The belief in something that has no factual, logical, or scientific basis. Faith involves a deliberate decision to ignore reality and to avoid scrutiny. In the realm of the known, faith is a decision to ignore reality and to believe in something where the evidence suggests that what you believe in is false or with complete indifference to the evidence. In the realm of the unknown faith is a choice that leans against the evidence. In contrast, a hypotheses is a guess that leans in favor of the evidence where there is a logical reason to support if the hypotheses.
Key elements that indicate faith are:
- Absolute Loyalty to a Position - Unwillingness to change your mind if you are proven wrong. Faith is when you choose to believe something and reality tests are ignored. A Realist accepts the position that if one is proven wrong one is expected to change one's mind.
- Avoidance of Scrutiny - Faith based believers tend to avoid scrutiny of their beliefs. Logic and Reason are declared to be inferior to believing based on emotions and the imagination. Questioning is considered to be either sinful or blasphemy. Or that the belief can not be tested because of achieves salvation through their ability to ignore reality and put the loyalty to the belief first. A believer will sometimes claim that there are "other realities" where the rules of theis "materialistic world" don't apply.
Faith and Reason are mutually exclusive. Things believe through faith can never be proven because if something is proven then you no longer need faith to believe it. It becomes part of the world of reason. The process of proving something means that you have accepted the principles of science and scrutiny. If one tries to prove something then they also have to accept the possibility that it might be disproven. Without the possibility of being disproven, the proof is meaningless.
Anything that you can't question is a lie.
Things believed through faith are untestable. One can not determine through faith if what one believes is actually true because of the possibility that what one believes might be actually false. Therefore if two people believe opposite things through faith one can not determine if either belief is true because one would have to turn to reason, logic, and scrutiny to make the determination and one would have to expose their beliefs to the possibility that they are false. (See Faith Paradox).
Faith is fundamentally a dishonest process in that it specifically excludes any kind of truth testing. One is expected to believe even if what you are believing in is wrong. When one disregards truth and reality then they are involved in a process that is dishonest.
The Church of Reality is a Doubt Based religion. We reject that faith process and our position is that any belief that is faith based (in that it rejects scrutiny) is assumed to be not true. Our view is that anything real will stand up to scrutiny and questioning and that we are pursuing real reality as it really is. In order to do that we are required to examine everything to verify our positions. We accept the possibility that things we believe in are wrong and we are willing to change our minds when we make mistakes.
Faith should not be confused with trust. Our human minds are limited and as a community we have to choose to trust other people to make determinations for us. When we get on an airplane we trust that those who are in the airline business know how to make the plane fly. A Realist has a responsibility to question faith and to always issue the Sacred Challenge to ensure that one has not dedicated one's life to a scam.
To us Faith is a form of Idolatry. Faith is Worshiping a False Truth. In the Church of Reality faith is a Golden Calf. Many religions put faith first. They expect you to just believe it, without question. We do not. We embrace Doubt and Scrutiny. We put Reality First. We Accept the Truth. In our world view Faith is a rejection of Reality.
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Terminology 
