, then you won’t be able to believe in it through faith. Since faith is required, then scientific proof would be prohibited. Suppose there were one true religion, the religion that got it all right (or at least really close). And suppose that it had the salvation by faith clause. Then suppose that science proved that this religion were real. What would that mean?
If the one true religion required faith-based salvation and it were proven to be true scientifically, then that would undermine faith because faith is belief without proof and if you have proo, then faith is excluded. So if science proved the one true religion then everyone who believed in the true religion would all go to hell, because their faith was undermined by scientific verification. This would create a paradox for God - so the only solution must be that God would make sure that the one true religion must never be scientifically provable.
There is some evidence of this because it would explain why God remains hidden from science and totally scientifically undetectable. And it explains why so much of the Bible can’t be proved with science because if it could be, it would undermine the faith requirement preventing the believers in the true religion from obtaining salvation through faith. Thus the Bible has to be unscientific so that it can never be scientifically proven and have Bible believers lose faith because of proof and evidence.
So - based on the salvation through faith assumption, we can come to some interesting conclusions.
Science can never prove that God exists.
Science will never prove that the Bible is true.
The true religion can never be proven by science.
So - if this is what we know about the true religion, how then can we find it? Perhaps we can start with a process of elimination? Instead of trying to figure out what it is, let’s start with what it isn’t. If we know that God cannot be proven through science, all religions that claim the belief in God are scientific and must all be false. The same is true of people who claim to use science to prove the Bible. If they could prove the Bible through science, then they are going to Hell because where there’s proof there’s no faith. So - that eliminates a huge number of false religions that claim an affiliation with science.
Keeping in mind that, if any element of the one true religion was provable, then that element would lose it’s ability to contribute to salvation. It raises the possibility that perhaps the one true religion has no basis in science whatsoever, and the more impossible it is to believe in the more likely it is to be true. What religion would fit that classification?
The Church of Scientology might fit that criteria. They make no scientific claims that God exists, that the Bible is based on science, and the idea that 75 million years ago that Xenu slaughtered the Thetans and that we are possessed by their entrapped souls is so scientifically ridiculous that it fits all the qualifications of salvation through faith. So I suppose if I was forced to choose, I’d have to go with Scientology and hope for the best.
Faith undermines Science
Faith and science do not coexist very well because science by definition is proof based where faith by definition prohibits proof. In the world of science what is true and what is false are separated by testing and scrutiny. What stands up to scrutiny becomes true. What fails to stand up becomes false. People make mistakes and mistakes get corrected and truth is purified through what is basically an evolutionary process, the survival of that which passes constant inspection.
The problem with faith is that there is no way of testing to determine if what you have faith in is actually true.
The problem with faith is that it’s blasphemy to question what you are supposed to accept without proof. You are expected to accept a set of assertions based on bare claims of truth without any means of verifying if the claims are in fact true. And if any of the claims actually are false, then there’s no way to correct that. The only thing you can do is pray that what you are believing in is actually true. But even that doesn’t work because you have tens of thousands of religions that believe opposite things, and that’s the one thing that most every one of them have in common. God confirms them all as true. About the only religion that God hasn’t confirmed as true is this church, the Church of Reality.
The Church of Reality is one of the only religions that God hasn’t endorsed.
If people of faith had a consistent message from religion to religion, or believer to believer within the same religion, and God was telling everyone the same thing, then that might indicate there was a real source behind this faith. But what we in the Church of Reality see happening is that people make up stories and sucker gullible people into believing it. If you are a person of faith you can see this happening too. Every other religion except yours does it. Any believer can quickly see how other religions are deceiving their faithful. So by what test does one judge one’s own religion to assert that your religion is more real than the other person’s religion. The truth is - there is none.
Of course there are those who think that God talks to them directly and that’s how they know their faith is real. They have had a supernatural experience where God confirmed to them personally what they believe in is true. They “know it in their heart” and have no doubts about it now. But - that too has a problem. People of other religions who believe the opposite of what you believe have had the same personal experience with God. From the outside it appears that God will confirm anything you believe in and everyone who claims divine personal communication with God seems equally credible.
God tells Christians to kill Muslims. God tells Muslims to kill Christians. Why can’t God make up his mind?
So - is God telling people different things or are some of these people experiencing something that they think is God talking that really isn’t? What if they are just imagining that they are talking to God, or rather God is talking to them? Or - for those who believe in God and Satan, how do you know that Satan isn’t pretending to be God and fooling you? What objective test separates those who really hear God from those who think they hear God, but don’t really?
Lets say, for example, you are a believer and you have personally heard the word of God and you have a personal relationship with Jesus. However, as you are aware, there are a lot of weird religions out there who’s members claim the exact same kind of relationship with God and Jesus that you have, but obviously that’s a problem because they believe in things you know aren’t true. So somehow their experience with hearing the voice of God must be false. But they would claim that their relationship is real and yours is false. So - how do you objectively determine using faith and not science, that you are right and they are wrong? I challenge any believer to come up with a method, apply the method, and tell me which one is the true religion.
Understanding Reality Requires Science and Proof
Out here in the real world we have a way to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t. It’s called science. It relies on testing and proof. It invites scrutiny. It is doubt based. It specifically excludes faith, and it’s a process that works. To exclude proof is to exclude science and to exclude science is to exclude knowing reality. Reality exists on it’s own without any need to be believed in. But to know reality involves scientific discovery, doubt, scrutiny, accountability, and questioning. Can someone find reality by other means than science? Perhaps so. You could, for example, take a wild guess and just happen to guess right. But is that a way of knowing reality? Not at all, because if you take a guess and it turns out you are right, you will never know if you were right until it is scientifically proven. Reality exists on it’s own with or without understanding. Reality itself doesn’t care if we get it right or wrong. But if we want to get it right, then we need a way to discern what’s true from what isn’t. And the only way to do that is to prove it. Proof is the only way that we can know if something is real or isn’t real. Guessing isn’t knowing. Making up fiction isn’t knowing. Divine inspiration isn’t knowing, because you don’t really know if God is talking to you or if something pretending to be God (like your imagination) is talking to you.
To declare something real is to declare that it’s provable by science, or that it will at least some day be proved by science to be real. Until then, it might still be real, but it will just be a guess. The declaration of reality evokes proof and since faith specifically excludes proof, then faith excludes the understanding of reality. Faith puts what is real and what is unreal on the same level. Required faith excludes proof and denies verification. It relies on the idea that there are real things that we are prohibited from knowing by deities that don’t want us to be too smart. Deities that would deny us the understanding of reality. It depends on if there exist truths that can’t be questioned.
Faith makes you Gullible
Another side effect of faith is that it makes you more gullible. We live in a world where deception is common and it’s important to figure out who’s telling you the truth and who isn’t. People need to have good screening mechanisms to survive. You have to be able to test information to see if it’s true.
When you believe on faith, you reprogram your mind to accept information that is untested. It’s like having a back door where crooks can sneak in and get you to believe anything they want. All they have to do is cook up a scam and slap a cross on the front of it and Christians are reaching for their wallets.
The reason Christians are so gullible is because they have accepted the role of being a follower and doing what their crowd does rather than to think things through themselves. So once they become convinced that their peers are doing it, then they are ready to get in on it.
Many Christians also have bad mental habits. Cognitive Dissonance is the feeling of uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time. Christians learn to get comfortable believing in opposite things at the same time. For example it’s scientifically clear that life evolved, that dinosaurs existed millions of years ago, and that the universe is vast and is billions of years old. Yet at the same time they believe that God created the universe and that we came from Adam and Eve and that the universe is only 7000 or so years old. To the scientific mind this raises a red flag as the person quickly realizes that both can not be true. But the Christian mind is dulled to the pain of conflicting beliefs and the “this can’t be right” reflex isn’t triggered.
When the Bible contradicts itself, Christians start “interpreting” the Bible so that the Bible doesn’t really mean what it says. Contradiction is masked by a constantly moving interpretation.
When trying to understand the Bible, the Christian mind does the same thing. The Bible is full of self contradictions and contradictions with reality. Even if you take miracles into account and that God is omnipotent, you are still left with a huge amount of stuff that is totally illogical, yet is accepted as true. For example, the Old Testament says God required human and animal sacrifices just like the imaginary gods did. You have an omnipotent being that is so insecure that he needs lowly humans to perform sacrifice rituals for appeasement? It’s like, HELLO, don’t you see how ridiculous this is on it’s face? An omnipotent being needing people to slaughter their children? Yeah right! But to the Christian mind it goes right in without question. The only miracle I see here is that people can actually be conned into believing this.
So - if you’re a scam artist, what kind of person are you looking for to fall for your scam? You want to find people who are ready to believe anything. You want people who are already forking over 10% of their income to the invisible cloud being. People who have the back door of their mind unlocked. Someone who fired the security guard who’s mental safe is wide open for the taking. Once a person can be suckered into surrendering their logic, then they are ripe for the taking. And scam artists know this. That’s why so many scams are directed at Christians. It’s not that Satan is targeting the faithful, it’s that the faithful fall for this stuff so easily because they are used to believing without question.
Is Faith Based Salvation Irresponsible?
According to the rules of faith-based salvation, you are saved by faith and not by works. Faith-based salvation contemplates virtually unlimited forgiveness for any sins. It is what you believe in that counts, not what you do with your life.
Now - I do understand that this isn’t a blank check to murder steal and pillage because Jesus will forgive anything. In fact, I’ll write up a definition that perhaps Christians will quote on how faith-based salvation works. Being saved is sort of like an insurance policy. It covers you if you sin, even if it’s a big sin. Just like your insurance policy covers you if you crash your car and kill someone, even if it’s your fault. But, like auto insurance, you can’t deliberately crash your car knowing that you’ll be covered, and if you abuse the coverage they will revoke your insurance. So - I do admit that although salvation is by faith and not by works, you do have to do a little something to show you are really on board with the faith thing. Having said that however, faith by definition is the belief in things that can not be proven, because once it is proven then it’s science and no longer faith.
What is of concern here is that there are two worlds. “This World” is the world of science and reality and it is materialistic and physical, full of sex and evolution and black holes, and quantum singularities, logic, reason, space-time, atoms, and gravity. This world is inherently evil and ruled by Satan. This is the world of the Church of Reality.
The real claim behind faith-based salvation is that you are saved only by giving up reality.
Then there’s this “other world” which is like a parallel universe with a completely different set of rules. This world is the world where God lives. It is the spiritual world that one can experience only through faith that allows the mind to communicate with this other world. In this other world there is no science. It is the world of miracles where anything and everything is possible. It is the world of “the spirit” that created this physical world as some sort of “test” to see if your soul will find it’s way back to the “other world”. Those who hear the calling will be rewarding with eternal life in paradise and all others will be tortured forever in Hell.
What this implies is that there is a reality outside of reality which is in itself a contradiction in terms. It implies that, in this alternate reality, if I can call it such, concepts like proof and facts don’t exist. It is outside of science which is of “this world”. In fact, how can you even call such a parallel world “real” when such a term is outside the framework of this “other world”?
The spiritual world is completely different from one person to the next. It has properties that are more consistent with imagination than reality.
So - here’s the problem. Billions of people believe in this other world. If their beliefs about this other world were consistent, that is, if everyone who believed in the other world all believed the same thing, then that would be interesting. But the reality is that there is nothing at all consistent about people’s experience of the “other world”. As it turns out, everyone’s other world is completely different than everyone else’s other world. So there isn’t “another world”, there are billions of other worlds. There are as many other world’s as one can imagine. Which raises the question, is there another world, or is it just our own individual imaginations?
I believe that it is irresponsible to invent an imaginary world with an imaginary set of rules and try to pass it off as something that is more important than reality itself. I think that it is a sin to call reality evil and say that reality is somehow “Satan’s World” and that the world of imagination is somehow superior to real reality as it really is.
I find it interesting that believers who claim to support moral certainty and criticize non-believers on the basis of “personal reality”, are in fact doing the same thing themselves. Believers seem to believe that they can do whatever their imagination makes them think, that God is telling them to do and that makes it right. I suppose it would be OK if there really was a God who was really telling them what to do. But, if there was a real God telling people what to do, then the message from this single source would be consistent. We know that the God of the Christians and the God of the Muslims is not the same God. What is really happening here is that people are expressing their self-centered personal realities and trying to justify it by claiming that an outside divine power is speaking through them when the reality is - they are at best just fooling themselves. We realists contend that impersonating a deity is dishonest and irresponsible.[/i]
