Faith and Evil

Faith is believing something, something which can not be proved to exist. When someone believes some religious doctrine, they are believing something for which there is no evidence. Modern believers point to history, their holy books, heroes and martyrs, arks and shrouds, and any number of bits of so-called physical evidence to “prove” their faith. All they ever end up proving is that people for centuries have done the same thing they are doing. People for centuries have believed, not in existence, but rather, in what they wanted to believe. People of faith for all time have shared this common belief: that their minds—their thoughts, wishes, visions, dreams—are real and that their minds have the power of creation. “If I believe it, it is true. As evidence, I offer the words and deeds of thousands [billions] of others who believed it too. Surely, so many could not be wrong.” They express their faiths in community where they have the physical support of other believers. Universalizing faiths—like Islam and Christianity—encourage the faithful to win converts, increasing their numbers, increasing their certainty that the unreal is real.

From time to time mindless reality demonstrates the fraud modern humans call faith in their gods. Tragically, the innocent are made to suffer.

Eleven-year-old Madeline Neumann, after suffering two months of deteriorating health, paid for her parent’s irrational psycho-epistemology with her life. Madeline died last month of diabetic ketoacidosis while her parents prayed that the demons would leave her body. A single shot of insulin would have saved her life.

Madeline’s mother, Leilani Neumann, said that she and her family believe in the Bible and that healing comes from God. “We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do.” Incredible…a 21st Century American who thinks prayer is more effective than modern medicine in treating the sick.

Do you think the death of her beautiful little girl has caused Leilani to reconsider her thinking on the matter? Maybe even question her faith? Think again. When asked how she and her husband were coping with the loss of their daughter, Leilani replied: "Only our faith in God is giving us strength at this time." Incredible… it was her faith in God that brought this disaster to her doorstep in the first place. A little “faith” in humanity and human science [i.e. reality] and Madeline would be alive today.

I happen to know that when people like Leilani say things like “only our faith in God is giving us strength at this time,” they are actually proud to make the pronouncement. It’s as if voicing it makes them feel closer to God. It is the public pronouncement that gives them “strength.” Knowing others have heard their public surrender to the will of the All Mighty somehow makes them feel favored, more holy.

One relative told police that the girl's mother believed she "died because the devil is trying to stop Leilani from starting her own ministry," according to the Associated Press. The death of her little girl is not about a treatable insulin deficiency and her failure to grasp reality. For Leilani it’s about her imagined battle with the man in the red suit, horned forehead, and pitch fork. Incredible stupidity.

“Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.”—AR, For the New Intellectual