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Faith is The Enemy
Irwin doesn't know how to handle serpents The Lord's Way
Speaking in Tongues
Chain of Faith
Muhammad the Plagiarist
Who Cares What Jesus Would Do?
The Leap of Faith
Blinding Faith
What do serpent handling, firewalking, flagellation, bull running and bungee jumping all have in common? They are all activities that require modest courage and not one atom of Godly power to perform.
The world has been systematically conned by religious people into thinking that man cannot act heroically except when filled with belief in some juju spirit. And secondly, that faith is only powerful as an enabler of heroism if it is faith in the real god, apparently passionate belief and trust in a false god would have no effect on the performance of such feats. The magic feather really has to be magic, of the right colour.
Steve Irwin is a fanatic, but he is not filled with the Holy Spirit, he picks up snakes all the time because he knows how to handle them. I have no idea what, if any, religious beliefs he holds but I am quite certain that they are entirely irrelevant to the practice of serpent handling. He regularly picks up highly venomous snakes while talking excitedly, the sort of thing that impresses the impressionable who have a fear of snakes. Many Christians do very similar things as a form of worship. Anybody who is impressed by this is simply gullible. Steve Irwin does not get bitten by snakes as often as you might imagine not because he has faith but because he knows what he is doing and knows the signs to watch for, “knowing” that the snakes will not bite would not be helpful, he does not put his trust in the promise of a god but in his ability to understand snakes.
Walking across a bed of hot coals in bare feet is obviously insane, common sense tells us. But as is often the case common sense is missing out on a lot of the important facts. People with a profound faith in their god can convince themselves that they will not be burnt, and so can rationalists with not the slightest shred of supernatural belief. While I would not attempt to do it myself without some very good reason I am glad that the supernatural attributes of firewalkers have been thoroughly exposed.
Many people have demonstrated their belief in an irrational and impossible sky spirit by setting themselves on fire, hanging themselves, throwing themselves off cliffs, trying to walk on water or commune with lions. In these cases the predictions of common sense are quite accurate, do that and you die, whatever you might believe. Such activities do not spread very well, as demonstrations of the power of faith they lack a certain something. In contrast when common sense is seriously at odds with the real risks involved there is the potential to evolve a new religious practice, or a new extreme sport, and sometimes both.
In the Pacific there is an island called Pentecost. On that island the young men traditionally demonstrated their manhood by land-diving. They jumped off high platforms with vines tied to their ankles. Experience and bravado over the years evolved this into a thrilling but surprisingly safe activity. The jumpers experienced spectacular G forces as they used exactly the right vines to ensure that they were pulled clear at the very last moment before smashing into the ground. The ceremonies were an annual event, at just the right season. When Queen Elizabeth II visited the island the islanders were persuaded to put on a show for her (the spectacle had been filmed a few years before) although it was the wrong season they agreed. The results were fatal. All the tribal experience was worthless, at the wrong season the vines did not behave in the same way, several jumpers smashed into the ground and were severely injured. The moral of the tale is that heroic feats of men do not rely on faith, those men leaping for the Queen had just as much faith that fatal day as they had a few months before when they performed the same feats without injury.
Faith is a parasite of an idea, it latches itself onto any idea that makes it seem good. Everything that happens and is good is taken to be proof of the existence and grace of God or the power of faith. Everything that is bad is the fault of human weakness. Praise be to God, shame on man. That is the constant message of the whole of human history. The atrocities of the Nazis were down to the evils of men and the influence of Satan while every battle won and every freak survivor of an otherwise all destroying calamity is down to God. If a child is pulled out from under the rubble of an earthquake after two weeks God gets praised for the miracle, as if every person trapped alive for two weeks is rescued before they die in agony. What is the record for survival buried alive? I suppose the answer is God alone knows, but doesn't care.
It is time we stopped beating ourselves up so much and stopped giving all the credit for human heroism to a non-existent God. Heroism, machismo, bravado, courage: call it what you will, it is not God-given, it is inherent in the human character. Atheists can handle snakes, walk over burning coals and get up out of trenches and walk slowly toward the enemy machine guns just as much as any religious people can. The power of faith is a myth, and it does not need the belief in a myth to act heroically any more than special behaviour requires the drinking of a particular brand of beer or eating a particular breakfast cereal.
Faith has not moved a single mountain.
Faith has not moved a single mountain. (Disagree? Give me the map references.) Faith has not allowed a single impossible feat to be achieved. Despite what cartoons and Hollywood show us on a regular basis belief is not all that is required. If you step off a cliff gravity operates immediately, it does not wait for the object to believe that it will fall. If your team is third rate it will never win the championship, no matter what the members of the team think. No matter how much you love somebody they will not fall in love with you simply by an act of your will.
Self-belief will get you anywhere, you can do it if you believe in yourself enough. That is one of the biggest lies ever told, and it is so obviously impossible to prove wrong. If you set out to be a world famous rock star and end up stacking shelves in the supermarket it is obvious that you didn't really believe enough. The successful people in this world have luck, talent and self belief, but they do not believe that luck is important. Would you allow people to believe your phenomenal success was down to anything other than your innate worth? More importantly would you allow people to believe that your phenomenal wealth was due to anything other than your phenomenal personal qualities? Of course not. And if you want to con the entire world into believing your convenient lie who is the best person to start with? Yourself, naturally. It is not just in business: thieves, kings and lottery winners think they deserve their rewards too, for exactly the same reason, the myth of the deserving self. Not one single class of privileged people in any society in any historical era has believed themselves unworthy of their riches. I have no doubt that if tapeworms made movies they would be the heroes.
Belief is not an antidote to physics.
Belief is not an antidote to physics. The Belsen breatharians are a testament to that. No matter how much faith you have if you do not get enough to eat you will die.
Belief does nothing in and of itself. If a person acts like a person with belief they will achieve the same results. There are many “alternative” circus performers who perform acts of great apparent risk and pain, which if performed by monks or fakirs would convince people of the power of their beliefs. These circus tricks are just tricks, some are illusions and many are simply nowhere near as painful as the observer imagines.