The Evil of Faith

Faith, by definition, requires the absence of evidence. Thus, the prerequisite for faith in a religion or a god is to have no grounds or objective justification for believing at all. Belief in God is, and must be, mere wishful thinking.

Animals have basic needs related to their survival and procreation, and seek instant gratification. Humans have a need that goes beyond that of all other animals: the need for purpose. But finding your purpose is an arduous process and success is not guaranteed. Humanity is, after all, in the infant stages of its intellectual, cultural, and moral lifecycle.

Inventing a purpose for yourself that is based on faith, aka no reason or justification, but rather mere wishful thinking, offers instant gratification and the illusion and comfort of pretending you have a purpose. It’s the intellectual, cultural, and moral reaction of an animal having no concept or regard for anything beyond its own self. The concept of operating on faith takes away the one driving force behind the progress of humanity. A person content with an imaginary purpose stops looking for a real one and holds back others (we don’t live in a bubble, and we are all influenced by others in one way or another).

To those who wish to argue that 1. faith in god can be based on evidence, or 2. that a faith-based purpose can still be truthful, real, useful, my answer is simple: 

1. evidence-based faith isn’t faith, it’s a hypothesis; and so far, all proposed ‘evidence’ for the hypothesis of god has been thoroughly debunked by people and by fields of science concerned with seeking the truth – people and disciplines that would accept tangible evidence for what it is. 
2. there’s no reason to think that (belief requires the absence of reason). And there’s a myriad of reasons not to think that (the moral evil done by religion in the world outweighs the good by far; faith-based purpose has never produced substantial progress; substantial progress has been halted by faith-based purpose on multiple occasions throughout the world’s history; etc. etc. etc. etc.)

Thus, faith in god is, in my opinion, an intellectual, cultural, and moral Evil.