Often, when explaining to a religious person why I believe faith is a morally reprehensible practice, I encounter this response that dismissively avers: “Oh, that’s blind faith, and I’m as much against it as you are. It’s not the faith I exercise.”

It seems, indeed, religious folk everywhere are eager to distinguish their own faith from this “blind” variety, which they universally regard as naive and foolish, while agreeing with acclaim that such brand they exercise is of a whole different kind, is neither naive nor foolish, and indeed is commendable and virtuous.

But what is the real difference between such faith as these folks decry and the kind that they celebrate in their own practice? Do those who make the distinction even have a clear concept, in their own minds, of what the true difference is, if any?

To begin an answer, we must first clarify what is meant when the word faith is employed in this context. This is critical because it’s common for discussion in this realm to import a “does-not-really-belong” meaning of the expression and to purposely conflate that meaning with what truly applies.

That does-not-really-belong” meaning refers, simply, to trust or belief that is authentically supported by standard evidence and reason. As an example, I have reasoned trust that the braking system on my well-maintained automobile will actuate when I press the appropriate foot pedal. In such context (and at least if pushing word usage), it may be said I have “faith” in my car’s braking system.

This usage is of course contrary to (even the opposite of) the authentic meaning of faith as used in a religious context—where, without doubt, faith much more standardly refers to a method or basis behind trust or belief. Specifically, it refers to a method or basis that is used instead of supporting evidence and reason. As an example, I may say I believe or trust in God because I have faith. The implicit assertion, obviously, is my belief is not based in ordinary evidence and reason. It is outside of and separate from those instruments.

Regardless, we must begin by dealing with that forced and odd usage of the word, because it is deceitfully employed by religionists in two ways.

First, religionists sometimes claim that because even nonbelievers trust in such things as our automotive brake systems, we are co-partakers, with them, in a practice of faith. This is of course nonsense and depends on the crude sophistry of making the same word apply to opposite substances, then pretending on such basis that opposite things (because they’ve been made to answer to the same word) are the same. Essentially, this ploy embraces the fallacy of equivocation.

Second, religionists will sometimes hold in one hand a frank admission (perhaps even a celebration) of the fact they employ standard-definition religious faith, while in the other hand schizophrenically holding a claim that their faith is nothing other than the same reasoned trust that even nonbelievers employ in prosaic contexts. This is again a crude sophistry. Even potentially answering to the same word does not make opposites the same. This is, incidentally, a second mode in embracing the fallacy of equivocation.

Regardless, the ruse is pointedly relevant to our focus on what is meant when distinguishing nonblind faith from its blind counterpart. The reason: it appears that in at least some instances, when religionists assert their faith is not blind, they rely on this second deceit of conflating opposites. In other words, they implicitly insist their faith is merely reasoned trust. That is, of course, a lie.

To expose the deceit, consider the reaction when most any religionist is backed into a corner on some matter of evidence and reason. What we normally hear is something very close to: “Well, sometimes you just have to have faith.” Clearly, this reaction is not showing normal respect to evidence and reason. Rather, on its face it asserts that evidence and reason will not in this context be given their normal due. They will not be fully respected. Instead, the declarant assures that trust in his or her conclusion will persist despite the particular unfriendliness, in regard to evidence and reason, that’s been shown.

If you are a theistic person and believe your faith as practiced is reasoned trust (as opposed to being unreasoned or anti-reason trust), please ask yourself why it is you so often claim ordinary evidence and reason can’t be used as paths to “spiritual understanding.” Why is it you so often insist that the “spiritual realm” is different, requiring different modes of knowing? Clearly, in such speech, you’re not referring to forming trust based on ordinary evidence and reason. Clearly, you are talking instead about some mode of concluding that bypasses those standard informants—a mode that, indeed, treats them as inferior for the context involved. Clearly, in other words, you are referring to a mode that, for the applicable context, disrespects standard evidence and reason.

Please be honest and admit this—this actual practice of yours—is not what you may otherwise conflate with reasoned trust. Rather, it is that very opposite animal, for it goes beyond evidence and reason, ignores them, disrespects them, is even against them. At a core level, your practice is the particular and specific species of anti-reasoned trust that the word faith much more typically and standardly denotes.

So (and to prepare for a segue), we’ve now established that the second personality in a faith-believer’s schizophrenia (in which he claims his faith is “not blind”) positively is not reasoned trust. Having gotten this out of the way (phew!), let’s now turn to consider what might be the real distinction in religious faith—in particular, between what may be imagined as its “blind” mode and what’s truly operative when folks believe they are practicing in a “nonblind” manner.

It may be surprising, but I will here show there is in fact a large and substantive difference. More pointedly, I will show that pure faith (if indeed it actually exists in real practice) is dramatically more innocent of mendacity and less pernicious in consequence compared to any standardly practiced faith.

I’ve graphically mapped out such “faith” animals as are typically seen by a religionist in figure 1.

Because we are now totally clear on the fact that any true distinction between blind and nonblind faith must consist of variations in anti-reasoned practice (within category 2 of figure 1), let us now move on to trying to understand what the genuine difference is.

Considering first any such faith that is honestly and purely blind (i.e., sub-category 2A of figure 1), let’s begin by making explicit a matter that’s previously been intimated: it is not obvious any real persons practice such a faith. Any such practice may, in fact, be a fiction. Regardless, we may at least imagine a practitioner of pure blind faith as a theoretical construct.

Thus imagining, it seems reasonable to define a person who exercises pure blind faith as one who does not bother with evidence and/or reason at all. In other words, there is no pretense whatsoever that evidence and reason support one’s trust. There is evidently no desire for such support. There is no effort to find or create such support. Thus, this imagined person is perfectly happy to trust and believe in the absence of any reasoned justification whatsoever.

In contrast, real persons are much more likely to care very much about what evidence and reason can be made to at least seemingly support their faith. For such reason (and quite aside from the deceit of falsely conflating their faith with reasoned trust), these persons (as referenced at 2B of figure 1) engage in a constant, robust, and studied effort to assemble as much evidence and argumentation as possible of a kind that seemingly supports the particular package of theistic notions they prefer. At the same time, they actively seek to either avoid or explain away (by whatever means they can) otherwise discomfiting evidence. Thereby, they end up painting an evidentiary picture that in their own minds seems very convincing.

The degree to which this picture is convincing is generally very much underappreciated by those who’ve not assembled pictures of similar substance. If I’m a Mormon, for example, I will not likely think that the picture as seen by a Catholic, for his or her faith, can possibly be as convincing as the picture as seen by me for mine. I will be wrong, and the reverse is equally true. Generally, I think, atheists underappreciate how convincing the picture as seen by each religionist, from his or her perspective, is. These pictures, as built by a motivated assembling of evidence and reason, can be extraordinarily persuasive to their creators.

It is thus wrong to simply think “How stupid” when we view the various convictions people have in nutty things. We should never forget that, at least typically, each devout believer has mentally assembled a robust mountain of seemingly incontrovertible evidence. This mountain creates an evidentiary picture in which, from the viewer’s perspective, there is one thing after another that proves the conclusion, and every apparent disproof is easily answered. With such a picture controlling, it would (at least from the holder’s perspective) in fact be stupid to conclude against it.

It is of course true, regardless, that each such picture has flaws. It’s as though there were determination to assemble pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to fit a desired image, but it is not the same image as the pieces can be assembled to fit perfectly. Therefore, pieces are repeatedly forced against imperfect fits. Thus, there are often problems. Where two pieces are placed adjacent to one another, for example, one ought to have a socket and the other an extrusion that fits perfectly into the socket. Yet there are cases in which both pieces have facing sockets, and a hole in the image results—or vice versa. Or an extrusion indeed faces a socket but is a little too small by comparison, or a little too large, or not quite the right shape. Certainly, a practitioner ends up assembling the desired picture regardless (placing pieces that are largely dark in tone where the desired image needs to be dark, and so on), and it will seem persuasive enough, but there are nevertheless many gaps, overlaps, and bent pieces in consequence of seeking to force fits that, honestly, aren’t quite right.

Because such imperfections are comparatively more exposed when these pictures are examined with a careful, close focus, practitioners tend to prefer views that are rather more blurred, abstract, and uncritical. This allows the many imperfections to fade and/or disappear and for the generalized image to thereby stand supreme. It’s in this mode that each picture seems so very convincing.

It of course happens from time to time that such persons can’t help but see one or more of the bad fits between puzzle pieces. It is precisely here where the practitioner confesses to using faith and perhaps even celebrates the fact.

Regardless, these practitioners will steadfastly insist they’ve done far better than one who did not so mangle the puzzle pieces to fit (that is, a practitioner of pure and blind faith). The reason is that rather than ignoring evidence and reason, they have employed such instruments (or at least an abuse thereof) almost all the way to full and complete support of their trust. It’s only in bridging the last remaining gap (in ignoring or overlooking or giving excuse to one or more imperfections of fit) where they confess to having taken an infinitely tinier “leap of faith”—in particular a leap that is much tinier compared to the infinitely large leap that’s taken by a naive person of purely blind faith.

Essentially, that is how these people see it. I understand the dynamic because I was once such a person (see sidebar).

If you are currently such a person and read figure 1, I urge you to confess: this is the true and genuine distinction in your practice. Yours is not the category 1 (simple reasoned trust) you may falsely claim it is. Rather, your real-world faith is precisely as the figure delineates for category 2B.

Beyond this, let’s consider a further matter.

If faith in defiance of reason is genuinely a good and virtuous thing (as in fact religions so often celebrate it), isn’t it evident that real-world practitioners embrace this virtue less compared to any who might instead maintain faith in a purely blind stance? Isn’t it evident, indeed, that real-world faith practitioners corrupt any such purity that might have otherwise existed in faith by seeking to supplant it, as much as they can, with evidence and reason? Even on the basis of their own premises (which so often glorify reason-defying faith), it would seem this must make their faith significantly inferior to the purely blind variety.

In fact, their kind of faith is not only inferior because of all such premises that glorify faith; it is at the same time far more sinister and diabolical. The reason is our imagined blind faith practitioner is at least honest in that he is not compelling evidence and reason to seemingly support him. He may indeed remain reasonably cognizant of the fact he is, to use an expression, “out on a limb” so far as any such support is concerned. By hearty and damning contrast, the person who exercises real-world faith has zero honesty in his or her technique and is unaware. Not only has he or she corrupted and reduced the very generality he or she otherwise claims is virtuous (again, reason-defying faith), but, more fully, by so doing he or she has simultaneously corrupted evidence and reason too.

As already partially described, this corruption involves the practice of forcing puzzle pieces to fit a predetermined and wrong picture. It also involves manufacturing false pieces, throwing out real ones, and many related practices. I will further emphasize by describing it in a different way.

It’s a very plain fact that evidence and reason are not friendly to any particular set of theism-favoring conclusions. They are, in fact, decidedly unfriendly. Indeed, the more specific and extended a set of theistic conclusions becomes, the more unfriendly becomes the evidence and reason against them. So, in the face of this, how is it that someone who practices real-world faith manages to build for oneself an evidentiary picture that one strongly believes is overwhelmingly supportive of his or her particular theism?

The simple answer is he or she abuses evidence and reason. The believer contorts, twists, manufactures, and evades, all in a carefully orchestrated exercise of preprogrammed self-delusion that has a predetermined and never-in-doubt end result: supreme conviction that evidence and reason supports what in fact it does not support.

How can anyone doubt that such self-delusion is fundamentally what’s at play when so many religionists are so devoutly convinced that evidence and reason compellingly support so many utterly conflicting conclusions? Of course, each participant also likes to believe it is other religionists (or perhaps nonreligionists) who have engaged in such chicanery of the mind. Surely it is never (and never could be) “yours truly.” Nor could it be, of course, others who have reached like-minded conclusions. Somehow, always, it is exclusively one’s own belief tribe that, while happily engaging in reason-defying faith, has nevertheless avoided self-deluding error.

This is foolishness indeed and again shows why any practitioner of purely blind faith would be a much better soul, because that person would not in such manner have self-deluded. Nor would that person have abused evidence and reason in the effort to contort it into supposedly supporting conclusions that, avowedly, it does not support.

Moreover (and here is a very great irony), the person who practices (putatively nonblind) real-world faith becomes far more blind than our imaginary soul of pure faith. This is because the latter could at least potentially maintain eyes that are wide open in understanding what the evidence genuinely supports rather than what it does not. By virtue of having self-deluded in regard to evidence and reason, by contrast, real-world faith practitioners blind themselves to what those instruments genuinely indicate. By such means, these persons become, in fact, a great deal more blind than the putatively “blind faith” person they decry.

If the standard variety of blind faith is a sin against reason and reality, its real-world counterpart is a sin that’s far more sinister, diabolical, and severe. Although they think their stance is superior to that of imagined blind-faith practitioners, real-world practitioners are rabidly worse. Perhaps it’s the ultimate “cherry on top” when at least some such folk proceed to falsely claim that their faith is not really anti-reason at all and is instead just reasoned trust. It’s a lie on top of lies.

In such context, my shorthand reply to those who proudly distinguish their faith from the “blind” variety is: “Do not pretend your faith is even similar to reasoned trust. In truth, your faith rejects and deprecates evidence and reason, on the one hand, while on the other hand celebrates rank perversion of those instruments, so as to make them seemingly support your theistic view. You thus begin by insulting the exact virtue you otherwise claim for faith (that is, belief without seeing). Then, in result of perverting the only real informants, you end by making yourself exceedingly more blind than if you’d otherwise exercised the pure ‘blind’ faith you are so fond of deprecating.”

Most religious practitioners will, of course, flatly deny that they pervert evidence and reason. Regardless, if pressed most will admit they engage in an approach to those instruments that is, at the least, motivated. In particular, they’ll confess it is motivated in the sense that they actively seek, emphasize, and treat with relatively uncritical favor most any and all apparent confirmations while dealing oppositely with evidence and/or reason that might otherwise seem unfriendly. If pressed, indeed, most will confess their stance is such that the actual state of evidence will never, no matter what it may prove to be, sway their faith. Rather, treatment of incoming information will always be whatever it needs to be so as to make all that’s incoming seem to continue in support of the faithful conclusion. With that as the stance, it obviously follows, a fortiori, any pretense of respecting evidence and reason is sui generis corrupt.

This leads to a realization that faith may be looked at in another way. It may be viewed as something that grants license to abuse evidence and reason so as to make those instruments seem to support whatever the theism-favoring viewpoint that’s desired is. More fully, faith grants license to make one’s theism-favoring viewpoint always resist contrary informants, no matter what. Indeed, more than just granting license, faith commends the practice, blesses it, sanctifies it, and even makes it holy.

Likewise, faith is the stance wherein it’s one’s treatment of evidence and reason that—always and in every instance—must yield to the end purpose of belief. Correspondingly, it is compellingly opposite from a stance where one is prepared to yield in belief to whatever it is that evidence and reason happen to honestly indicate. Does belief control evidence, or does evidence control belief? Real-world faith practitioners answer resoundingly in favor of belief controlling the evidence.

I have three concluding notes.

First, I believe we should reject use of the expression “blind faith.” The expression is oxy-redundant, because by its very nature faith is always and in every instance blind. To say “blind faith” is like saying “wet water” in the effort to imply some water is not wet. It’s an inherent deception.

For better nomenclature, I suggest we adopt the expressions “pure faith” and “corrupt faith.” If indeed we revise figure 1 with use of these expressions, you’ll see how much this improved labeling enhances understanding.

Second, it should be obvious that each and every time when it’s the preference of a human to genuinely know what’s real, faith is not an option. Rather, when genuinely wanting to know the truth of a matter, we naturally seek every element of evidence and reason that may be appropriately applied and honestly and critically assess the same. We then make our conclusions strictly adhere to such guidance as is thereby provided. The only impetus we’d ever have for doing otherwise (say, for exercising either pure or corrupt faith) is if we entertained a preference for believing other than what is real.

In such context, pure faith is what’s involved when a person closes eyes, plugs ears, and pinches nose to ignore any such incoming data as would truly inform, then merrily imagines a preferred reality not swayed by such informants. Corrupt faith is donning a virtual reality headset that’s programmed to play one’s preferred reality, so that one can see, hear, and smell a pretend world that one wishes to perceive, despite a real and outside world that is otherwise.

Third, while religions bear many shames, perhaps the greatest is that they so pervasively and repeatedly celebrate this deliberately delusionary, awful, and disgusting practice of faith. More fully, they sanctify it, describe it as something wonderful and holy that should be aspired to. It should perhaps be unsurprising that operations founded on falsity should find this a convenient gambit, but it’s so very great a shame on them—especially and particularly because they are the very operations that celebrate themselves as, putatively, teaching the path toward goodness and truth. What great hypocrisy, and what a great lie.

Whenever someone or some entity tells you: “Don’t look; don’t listen; don’t smell” (or if you’re told to resist trusting those informants and rely on emotions and/or feelings instead), be wary. There is not a single reason anyone would so admonish, except that they want you to believe in lies. I once came across a quote whose source I cannot now resurrect. In essence, it said: “There is no greater liar than a preacher, except his listeners.” To interpolate, it’s certainly true that a preacher lies to his flock. But his listeners—when they enthusiastically proceed onward in their own self-persuasion—lie to themselves.

To answer this article’s title question, the truth is there is no religious faith that is other than blind. There is, however, a distinction in kinds of blindness. There is pure blindness, and there is corrupt blindness. Because it is crammed with self-delusion, the latter is all but infinitely more blind than the first.

Likewise (and as is incidentally pertinent to this magazine’s title), corrupt faith is the very antithesis of “free inquiry”—for it permits only such inquiry as is forcefully constrained to produce false but apparent support of its resolutely unmovable a priori conclusions.

How I Left My Faith

Glade Ross

As an early step toward ceasing to be such a person, I eventually came to realize that, in spite of how compelling I’d built my picture to seem, it was nevertheless fallible. I reached a level of self-confession, in other words, wherein I admitted it was at least possible my picture was not an accurate image of what genuinely is.

More deeply, I realized that even my supposed guarantor of accuracy (what I believed was affirming communication from the infallible source of God) was not truly the absolute guarantee I’d held it to be. The reason is, though I intently believed I’d been a regular recipient of such communication, I
realized it was at least possible all such experience as I’d so identified was in truth merely prosaic.

It’s not that I in the least doubted my picture. I continued to feel overwhelmingly convinced. Yet, I now understood that my conviction lacked a perfectly reliable basis. I thus became aware I was indeed making that quintessential “leap of faith”—a willing step without perfect illumination where, though consciously knowing there is some risk of error, I nevertheless willingly proceeded.

I was a Mormon, and Mormons are very much encouraged to frequently testify they “know the church is true.” I ceased to so testify. It now seemed silly, wrong, dishonest, and not genuinely meaningful. I instead began to declare, where appropriate, only that I “believed” the tenets were true. I understood it is wrong to claim knowledge where one understands that a leap of faith is involved. I further understood that any claim of knowledge in such a context does not make a conclusion more reliable. It makes it less so.

Again, it was an early step. A critical preceding step occurred years earlier when I’d committed myself to the proposition that it’s more important to believe accurately than to believe comfortably. Combining that with recognition my picture might at least potentially be wrong, I was poised, upon encountering puzzle pieces that fit poorly, to no longer make excuses or force wrongful fits. Instead, I tried placing particular pieces so as to fit a picture
wherein Mormonism and other religions are seen as mere fictions. You’d hardly believe how exhilarated I felt upon discovering the sense of illumination and enlightenment that greeted me upon seeing puzzle pieces suddenly slide into place with easy perfection. It was almost as if I was born again.  Seriously, it’s been a new life ever since. 

Given that a preference for accuracy in belief over comfort had made such a difference for me, I have since, when speaking with still-believing Mormons, often asked if they’d want to know the truth of the matter if their faith happened to be erroneous. It’s usually hard to get a candid answer, but in every case it has seemed the true answer is no, they’d not want to know the truth of the matter. Obviously, this shows why they have continued in belief whereas I did not. Beyond that, it shows contextually how faith is at base the excuse and method that’s used for believing in falsity, even somewhat deliberately so.