Faith (Superstition)

What most people mean by the word faith is nothing more than superstition.

Superstition is any belief (or supposed knowledge) based on anything other than reason based on evidence. For example, any belief based on feeling, whim, consensus (that is, what most people believe or think), tradition, authority, or, any so-called, “supernatural experience,” which in any way contradicts reason, is superstition.

Superstition is always the result of some variety of anti-intellectualism, implicitly or explicitly. It always implies the mind and reason are inadequate for discovering truth or some truth. The general term for all varieties of the anti-intellectual means to truth is mysticism. The great question that is never answered by any advocate of mysticism is exactly what human faculty (since not the mind) by what process (since not reason) is the acquisition of this non-intellecutally acquired knowledge accomplished? The similarity of the word mysticism to mystery is no coincidence. How mystic knowledge is acquired is a mystery. It is acquired through some mysterious process of some even more mysterious unknown faculty.

And after this mystic knowledge is acquired, how does one distinguish it from mere hallucination or delusion? How does one determine that a notion or idea with no identifiable origin is, in fact, truth, and not merely a mistake or an illusion?

In most cases, superstition has perfectly understandable origins. Most superstitious beliefs are held on the basis of tradition (we’ve always believed that) the views of one’s peers or society in general (everyone believes or knows that) or the views one is taught by their family, school, church, political and social leaders (our authorities teach that). In light of the fact that knowledge of the truth is so important (a matter of life and death) and that the only means to knowledge is the rigorous application of one’s best ability to reason correctly, why is there such a rush to embrace beliefs or teachings of others and such reluctance to use one’s own mind to reason and understand the truth?

The basic reason is that reality is ruthless and unforgiving. Every individual is responsible for their every choice and action. Most people are so certain of their own inadequacy to deal with the real world by their own ability and efforts, they will grasp anything that seems to relieve them of complete responsibility for their own life. They are so sure they are incapable of comprehending the world adequately they will accept the word of anyone who has the slightest plausibility for understanding it for them and providing them with some simple guidelines for dealing with life and the world.

Most people are so sure they are incapable to achieving in this world what is required to make them happy by their own efforts, they will embrace anyone who promises to provide what they need and want if they just do what those, “leaders,“or “authorities,” tell them to do. Because, even the weakest mind and poorest reason cannot escape the conclusion that one cannot morally evade the responsibility for one’s own choices and actions, they will embrace any teaching or view by any teacher or leader that convinces them, even though they have abdicated on every essential responsibility of life, they are still good and that their life does have meaning and that they are right to enjoy what they could never earn or produce themselves.

Superstition is not the result of ignorance, it is the producer of it. Superstition is the psychological hiding place of immorality and the means by which the immoral rationalize any moral perversion, from simple theft (i.e. accepting welfare) to the most heinous crimes (e.g. terrorism and genocide).

There is a difference between faith and superstition. What you believe is faith, what other’s believe is superstition.

It is a very strange thing that most people are able to discern the absurdity of other’s credulity, yet hold as inviolable truth, their own equally ridiculous, or worse, ideas. This is true, because most people’s beliefs are not derived by any rational process, but by an eclectic process, picking up ideas, like scavengers, from any available source, parents, peers, teachers, the media, and favorite personalities. The only “critical” part of the process is determining how popular an idea is, and how it makes the believer feel. Whether or not an idea is actually and rationally true is, if at all, the last consideration.

There are those who scoff at the school-boy, calling him frivolous and shallow. Yet it was the school-boy who said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” —Mark Twain

Of course Samuel Clemens was a writer of fiction. Here, everything is fiction, even his name. It is all fiction except the fictional quoted sentence, which happens to be absolutely true.

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. —Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell has done almost irreparable harm to the field of philosophy, but was nevertheless a brilliant thinker, and excellent writer. Even when wrong, his philosophical writing is both interesting and capable of being understood; this is untrue of most philosophers. (Exceptions include Locke, a good philosopher, Hume, a bad philosopher, and Rand, the last good philosopher.)

Even bad philosophers say some good things, and this typically British understatement is one of Russell’s best, and states exactly what is wrong with all teaching that is based on the popular meaning of “faith.”

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. —H. L. Mencken

It is true, most people not only believe what is not true, but vehemently, sometimes even violently, defend their absurd views. We know that most people are wrong in what they believe on most fundamental issues (see Democracy and the notes.) That wrong beliefs are intentional is difficult to believe, but that is because it is true.

Loathing of the truth is almost universal and this pithy statement of Mencken almost perfectly expresses the reason human history seems so absurd.

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, “I bet that my Redeemer liveth.” —Samuel Butler

When the beliefs of those whose beliefs are based on nothing but faith happen to be true, it is entirely accidental. The whole principle of the popular definition of faith is that there is no basis for believing what one believes to be true, because the moment there is a reason for believing it, it ceases to be faith. Faith, then, is always a kind of gamble, that what one believes is really faith (some mystically induced knowledge with no external identifiable origin) rather than a mere psychological illusion caused by a blow to the head or some chemical imbalance in the brain.