Hebrews 11 then talks about all the wonderful rewards various faithful received after death:
All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
Hebrews 11:13
This is a pretty common technique among all major religions. They tell you not to worry about this life. Do not worry that you are not getting what you think you deserve in this life. This life does not matter, they tell you. Worry about what comes after this life.
This is the emotional hook, the reason many choose to believe. Not because they see any reason to. But because they fear missing out on rewards after this life. Most religions know this and they wrote their texts to take advantage of this emotional need to believe in a better life after death.
“For we walk by faith, not by sight – but we are of good courage and prefer to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”
2 Corinthians 5:7-8
Again, look not to the outside world for reasons for having faith. There are none. What matters is not the body or the material world, but the Lord. What matters is not this world, or this life, but the next one. The one where you get to be in Heaven with God.
Faith has nothing to do with reality. Those who have faith do not care about what reality is and what the facts are. Sight can only be a hindrance to believing what you want to believe for no reason.
This world is just a trial to be endured. Let us not be too concerned with life or things in this world and instead look to next life. For it is those things that matter. This kind of attitude will encourage a disdain for reality and the evidence of the senses as unimportant.
What matters is being at home with the Lord. For that, we must have faith and obey what he believes. Of course, since he does not exist, we have no way of knowing what he might want. But we can have faith in what we are told he wants. Which is what the clergy tells you he wants.
This is how religions control people. If you want to hear the Words of God that are your salvation, only they can tell you this.
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
John 20:29
So, according to Jesus, the righteous are those that see no reason to believe something but choose to believe it.
Blessed are those that do not use their eyes but blindly accept Jesus for no reason. Blessed are those that do not use their senses or their brain.
This Thomas is, as some of you may have noticed, Doubting Thomas. This is a skeptic apostle that refused to believe that Jesus resurrected himself without seeing some evidence. Indeed, let me quote John 20:24-25:
But Thomas, one of the twelve, who was called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.
John 20:24-25
Thomas simply wanted some evidence of the resurrection. Jesus condemns him for expecting this and not having faith. Jesus condemns evidence and tells Thomas that faith is about blind acceptance for no reason.
Thomas is being reasonable when he asks for some kind of evidence, but the Bible portrays such behavior as unreasonable, as it must.
Blessed are those that care not for what the facts are and just believe!
For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, through perseverance, we wait eagerly for it.
Romans 8:24–25
It is apparently not valid to have reasons for hope. Hope, by which it seems the authors mean faith, is not really hope, if one has a reason to believe. Or so Romans insists. So did some of the Roman emperors.
It should not surprise us to find the Bible encouraging people not to see, not to think. Sight and thought are the antithesis of faith and the things most likely to destroy one’s faith.
Conclusion
We have seen that faith is the blind acceptance of empty assertions in the absence of proof or evidence. This blind acceptance leads people to reject reality and often to fight against it.
We should note that a lack of faith is the one crime God will not forgive you for. Not blindly believing God for no reason is the ultimate sin, and blind obedience is the ultimate virtue. We will come back to this in a future article.
Faith is what the Bible demands of its followers. Not justified trust, but blind acceptance of empty assertions.
Oh ye of faith, believe because the Book says so. Believe in it because God will reward you and if you do not, he will punish you.
I don’t know about you, but I would rather deal with reality as it is. Impossible rewards and punishments will not hold me back. Live your life as you see fit, but I will live my life in this world. Not in the word of delusion offered by the Bible.
What could it hurt? Faith demands that you blindly surrender your mind to the irrational demands of mystics. That you believe things for no reason. That you surrender objective morality to the arbitrary decrees of a despot. These things can only frustrate your attempt to gain happiness in this life, the only one you will ever have.
But religions tell you, that does not matter. Because after you are done with this life, there is something after death. But this is not so. And yet religions demand that you give up everything in this life for a fantasy world after death.
And that is the great tragedy of faith; it demands that people surrender earthly values for nothing. You must accept things for no reason and frustrate your chance of happiness in this life. Indeed, you must give up happiness in this life for a fantasy, for nothing.
This is what faith does. It robs you of happiness in this world for nothing. Therefore, you should never exercise faith.
This applies in non-religious contexts too. Faith in anything is a cognitive dead-end. If you accept any claim for no reason, then it is cognitively useless. It can only serve as a roadblock in your mind that impedes a proper grasp of reality, as must all arbitrary claims. This too will impede your ability to deal with the world, and to some extent, make your happiness that much harder to achieve.
No good can ever come of accepting anything on faith. It can only impede your ability to grasp reality as it is and to deal with the world. It can only hinder your happiness.
There is no ghostly world waiting for you after this one. Make the most of this life, the only one you get. Don’t throw it away for some fantasy cloud paradise.
