TO THE PURVEYORS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH -YOU ARE PAINTING FEELINGS AS BELIEF

You priests and bishops decide what the Church is to believe. You teach that there is much in Christian morality and Christian doctrine that we cannot understand for God is all wise and we are not. You say we have a duty of humble obedience to the authority of the Church for God has set it up to take his place on earth as our teacher. You embrace the essence of fundamentalism, fundamentalism commands that we simply obey for we cannot understand the things of God completely but only partly. It is divisive and has led to 9/11.

Perhaps you make up your mind in advance that the evil doctrines are true and then you sift and manipulate the evidence to back them up? No you feel they are true or you want to believe them and then you try to make the evil beliefs look good or believable or possibly true. Your beliefs reveal the kind of people you are. You do not worship God but the perception of God. Your doctrines all show how you perceive him. You worship your own creation. The good works you do are not good because they are done in the honour of that abomination.

You pretend that you believe that the Protestants and Orthodox are sincere but wrong. This contradicts your doctrine that Jesus gave the Church four very simple and obvious marks by which we would know her to be the true Church and they are simple so that a person of very limited intelligence could see it. The word Catholic means universal and speaks of the Church being for all people so they can believe in it and see that it is the true Church be they professors or people of little intelligence. Your ecumenism is a smokescreen. You want to avoid inciting hatred and division for that would involve antagonising modern society and the legislature so you hide your true colours. But they will show. If God has set up one true religion and that religion is the Catholic Church then it should have a special place in every civil law for God comes first and is ultimately the only real ruler. Your doctrine brings you power - so I will not assist you in getting it so I want my name out of your membership lists.

Your faith is belief not knowledge. You say it is knowledge but it is obviously not. That is why you reject the view: "I have my faith and you have yours. So I will treat my faith as just my opinion and not take it too seriously. I believe for example abortion is wrong but other people disagree so I am not going to argue against abortion." Lies, lies, lies!

Your faith is belief. Belief means you accept something as probably true. It is not knowledge. Thus we see your arrogance in your proclamation that you are the one right Church and are better than any other religion.

You accuse - at least in your thoughts - atheists like Dawkins of doing things that they criticise you for doing. For example, you say they believe in reason though unable to prove that it works. To say that reason is an assumption or unproven is to deny that anything can be known for sure! Belief in reason is a default position. We have to take it otherwise there is no alternative. You accuse atheists of criticising you for making spiritual assumptions. But Dawkins and co don't make as many unproven and unprovable beliefs and assumptions as you do. They are kinder than you for they agree with abortion to save the mother's life and you don't.

A person who believes that the luck in his life came because he carried a pebble in his pocket will take the good things that happened as evidence that it works. He will say that the bad things that happened were good in some way so they are evidence that it works too. A person who rejects such superstition and attributes the good things in his life to prayer will cite them as evidence that it works. He too will argue that the bad things turned out to be blessings. Prayer is an exercise in self-deception. Prayer is just another form of superstition. The Church condemns superstition: pots and kettles.

When a priest is nice he is hiding the dark side of his faith and is been sweet for it is good for him to be and it's a tool for seducing people into the Church. However, Jesus and the apostles were as subtle as sledgehammers and said they believed in speaking out for the truth no matter what the consequences. They taught that hiding the truth never works for the truth will set you free and Jesus claimed to be truth itself.

People mistake their feelings about religion for belief. For example, Catholics enjoy the feeling from the thought that Mary is their Mother and that Jesus wants to physically enter their bodies at communion.

Most Catholics don't know enough about the case against their faith to have real belief. Belief is based on evidence. Belief that only looks at supportive evidence and turns a blind eye to contradicting evidence is not belief at all. True belief looks at everything and isn't afraid to. Christian "belief" is a product of manipulation and fear and sneakiness. It is not based on evidence but on sifting the evidence and not letting it speak for itself. Christian "faith" is harmful and hypocritical and is the seed of all the religious wars waged by Christians.

There are countless faiths in the world - all disagreeing with one another. Even within a Church, you will have a variety of faiths for it's not humanly possible to help people to believe even most of all the things they are required to believe. This shows that any religious believer is more likely to believe things that are wrong or false. If people were more open to the truth and were not deceiving themselves there would be more doctrinal and ethical unity in their beliefs.

The evidence that faith in Christianity is really just self-deception is overwhelming. If somebody claims to be a believer, the burden of proof is on them. We are not to be asked to believe them or to take their word for it.

The Christian notion that faith leads to knowledge and is a gift from God is really just a mystical way of affirming the dangerous notion that belief does a good job of backing itself up. Belief in belief means “I am confident I am right just because I believe.”  Belief in belief is deadly. All religionists praise belief in belief. Would be fine if we had more concern for evidence and real evidence at that!  Belief in belief may be called faith but it is really just a cynical lazy irresponsible placebo.  If you don't like the unknown you will use belief as a sedative.  And it is easy to think you believe things when you do not realise that you in fact don't and are just going along with something.  That is an issue too.

Those who say, "Religion comforts people so say nothing against it" are just lazy.  It is presumptuous for many religious people do not see themselves as that fragile.  And human nature is versatile.  It is a red flag if feelings is all you care about.  It shows your lack of concern for truth and everybody has to face truth sooner or later anyway.  It is not fair.  Nobody needs that fake or lazy concern from you.  People will see you for what you are.  And where is the comfort of meeting a gospel reading that scares you half to death?  If people need comfort, speak out against religion to stop it drawing them in with false promises.  And as for comfort, no two people get it the same way so sooner or later a religious person is going to have their crutch broken by something a co-religionist says.

The brain in many things, especially big things such as the meaning of life, tends to get defensive when it meets a challenge. It is a survival mechanism. It is dangerous and harmful if it causes you to react as if you are fighting for your life. Religion has no business in getting converts with bad poor evidence and leading people to suffer like that. And what if the messenger gets shot metaphorically speaking or even literally?

The evidence is that religious systems are hard to bring down and people won't stop giving a religion their children even if they know the religion is false and has bad doctrines. Feelings pretending to be faith make believers strong and that can be intimidating for would-be heretics. Belief in belief boils down to, "I feel I should respect belief". And that in turn is, "I feel I should respect the beliefs that it suits me to respect".

Evidence matters. A belief does not matter except as a mark of respect for evidence. Grow up.