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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Taking It On Faith

By The Daily Dish
Dec 12 2010, 12:39 PM ET

Alex Knepper detests faith and argues that "can’t have rational morality unless we get rid of God":

 [B]elief in God rests on a foundation of faith. That is: God’s existence cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, based on the merits of the evidence. We cannot construct a rational framework for theistic philosophy. It ultimately rests on, as the Catholics love to remind us, ‘revelation’: something or other with a supernatural root that one takes to be true because of ‘personal experience’ or a ‘divine spark’ within that lets the believer know what’s up.

But anyone accepting faith as a legitimate method of reasoning has rendered morality impossible. My faith is as good as yours; a Muslim’s faith is as good as a Communist’s is as good as a Baptist’s. If we are no longer required to provide evidence for our beliefs forget proof; we aren’t even dealing with evidence, here then hello Dostoevsky anything is permitted. What, pray tell, can’t you justify with ‘faith’? Theft is appropriate: I believe it be so. Justify myself? Pah I have faith. You can replace ‘theft’ with anything anything at all! and ‘faith’ remains a foolproof escape clause.

 



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