Why faith is lunatic

published Feb 20, 2008, last modified Jun 26, 2013

I'm in the mood for some concept revision. This time, I will prove that faith is lunatic.

The very essence of faith is unsubstantiated belief.

A dogma is a particular faith-based belief.

Dogmas are incompatible with observed phenomena and laws. This is because of the very definition: if dogmas were supported by evidence, they would cease to be dogmas.

Most contemporary dogmas are not only unsupported by evidence, but also contradictory to it. This, of course, makes those dogmas blatantly false. Dogmas that are only unsubstantiated but not contradictory to evidence aren't necessarily false; but, should they become proven by evidence, they would -- again -- cease to be dogmas.

If you would like to define "lunatic" as "unsupported belief", then all dogma would fall under that definition. If you would like to define "lunatic" as "contradictory to evidence", then only most dogmas would fall under that other definition.

But in the context of this conversation, you can use those definitions mostly interchangeably. Let me explain why.

Let's posit that the definition of "lunatic" is the most lenient: "contradictory to evidence".

In that scenario, not believing in a generic god would not be lunatic, because his non-existence is perfectly compatible with evidence; since we haven't observed anything for or against it, it would be unsupported by, but not contradictory to evidence.

A generic god's non-existence is perfectly compatible with the observed phenomena and laws. On the contrary, if you were to believe in most gods and their accepted dogmas, you would by necessity have to hold thoughts completely contradictory with observed phenomena and laws.

But what would actually be "lunatic" is actually believing in all the related things that believing in contemporary gods necessitates. Especially if you're a literalist advocate. Contemporary faith spews things that are not only completely unsupported by evidence, but blatantly against reality.

Ergo, faith is "lunatic".