Resolution: Faith should not be considered a virtue.

Hello! You are well phrased and concise. It's very nice to read your argument and I think this will be fun! First point of disagreement may be, more accurately, a point of clarity. "Faith is not the belief in God so much as it is the belief in the values which that "God" has (i)ngrained into our society." Belief that God has engrained beliefs into our society either presupposes a belief in God, or presupposes the presupposition by many that God or gods exists. Furthermore, I am not asserting that religious faith alone is not in itself a virtue, rather I assert that Faith is not virtuous because one can use it to justify anything. Religious faith merely tends to be a particularly strong branch of faith. If we would like to use Belief in God as an example, then let me make an example of an argument from faith as charitably as I can(Feel free to make another one yourself if you feel that you can demonstrate this well): 1. I believe that Value X is justified because God has ingrained this value in society. 2. God, If God exists, Justifies X by Gods nature, goodness, will etc. 3. (from 1&2) If God exists then X is justified. 4. I have Faith God exists 5. Therefore I believe Value X is justified Put any value in for X and we see that this argument justifies it. Let us look at a non religious example: 1. I believe that Value X is justified because the good king says so. 2. By faith, The Good king is as such, Good. 3. I believe that the king's word justifies Value X Clearly this requires further examination. We must establish that the King is good, real, competent and much more before we can use His word to justify values. Indeed what if value X is Racial superiority or a tradition of child sacrifice? In any case, Faith has cut short the chain of reason long before one ought to be justified in believing a moral proposition. Therefore faith is not conducive to forming a well reasoned moral picture and is not a virtue. Secondly, In response to the North Korean straw man. If one goes looking for the Highest rates of suicide, and points out that the second highest rate is in a secular country, then one ought note that in your same list, One finds Guyana, a vastly more religious state (interestingly largely a Hindu population despite being located on the east coast of South America) To be number one. So do not point to a one off correlation in an inconstant list to imply causality. Also, Isn't it more likely that living in a totalitarian society, where your leader is himself considered a God of sorts, where the words civil rights are meaningless, would cause greater anguish than secularism? Here is a list of the happiest countries by one scale. Notice the source is a mainstream publication. http://www.forbes.com... Top 2 countries on this list are Norway and Denmark, two of the most Atheistic societies. This puts a nail in the coffin for any point resting on the assertion that Religious faith is REQUIRED to yield a thriving society. The question that remains is, does Faith help in creating a Moral society? I believe I have thus far shown that faith does not. In response to the assertion that societies tend to lend their trust to faithful leaders. The example given was as follows: "Israel will always have a Jewish Prime Minister while the Saudi King shall always be a sunni muslim. Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, is himself a self proclaimed believer in the Russian Orthodox Church." I assume that we are not in disagreement when I say that Vladimir Putin and Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud or his late brother Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, are not prime examples of worldly or just rulers. I think rather that the assertion is that these countries will always have a religiously faithful ruler. While i agree that this is true, I cannot agree that this OUGHT to be the case. Indeed the fact that these rulers make the faith based claim that God is one their side, makes their actions (like the state funding of terrorism) LOOK justified, to people who make the same faith based claims. In the end, the widespread nature of religious faith no more lends to it's virtue than does the widespread nature of misogyny lend to its virtue.