Faith, Reason, Freedom, and Power

How do demagogues use faith and religion by avoiding reason to control others and gain power?

There is a convenient Achilles heel in Christianity.

Christianity requires followers to suspend reason and take a leap of faith to unconditionally believe in some things that cannot be proven: Specifically, an omnipotent, omniscient supreme being who, being redundant here, sees and knows all. Since he judges, that means that he interferes as well. He roots for us.

“He” is given a male identity and called God.

These truths are according to the rules set up by the men who created the religion and wrote their guidebook — The Holy Bible.

Followers are conditioned through practice, prayers and ceremonies to accept these pillars of faith without question.

So, when a megalomaniac uses these precepts to gain power and secure support from Christian Evangelical leaders as their savior, people who either lack critical thinking skills or are pre-conditioned not to challenge, just willingly follow along.

When ”the savior” uses fiery rhetoric to condemn anyone who refutes him. He uses the bible as his empirical evidence and a prop. He holds it aloft as if handed down from above and attacks all non-followers as despicable. He says that ‘he alone’ can save them. He effectively activates them as the missionaries of his brand.

Sound familiar? Christians are also missionary and evangelical. They must aggressively spread their interpretation of The Word of God across the planet.

Question him and you too will suffer vicious, unyielding personal attacks.

So, the sycophants line up behind him like a flock of sheep in hopes that they will not be slaughtered too.

They think that their God is The God. That Jesus Christ is the only path to salvation. They share these beliefs with conviction and fervor. There is no real freedom of thought or power to question these convictions. Have Great Faith! Hallelujah!

Follow this thinking, to its natural conclusion: Christian Evangelism says that if you are not with us, you are against us. We are good, therefore, you are evil.

Apply this same logic to politics and the Christian conservatives: if you don’t support us and our leader who claims to be our savior, you must be the enemy.

Since they are with and for good and God, non-followers must be, can only be, bad and the evil.

Voila! How demagogues use religion to control behavior and gain power…

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So, what is wrong with faith? It sounds like a good thing.

First, we must define faith.

Faith according to the dictionary is a noun. Faith must be a noun before it can be a verb.

For, you cannot do or practice faith until you know what it is and what it means.

However, no matter the meaning, how people practice their faith is based on what it means to them individually.

Here is the definition according to webster’s dictionary.

faith
noun

A strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

My definition: Faith is the suspension of reason to believe in something regardless of contrary evidence.

The concept of religious faith and people with faith is a double, false positive:

First, they often wear their faith as a badge of honor which deserves praise by those who have less faith.

Second, conversely and ironically, they also think that more faith they have, the more they think they should be admired for it.

‘I have great faith,” people say with pride.

Having more of something doesn’t make it better than having less. This is known as the “more is better” fallacy. One more beer after pounding 10 is never better.

Bragging about one’s faith is no more than a self-congratulatory celebration of ignorance.

“Look at me! I have great faith!”

This is one of the fundamental problems with Christianity: It is aggressively missionary and evangelical while simultaneously and ironically espousing humility and empathy.

How can Christians humbly claim that their interpretation of their God through their religion is more correct than any other interpretation of God?

Devout Christians universally believe that “more, ‘greater’ faith is better than less or no faith. They believe that people without faith are missing something in their lives.”

How do they have the temerity to try to persuade others to change and follow their beliefs as missionary evangelists do, if not insisting that their beliefs are better, more truthful and ultimately beneficial (only one True God and one path to heaven) to those believers than the people they are trying to convince?

And they further espouse that their faith is better, more honest and truthful than results from the use of reason to find truth?

Where is humility in that?

What is reason? How is it different from faith? Why is it important?

reason
noun
the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgements logically.

There is no faith in reasoning and no reasoning in faith.

They are separate and distinct from one another.

There is no faith in reasoning and no reasoning in faith.

They are separate and distinct from one another.

Repeat it again. Slowly. Don’t move on until you are sure that you got it.

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Reason wants factual support. Faith doesn’t care.

Faith gives away power.

Reason brings freedom to self.

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Do you prefer faith instead of reason when searching for truth to explain things that cannot be proven?

Do you suspend reason to enable faith regardless of evidence?

Why?

Possibly because you know that your brain can deceive you? Optical illusions prove that people can see the exact same thing differently. So, reason is also fallible if not checked with many sources. Faith cannot be checked with fact. Faith doesn’t care about facts.

Do you trust what was written by men in a book that has not been updated in thousands of years, versus your own brain?

What do you do when contrary factual evidence, like biblical hypocrisy and inaccuracy, refutes what your faith requires you to believe?

Do you double down on having “great faith” despite evidence that is contrary to what your faith teaches?

If so, how is faith great?

And, by extension, how is having ‘great faith’ a ‘good’ thing?

All faith does is give you a false sense of confidence about things that you cannot prove.

However, as human beings, we are wired to want and need that mental pacifier of confidence in a foundational story even if it cannot be proven. It gives us the satisfaction of closure on the subject.

We like to complete things so we can move on to the next thing:

Do you tie half a shoe?
Do you brush only a few teeth?
Do you take half of a poop or pee?

No. Of course not. The completion of little things in life is rewarding and pacifying. It puts things in order for us. We seek order in things.

Imagine how much better it feels to be able to definitively answer weighty, significant existential questions, like who, what and where is God? What role does ‘he’ play in our existence here on earth and after we die?

Simple, definitive stories help pacify us.

Religious stories offer simple answers to those complicated, unanswerable existential questions.

The Holy Bible is the unimpeachable source of those stories as ‘truth’ for Christians. It pacifies them. It gives them certainty.

So, Christians in western civilizations rely on the Bible for answers to their existential questions. Instead of critically considering the sources, they just take The Bible as The Truth.

Concurrently, they distract themselves with the busyness of daily living, the acquisition of material possessions, entertainment, and consumption for gratification instead of trying to understand conflicting stories.

They rely on faith instead of using reason.

But where can we find the truth?

From using reason formulated by a brain that is easily fooled?

Or from faith in things that cannot be proven?

Everything is subjective.
We all have our own truth, our own faith, and our own use of reason.

What is missing from most of our lives is the active pursuit of finding the truth by using reason. Instead, we lazily rely on faith in something told to us by others about the meaning of our existence and answers to our existential questions

We can have faith in unprovable assertions that were in a book written thousands of years ago by men who had an agenda to control others and maintain power, or we can use reason by our own limited and fallible brains.

I suggest that we should use our brains to our best ability, draw from many resources, update with new information, commit to exploring more and always being open to new information.

As you can see, I have no definitive answers, just a few suggestions about an approach to these issues.

I have faith in a God I can not prove but that God, my God is not outside of me. Proof of that to others is unnecessary. That God, my God, does not judge me. That God, my God, just loves me. My God loves you too and is inside of you too if you want to share the same God. My God can be our God.

Your faith is very personal, so I am not one to tell you how you have and use your faith, but I do have one request, use reason too.

Reason is not infallible, but it is separate from faith and helps give you freedom and power to find truth.

When your faith allows for reason, you will have the power and freedom to get closer to truth…and God…:)