Faith Is Evil

When a person places faith before reason, that person is setting aside their ability to think logically and replacing it with an unproven belief.
That's a personal choice and while I find it sad and don't agree with it, I don't have the right to tell you what to believe.

The problem arises when your faith tells you that you must teach in public schools that your faith is the only truth, that the country must be run according to your faith, and that you may deny basic human rights to those who do not share your faith.

When my son was in Kindergarten, he was taught a song.
"We thank you for the food we eat,
We thank you for the world so sweet,
We thank you for the birds that sing,
We thank you for everything."
It is the child's mealtime blessing/prayer with the word 'God' removed.
The next morning, as the parents and kids waited for the classroom door to open, I asked the parents if any of them had a problem with the song's religious nature.
One of the mothers said, "The song didn't say anything about God!"
The way she said, "God," was a warning. I could hear the reverent tone in that one word.
"Then who are the kids thanking?"
That was the end of the discussion. She blew a gasket and started shouting about the persecution of Christians and how as soon as God was mentioned, someone had to start trying to kill Christianity.
I just stared in shock. Here's this woman screaming at me and I just couldn't bring myself to go back at her in front of fifteen or so kindergarten kids, some of whom were now scared and hiding behind their parents.
All I could do was shake my head in a sort of resigned acceptance of her bullying.
None of the other parents spoke up.

In 1985, I attended a year of college and studied Fine Art.
I remember a discussion about religion that I had with a girl that must have lasted three or four hours. She was a quiet girl, plain, humble, studious, smart, and very Christian. She prayed every day in private and I got the impression she would be a fierce friend. I liked her company and though we discussed many topics in our eight months of schooling, this one stuck with me all these years.
It was a pleasant and polite discussion. One of us would make a point and the other would counter it and when all was said and done and I had argued her into a corner, she fell back on, "I suppose you just have to have faith that God exists."
I used to pat myself on the back over that concession but now as I look back, I see that nothing had changed. In spite of her inability to counter all my arguments about the false nature of her religion, she would believe because she wanted to believe.
There is no logic or reason that can shake faith.
The necessary companion of belief in a god is a disbelief in evidence.
In the end, she was willing to cast all evidence aside if it got in the way of her faith.

Throughout the years I have had similar discussions with other people but that particular discussion opened my eyes to the fact that for some religious people, faith comes before friends, family, and society.
Their unfounded belief, their "relationship with God," is more important to them than anything else.
But faith does not simply come before reason. To have such strong faith, reason must be entirely cast aside as an enemy of faith.
I find this a sad waste of a mind.

We now see lots of people who are uneducated in even basic science making decisions that affect the climate of the world. They promote the cutting of funds for NASA and for science in general because it conflicts with their faith.

Faith promotes ignorance and shouts itself as the only truth. It demands that all humanity dumb itself down in order to accept the ignorance of faith.
No!
We must never succumb to this ridiculous notion that faith is a virtue above all others.
It isn't.
Faith is a rejection of reason and must be called out for what it is. It is not a virtue. Faith is an enemy of truth and the greatest lie ever told.
Faith is evil.