12/3/2024
Faith is not a virtue, skepticism is. Don't believe me? Let me explain.
Can faith give you purpose and offer you comfort? Sure it can. That is faith's allure. But faith can also justify harm and lead to false beliefs. One can believe in leprechauns with faith. One can believe this book or that book with faith. The 9/11 bombers had faith. The Christian Crusaders had faith. Genocides happening today are justified in part by faith. "God's chosen people" is believed by faith. Faith says "I am right and you are wrong" while offering no evidence for a claim. Might makes right.
But Steve, I do good things because of my faith! I bet you do. Thank you for it. But this is the rhetorical sleight of hand you are doing to yourself: you do beneficial things because you are a humanist and you substitute the word faith for your own kindness to humanity.
Need evidence of your own humanist morality? I bet if you believe the Bible or the Quran you probably already ignore or explain away some of the immoral and bizarre commands from your book. Because you are a humanist you self-select the nice stories and ignore the inconvenient ones. Apologists and preachers make a career twisting and reinterpreting the words of their book. It wasn't REAL slavery...they say. That is metaphor! You are taking it out of context!
Many Christians love to proclaim their book as some objective moral standard. This is flatly puffery attempting to give themselves a moral superiority. Morals are subjective and evolve with time and culture. Need evidence for my claim? Think of any thorny moral issue and you can find people who identify as Christians on both sides using their religion as justification. Gay marriage. Abortion. Death penalty. IVF. Immigration. Homelessness. Question the beliefs of the other side and you get "they are not REAL Christians". If Christians can't find the same moral conclusions on some of these big issues then their book is not an objective moral standard. God did not write the same objective moral standard on every heart, it is YOU who project your morality to your faith. This is why Christianity has more flavors than Baskin-Robbins.
With skepticism you question and ask why. Skeptics do not blindly follow. Skeptics seek the truth that comports with the shared reality we live in. Skeptics develop a moral foundation that is grounded in the human experience, that benefits human flourishing. Humanist morality is defined by judgments of well-being, health, fairness and harm reduction, not immutable commands from a book. Humanist morality requires justification and is defended by reason and evidence of outcomes.
You are moral because you are a humanist. No faith or God needed.