PERENNIAL QUESTIONS 
Much of what man has accomplished could not have been accomplished in the absence of faith.
Why, then, do you have such an aversion to it?
If you had studied my homepage carefully, you would not have asked this question.
I do not have an aversion to faith.
In fact I possess a very strong sense of faith.
However, I do have an aversion to the abuse of language, CONDITIONED faith, the teaching of false and/or untestable and unfalsifiable "information," and the blind acceptance of claims that cannot be verified.
Moreover, the problem lies in what is meant by the term 'faith' when it is used by various individuals and particularly institutions.
The problem lies, also, in who uses it and to what purpose.
The use of the term often underlies a specific agenda.
Following are some of the ways in which we use the term:
1) Have faith in yourself.
(Have confidence in yourself.)
2) Have faith in your spouse.
(Trust your spouse, or believe that your spouse is not cheating on you.)
3) Keep the faith baby!
(This use can mean whatever you wish it to mean; possibly: "Don't give up your system of blind
beliefs.")
4) Have faith in God.
[Blindly accept His existence and trust that He will do what (He thinks) is best for you.]
5) Be faithful.
(Don't cheat. Be loyal. Do your duty. Live up to your vows.
Do what is expected of you.)
6) Don't be unfaithful.
(Don't cheat or be disloyal.)
7) You have to accept it on faith.
[Accept as true what is not known to be true, i.e., intuitive (no evidence) belief.]
8) Positivists have faith in the principle of verifiability, i.e., evidence.
(An opponent of Positivism means "blind faith.")
In SOME of the above the term is a religious, theistic, and even secular
euphemism for unquestioning blind acceptance.
It is too often an admonition to accept claims, particularly theistic claims WITHOUT and/or IN SPITE of evidence.
Such an admonition often carries the weight of centuries-old established religions, the tacit threat of eternal punishment, and guilt-producing language.
For various reasons, such a use of the term is one of the most damaging forms of
ignorance -- discussed
elsewhere in this homepage.
Underlying them all is the fact that it hides one's ignorance from one's self.
If one wishes to learn to use the term 'faith' properly, one must first learn the ways in which faith is conditioned or established.
FAITH WITHOUT EVIDENCE and FAITH IN SPITE OF EVIDENCE:
These are accomplished through a process of physiological conditioning, resulting in a conditioned psychological state of mind.
The process is analogous to Pavlov's conditioning his dog, with the ringing of a bell, to lap up a bowl whether it is full or empty.
Today, lower animals are trained (read: conditioned) for the entertainment world.
In the case of conditioning theistic faith in human beings, the long and complex process begins on the date of birth when mother exclaims, "My God, what a beautiful baby!"
Proponents of a major religion say, "Give us your child for ten years and he will be ours forever."
They, however, use the euphemistic term, 'indoctrinating' instead of
'conditioning.'
From that day forward, one hears the term a "million" times along with concomitant theistic explanations, meanings, and terms like
'Heaven,' 'Hell,' 'angels,' 'Purgatory,' 'Satan,' 'sin,' and the like.
As well, one is offered the reward of going to heaven for being good,
or in some religions, being a terrorist suicide bomber with 80 virgins awaiting
him in "heaven." Or one is threatened with being sent to Hell for not having faith in God.
These are a few of the conditioning linguistic "bells," besides countless others, that are used to make you believe and respond as the conditioner CAUSES you to.
Such beliefs are held and responses performed in the absence of reason and knowledge on the part of the one being conditioned.
One has no choice in whether or not to believe.
If you are already "on the fence," then it is likely that some striking event like the tragic death of a loved one may be the "last straw" in the evolutionary process taking place in your mind in causing you to refuse to accept blindly claims that cannot be verified.
If you are a zealot, a true or born-again believer, or if you believe that your all-good God will always do what (He thinks) is good for you, whatever catastrophe, tragedy, disease, or suffering He may impose upon you, you will, in blind faith, attribute it to, "God has His reasons."
What, then, of your faith in the nature of God's "Goodness"?
Only an extensive and intensive education, into
the attributed meanings of that term, especially its uses in theistic
linguistic claims, will expose the non-epistemic and non-ontological nature of such claims.
As a result of such education the learning and understanding that takes place in examining the meanings of words is an evolutionary process leading one, forever
after, to reject as truth and knowledge what cannot be verified.
Choice of what to believe now depends upon faith (trust or confidence) in available evidence.
No longer will one's mindset be subject to conditioned blind acceptance.
The so-called truths (dogmas and edicts) of theism rarely, if ever, change.
If they do, they are changed with another edict or by a vote of those in power.
Truth and knowledge are dependent upon probable evidence, which is open-ended in character, and cannot be determined by edict or a vote.
FAITH BASED ON EVIDENCE:
Faith, here, means trust and confidence based on
evidence -- not blind acceptance.
Choice IS involved here.
If one discovers (has evidence) that one's spouse has been
UNfaithful, one has a choice of whether to trust that spouse again.
My
very strong faith in science is based on the fact that in my 93 years I have seen the evidence that when science (not an
individual scientist who is fallible) makes predictions, they are fulfilled and verified.
When a theory or hypothesis turns out to be weak or wrong, it is scientists who discover the weakness or error.
The most noble characteristic of science is its self-corrective character.
No one scientist can declare truth or knowledge without the community of scientists, throughout the world, being concerned that his claim be severely scrutinized through repeated tests, experimentation, and verification.
Were it to happen that science too often made predictions that never came to fruition, I would choose not to trust and have confidence, i.e., have faith, in it.