I disagree with this article.<p>> This type of thing [faith] would not stick around within our societies were it not useful.<p>Cancer sticks around but it's not useful.<p>> If I were in Nazi Germany, the rational thing would be to not help any jew.<p>This is absurd. Depending on what you knew at the time, it may have been by far the rational thing to help jews. Because then when it's over, you could claim you were one of the few who helped, and wouldn't be as guilty as all the rest.<p>> People who have faith have one absolute advantage over those who do not - their path is always clear. They know what they are doing, they know why they are doing it, and even when they doubt, they can always fall back in blind trust in some invisible thing.<p>I fail to see how this is an advantage. Suppose you had a well-defined, crystal-clear path walking off a cliff. That's good just because it's clear? Also I'm not convinced that faithful actually have clear paths; they're just as confused as the rest of us, but they don't like to think about that.<p>> And they are happier, because as each step along their route unfolds and turns out to be right, their faith increases and their belief that the problems will always be overcome with more faith grows.<p>And this is where I suspect this author is simply a troll. Is it really the case that the faithful are happier than other people? This contradicts my experience. I think the faithful are probably no more or less happy than anyone else. Indeed, frequently faith is a source of unhappiness, like any time they are faced with something that contradicts their faith.<p>This statements also claims "as each step along their route unfolds and turns out to be right", but actually they are right less often than rational people! And the author has ignored all the times when they turn out to be wrong. Being wrong more often than rational people isn't a bad thing?<p>> Don't dismiss blind belief in something. It's an extra-ordinary tool. It's fundamentally human, and when you rationalize it away, you are are taking away one of those quirks that make us human - those strange things like love and laughter and revenge that should not be there, but are, and separate us from machines.<p>Personally, I see faith as a meme, and we are seeing its tricks in action here. It's taking something that's not extraordinary or useful and making it sound extraordinary and useful. It's not, but it needs you to think it is to survive.
An interesting point. "I must design this well" or "I must code this beautifully" are inner drives that don't necessarily have rational thought behind them.<p>But then, the real truth behind this is that all rational thought rests on faith. "A projectile launched thusly will follow this path, because this is the formula that describes it, because it will follow previously observed patterns, because the universe behaves consistently, because the universe is rational, because... well, I just have to believe that it is."<p>Or "I will strive to write clean code, which is good because clean code is easier to understand, which is good because it helps others, which is good because... well, I just believe that it is."<p>Whenever somebody says "we should reduce dependency on oil" or "we should regulate mortgage trading" or "ruby is a great programming language" or whatever, they're using a whole system of values that, at bottom, is not rational. You value something, period. You assume something, and go from there.<p>None of us are superior in this regard.
It's buried halfway down the page, but the author states:<p><i>Using the word "faith" is an instant turn-off for most geeks, but you can replace it with "passion". It's the same thing.</i><p>Well, no, it's not. They're not synonyms and they refer to two very different concepts. Any discussion on this article will likely be as muddled as the article itself, since some will be discussing passion and some faith, both using the same word.
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." - Einstein
Reminds me of the 2 schools in "Worse is better":
<a href="http://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html" rel="nofollow">http://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html</a>