Faith vs. religion

[unixronin]

Viewed as a process, faith can be said to be the ordering of one's life and actions based upon one's personal beliefs of what some intangible higher power has ordained to be right and proper.

Likewise viewed as a process, religion is the systematic usage of other people's faith as a means to gain power and control over them.

Comments

[ithildae]

Generally speaking, faith is accepting as truth something that you have not personally seen proven. For instance, I have faith that electrons exist, even though I have never seen one, nor do I know anyone that has seen one. It is beyond obvious that you need to have faith to believe in $DIETY, but some higher power is far from the only thing that faith can be applied to. There are those who believe that the suppositions of science are truth, even though those tend to change (sometimes radically) over a lifetime.

Once faith exists, it is easy to manipulate, if it is faith in a person of questionable ethics and morals.

[unixronin]

Questionable ethics and morals are not required. All that is required is a trust that your religious authorities really are doing and relaying the will of your deity. Very few people, when told by someone higher then themselves in the hierarchy if their religion, "God wants you to do this", stop to think "Then why didn't he tell me so himself?" Why should an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent deity need intermediaries to relay his desires?

[ithildae]

God does not need intermediaries to express his desires, unless the person is not listening. God needs a hierarchy for the action of Divine authority. Without the structure, anyone can claim to represent God, and do great evil in his name. With the structure, a person need only accept the credentials of the organization, ignoring pretenders. It may sound insular, but God has the capacity to confirm organizational instruction at the individual level. Provided people are listening, a particular leader will not have the ability to take people from the course God desires for his organization. (Plus, if a leader within an authorized organization starts to go off course, God should be able to remove them Himself.)

[unixronin]

Then, honestly, it's about [expletive] time he did. I tend to view the leadership of the world's major religions as all-but-conclusive proof that if there is a god, who is not impotent and is paying attention, then he just plain doesn't give a damn. And in this context, I view the "Ah, but free will..." argument as sophistry.

[ithildae]

Addendum: Faith != Religion

[unixronin]

Which was exactly my point. :)