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The Power of Faith
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The Great Teleport Debate
Blinding Faith is a weapon that allows people to believe something without evidence, against the evidence and with utter conviction in both the truth of the thing believed in and the rightness of the faith. Faith allows people to willingly do evil.
Ah no... But... Say the religious. That is blind faith. Obviously blind faith is a bad thing, that is what damned Christians/Muslims/Heathen use and yes that is evil and wrong, but faith in the love of God/Allah or whatever is totally different. That faith is a good faith, wholesome and wholly justified.
How can you recognize blind faith in others? I think it comes down to asking whether they agree with you or not. If they don't agree with you then obviously their faith is blind, how could it possibly be a good faith if it is leading them astray? Good faith, faith in the love of God would not lead them astray. Except of course when it does, in which case it proves itself to be blind or the work of the devil.
When Catholics burned Protestants and then Protestants burned Catholics we had an object lesson in the difference between True Faith and Blind Faith. One lot had True Faith, the other lot had blind faith. Both burned, neither repented. The crowds watched and jeered (maybe even many of the same people in the crowd) and those lighting the fires went away feeling they had done the work of the Lord. The same Lord. When put to the test, a double blind test, blind faith and True Faith both wash away guilt whiter than white. |
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It makes no difference whether people burn other people for being Catholics or Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, homosexuals, atheists, communists, revisionists, Trotskyites, enemies of the people, enemies of the state, enemies of the race, enemies of the party or enemies of God. It is faith that fuels the fires. All faith is blind. Without blindness faith isn't faith. It is the will to ignore contrary evidence and the belief that holding such a belief is in itself an act worthy of acclaim that changes a mere belief into a faith, those two aspects are themselves blinding.
A belief in the love of God requires either an extremely sheltered upbringing, a belief in a very busy and powerful devil or blind faith. Children (both with faith and without faith in God) are raped, murdered, trapped in burning buildings, tortured, abandoned, accused of witchcraft, sold into slavery and left to starve to death every day. Is this evidence of the love of God? No. Obviously not. Butterflies, snowflakes, kittens and sunsets are evidence of the love of God. Nasty things are evidence of the Evil of Man. Heads God Wins. Tails Man Loses. That is how blind faith works. As God is good evidence that God is good is good evidence, anything that suggests the opposite conclusion can't be evidence and only a fool would think it could be.
Ask a believer in the concept of good faith and blind faith whether it is possible to have good faith in something that is wrong, and to be empowered by this faith. Watch them squirm. Naturally a person can have faith in anything they allow themselves to have faith in. Once they have decided or been persuaded that a particular belief is legitimate and may be held as a matter of faith that is it: that belief is impregnable. The only way to protect people from the dangers of faith, the most dangerous thought any sentient being can ever have, is for children to be inoculated against it in childhood. But of course this is the exact opposite of what actually goes on. Children are taught to respect faith, and people of other faiths and to grant faith the status of something extremely special and valuable.