The other day in the comment thread for “Petitionary prayer and the final hours of a Skoal hockey puck” AcesLucky made the kind of comment that really irks me. It was like hearing a Russian make a snide comment about the cold winters in Canada. Here is the offending comment:
“It’s not meant to be true, it’s meant to be faith.”
Here was yet another attempt to suggest that “religious” people (whatever that means) exercise “faith” while “secular” people who love “science” follow “reason”.
I’ve been dealing with such indoctrinational oppositions for awhile. See for instance my article “Is faith the product of an irrational mind?”
I was a bit irritated when yet again I heard AcesLucky peddling this pablum.
So I asked AcesLucky to defend this statement. In short, I requested a plausible definition of faith as an irrational (or otherwise subpar) epistemic state which is exercised by people who are “religious” but not by those who reject “religion”.
No such defense was provided or even attempted.
So now I’ll extend the challenge wider. If there is an atheist that would like to attempt a definition of faith as an irrational or otherwise epistemically subpar epistemic state which is exercised by religious people but not by atheists and other non-religious people, I will read your proposal with great interest. Here’s your chance to be famous.
On the other hand, if no such defense can be provided then please, please, stop chanting those mindless mantras of secularist indoctrination which says that only a subsection of the population exercises “faith” while others exercise “reason”.
