Faith is the problem
Reader comment on item: Heretic

Submitted by Edward Cline, Jul 1, 2015 05:05

I wrote this critique of faith and of Hirsi's March 20th Wall Street Journal column of the same name, "Why Islam Needs a Reformation," at http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2015/04/can-faith-be-reformed.html There is a link in my column to the WSJ article. I agree with Abigail Esman that Hirsi is naive to think that Islam can be reformed. It is essentially a nihilistic religion and political ideology. Were there a single redeeming element in Islam, a "reformation" might be possible. But unlike the Christian faith, which stresses the salvation of an individual's soul, Islamt erases all individual value in its demand for total abnegation of the individual. But overall the problem with Hirsi's expectation lies in the very notion of "faith." Faith, I argue, is the unreserved belief in something without evidence or proof. In this context, the faith is in the existence of an Allah, the Christian God, Jehovah, space aliens, jins, devils, leprechauns who move invisibly among us. When men can divest themselves of the necessity of faith, and live by the evidence of their senses and reason, then faith will no longer be needed. Faith in the unprovable has caused incalculable misery in man's history, and has been the cause of the slaughter of uncounted millions over time.

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