Faith by any other name...
PZ Myers just wrote a post decrying the use of the label “interfaith” to describe the cooperation between the religious and atheists and he refuses to operate under such a label because of the ‘faith’ part of the word.
I’m with him 100%. Faith is a dirty word, it goes against everything that atheism is; it eschews empirical evidence. It is obedience without question. I am not willing to operate under that label even, or especially, when cooperating with the religious for the greater human good.
Dressing up anything with the word ‘faith’ attached to it is a bit like decorating something with Amorphophallus titanum – it may seem more interesting, perhaps prettier but in reality is smells like a decomposing corpse.
Perhaps “inter-ideological cooperation” is a better way to describe it. I would be more comfortable with it myself, if put that way.
Just a thought.
“Faith” has become a sort of politically correct term for “religion” (as in “people of faith” ) in recent years. My impression is that politicians seeking to pander to the clergy or the anti-secular religious laity hope at the same time to make religious creeds such as seem more palatable to secular people, more reconcilable to the values of liberty, equality and unity through republican government that are the pillars of Western civilisation, using the language of honour and trust to misrepresent the fundamentally authoritarian nature of those creeds (particularly when they demand absolute loyalty to a clerical hierarchy). The newspeak in which religion becomes “faith” may also serve to draw attention away from the fact that those beliefs are wholly superstitious in nature and contrary to reason, but this is a secondary effect (particularly in the United States, where anti-intellectualism is already treated by a large segment of the population as a praiseworthy quality in a leader).
I have also noticed an effort on the part of certain anti-secularist politicians (in Europe, where they seem particularly attached to the terms “faith” and “people of faith”) to imply that “faith” transcends mere religion — the old “non-sectarian” fiction — and therefore, there need be no concern that government embrace of “faith” will exclude minority groups, possibly leading to potentially violent internecine conflict. After all, nobody’s civil rights are violated if the state should embrace or promote this allegedly unbiased “faith.” (This is of course a lie; “faith” does indeed, as PZ notes, exclude the fastest-growing minority religious demographic — in many places already a majority: those who reject “faith” in the sense of unquestioning belief.)
We must not permit politicians to conflate the uses of the word “faith.” Religious faith is nothing more or less than the belief without or contrary to evidence that has always been demanded by traditional religion and has always been condemned by sceptics. Acting in good faith — with honesty and sincerity — is, if anything, just the opposite of what these anti-secular politicians have been doing when they talk of the supposed importance of “faith.”
What I find disturbing about the ecumenical “interfaith” activities (which do, indeed, exclude the faith-free) that have become popular among Christian churches of late is that they seem geared toward forming a single international religious entity which would exercise political power at will. This makes the de facto and de jure secularisation of Europe all the more urgent.
I think you’re right. It does seem like people try to use the word “faith” to soften the religious connotation they’d really prefer in the context.
I find the whole “interfaith” thing quite odd to be honest. I can’t point to a single religion that teaches religious tolerance. If the Christian god existed he most certainly wouldn’t be putting up with the tolerance of other deities and it’s sort of difficult to misinterpret how Muslims feel about it.
No, “interfaith” is humanity remaking the superstitions they believe into something more palatable, more modern. They remake what they believe all the time while their evidence and reference material (like the Bible) most certainly do not; they see no problem with this.
That is, perhaps, what I find the most disturbing about religion.