Last week a bomb went off in the marketplace of Mascara in Algeria, killing over 40 people. It was another incident in the tragic war being waged by religious fundamentalists against a society which they see as too secular and tolerant. It is curious that responsible enquiry, of the kind conducted by scientists and expected in courts of law, is careful in drawing its conclusions, and open-minded about the possibility of contrary future evidence, whereas matters of faith are tenaciously regarded as inviolable, irrefutable, and unrevisable. The careful and open-minded procedures of science have given us electric light, antibiotics, central heating, television and computers. Religious belief, meanwhile, whatever it might do in comforting the fearful in the dark, has always and everywhere brought war, intolerance, and persecution with it, and has distorted human nature into false and artificial shapes.
Faith is a negation of reason.
Reason is the faculty of proportioning judgment to evidence, after first weighing the evidence. Faith is belief even in the face of contrary evidence. Soren Kierkergaard defined faith as the leap taken despite everything, despite the very absurdity of what one is asked to believe. When people can doggedly choose to believe that black is white, and can, in their utter certainty, go so far as to shoot you because you do not agree, there is little room for debate. One theory describes knowledge as a relationship between a state of mind and a fact.