Faith is not a lost or found

The National Post has recently been asking its readers to send in personal stories of the finding or losing of one's faith. I sent in my story/view but I doubt it will be printed, for 2 reasons, it's not so much a story, and they just printed an atheist's story in today's paper. Therefore, I'll post it here. Who needs their letter printed in a national paper when it can be posted on a blog for the whole world to read?

Have I recently 'lost' or 'found' my faith? I would say neither, I have carefully taken my faith and discarded it, since I no longer need nor desire it. Why is it assumed that faith is a positive thing? Usually when a term is described as 'lost' and 'found' it is assumed to be something of value, such as a wedding ring, or one's ability to see. I would argue that faith is not always positive. It is faith alone that can give a suicide bomber strength to give his or her life in the murder of fellow humans. It is faith that fuels conflict in regions such as Ireland, the Middle East, and elsewhere. It is faith that fuels hatred of homosexuals. It was faith that justified slavery for thousands of years. Richard Dawkins has described faith as "a process of non-thinking." I am very much in favour of reason and rationality. I now have the view that one should only believe something for which there is real physical evidence.

This letter is not exactly what your paper asked for. You asked for a specific event that caused me to either find or lose faith. I guess you could say that I lost 'faith' when I discovered reason 4 months ago.

Sure, major events in one's life might cause someone to have a change of faith, but for me, all it took was honest internal reflection and some research. Some people might see the existence of a supernatural being, such as God, as a result of a traumatic event, such as a motorcycle crash. I see the results of a motorcycle crash differently. If the person in the crash survives, it is thanks to the helmet they were wearing, or a last second maneuver. Keep in mind that only survivors of a crash can contemplate faith due to a positive result, the victim cannot come to the conclusion that there is no God due to the negative result.

After a traumatic event, people can be very emotional and confused. Turning to faith can be very tempting since it provides answers. Those answers to me are hollow. If you try to question them, they fall apart. That's why in our society we give faith and religion special protection. It is taboo to question another person's religion, but it is okay to question their political beliefs. I prefer science to provide me with answers. Scientific claims cannot afford to be hollow, they are constantly under attack, and if not properly defended with evidence, they are discarded. Science can be wrong, but errors in scientific understanding are eventually discovered and corrected. This does not happen with faith, since it is not needed nor desired. As an example, if one has faith that the Earth is only 6000 years old, then you will not explore concepts like evolution or cosmology.

I do not have faith in the Jewish God I was raised to believe in, just as you do not have faith in Zeus or Thor. If there is a God, I won't believe in him merely because my parents do, the burden of proof is on him. There are so many alternative belief systems available, and the only viable filter that I have found so far is science.

Please allow me to finish with another quote from Professor Dawkins: "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."