THE DANGER OF FAITH IN GENERAL AND RELIGIOUS FAITH IN PARTICULAR

The Bible advocates faith yes but not just faith.  It must have content and doctrines that come from God.  The Bible condemns pagan faith in false gods.

On religious peoples’ own admission, faith is dangerous and wavering. It is hard to keep it up. Doubt or disbelief are more or less inevitable. Even the very saints themselves battled against doubt and uncertainty. The Church does not care if you doubt as long as it is not wilful and as long as you fight it like a cancer. Such a fight would betray that a person’s supreme concern is to obey their religion and not to do what is right or suspected to be right. That will make them harmful to others. It is consciously cruel for a doubting priest to tell a married woman to kill herself by avoiding birth-control.
 
Religion expects the doubters to remain devoted to it which is evil for it is maliciously to support what you do not trust. It puts dangerous attitudes in you.
 
The Church tirelessly warns that the faith can be lost or weakened frightfully easily. When that faith leads to death and suffering even if it does not command it, the believer will be corrupted. They are told by their religion to become fanatical at least in attitude.
 
Religion declares that any resultant evil deeds happen in spite of the faith and not because of it. But when the faith weakens so does belief in the moral code it has. The weakening is as inevitable so religion cannot clear itself so easily. If a person’s faith is weak or gone and he believes that murder is bad for God says so then in that state his belief that stops him from killing will go or at least be too feeble to deter him from murder. Obviously, his religion is as bad as he is if he kills or wants to kill. Religion expects its victims to take faith seriously with regard to intellectual assent and often says that as long as you die repentant you will be okay no matter what kind of life you have led. When the faith is unprovable anyway religion is as good as asking for people not to take it seriously by living a good life for why should anybody be enslaved to guesses or opinions?
 
Anything religion condemns is condemned because God says so. If reason were the guide then they would not have so many silly rules. If reason and God’s word agree the doctrine is not believed because reason says it but because God does.
 
The history of the Catholic Church, the fact that it was part of my ancestors’ life, and the fact that it gave me a sense of power and special feelings meant that I was often willing to help and promote it despite doubts and disbelief. The result was a cold and devious person who hated anybody who did not believe in the Church.
 
The mother of cruelty is fear. Faith incites fear for it demands rigorous self-sacrifice which is fearful and there will be the fear of sin or of losing the faith or divine retribution or worse, everlasting punishment. Fear is the driving force behind religion and it is the reason religion tends to produce cruelty and delight in leading others astray from reason and happiness where the cruelty is disguised with encouraging smiles and “help” and worship and “good” example.
 
There is enough to make us cruel without religion and it is not needed for all you need to be good and happy is to reduce your needful desires to a minimum and detach yourself from everything outside yourself. Be easygoing. Religion is an unnecessary evil and is to blame for every single evil carried out in its name whether it sanctioned it or not for giving people something extra to hate each other over is sanctioning evil.

RELIGION EXALTS BELIEF OVER PERSONS

The pope and most religions boast that they value the person more than anything else apart from God. That is not true.
 
Faith is more important than persons to them. To the Christian or the Muslim, the person must be sacrificed on the altar of faith if need be – that is, by their definition if need be. You cannot believe in God and not put belief first.
 
Jesus told to love God with all our strength and power (Matthew 22). He told us to believe in God. He wants us to love others and ourselves for God’s sake only. So, we are to love God alone in reality and must use others to please God. Others are put out of the heart just for a belief. Belief counts not just more than persons here. It is the only thing that counts. Those who despise Jesus’ dogmatic image should realise that it is his true image. When God alone is the focus of morality it follows that the law has no connection with morality if it leaves God out so Church and state should be amalgamated so that the law can have real moral authority.
 
When Paul said that there was faith and hope and charity that the greatest of these was charity he only meant that you can’t have hope and faith without charity. Charity causes a person to honour God by believing what God has said. This is not true for you can trust in God and love him without believing in him.
 
If a believer and non-believer are about to be shot and you can only save one then who do you save?
 
The answer has to be the former because he or she is the most likely to be an advantage to God. We would say that you should save the kindest person for if anybody does not believe in Atheism that is our doing and we can convert the person who rejects our philosophy.
 
Inform the believers that when they are surer that they exist than that God exists they should not exaggerate the value of faith. If they persist in their piety then they show themselves up. Catholics priests will know from reading Descartes – who said that the one thing you can be sure of is that you exist - in the seminaries that it is wrong to give up their idols of faith.
 
When you see a contradiction in religion they tell you that there is no contradiction for it is a mystery how the two opposing teachings can be harmonised. This means that no matter how wrong a religion is then you cannot see it. Faith is exalted over reality and your mind and therefore your whole self. Copout answers are put before all things.
 
Timidity is caused by the fear of what others think and do. The person who hides their Christian faith is more worried about themselves than about God. And they cannot worry about protecting others because these have the same problem and should be told to get braver instead of being encouraged to be weak. It would be different if certain death would result but if they can hide or run they should declare their faith. It is the approval of others that counts the most and not their liking you. They don’t like not liking you. They may abuse you but inside they admire you for your courage. The Church says that it is always a mortal sin to keep silence when the faith is being condemned (Apologia pro Vita Sua, Appendix, Part 8).
 
If we are to love God alone then for us to hide our belief in God to please others conflicts with this. Would God want you to love him by hiding him?
 
When God is all-powerful and in control, it could be his will that his people declare the faith no matter what evil threatens for he is in charge and decrees that faith hope and charity, the three “virtues” of religion, alone matter.
 
What you believe influences what you do so should faith come first for you cannot be good without it? Sometimes. And never if it is the blind faith of religion. Faith is made for humanity and not humanity for faith.
 
If faith is supreme then it is easy to perceive how religion can tend towards the suppression of human rights.

BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible

BOOKS CONSULTED

A Shattered Visage The Real Face of Atheism, Ravi Zacharias, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Tenneessee, 1990
A Woman Rides the Beast, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1994
All Roads Lead to Rome, Michael de Semlyen, Dorchester House Publications, Bucks, 1993 (page 120 recounts Cardinal Konig of Vienna’s testimony that the Vatican helped Nazi war criminals to escape)
Blind Alley Beliefs, David Cook, Pickering & Inglis, Glasgow, 1979
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
Christianity, David Albert Jones, OP, Family Publications, Oxford, 1999
Crisis of Moral Authority, Don Cupitt, SCM Press, London, 1985
Documents of the Christian Church, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979
Ecumenical Jihad, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
European Union and Roman Catholic Influence In Britain, David N Samuel, The Harrison Trust, Kent, 1995
‘God, That’s not fair!’ Dick Dowsett, OMF Books, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Belmont, The Vine, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 3TZ] Kent, 1982
Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995
Human Rights, Michael Bertram Crowe Veritas, Dublin, 1978
In God’s Name, David Yallop, Corgi, London, 1987
Is the Roman Catholic Church a Secret Society? John V Simcox, Warren Sandell and Raymond Winch Watts & Co London, 1946
Is There Salvation Outside The Catholic Church? Fr J Bainvel SJ, TAN, Illinois, 1979
Jesus the Only Saviour, Tony and Patricia Higton, Monarch Tunbridge Wells, Kent, 1993
New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Radio Replies, Vol 1, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1938
Radio Replies, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota 1940
Radio Replies, Vol 3, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota 1942
Religious Freedom, A Fundamental Right, Michael Swhwartz, Liguori Publications, Missouri, 1987
Roman Catholicism, Loraine Boettner, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, 1987
Rome – Our Enemy, Clifford Smyth, Puritan Printing, Belfast, 1975
Spy in the Vatican 1941-45, Branko Bokun, Tom Stacey Books, London, 1973
The Church of Rome, Wilson Ewin, Bible Baptist Church, Nashua NH USA
The Dark Side, How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth, Valerie Tarico, Ph.D, Dea Press, Seattle, 2006
The Last Temptation of Christ, Its Deception and What you Should Do About it, Erwin T Lutzer, Moody Press, Chicago, 1988  
The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, Watchtower, New York, 1968
The Unequal Yoke, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1946
The Upside-Down Kingdom, Donald B Kraybill Marshalls, Hants, 1978
Unholy Sacrifices of the New Age, Paul de Parrie and Mary Pride, Crossway Books, Westchester, Illinois 1988
Vicars of Christ, Peter de Rosa, Corgi Books, London, 1993
Walking with Unbelievers, Michael Paul Gallagher SJ, Veritas Dublin 1985
What About Those Who Have Never Heard? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986
Whatever Happened to Heaven? Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Publishers, Oregon, 1988