Gullibility and “You Just Have to Have Faith”

If you have ever debated religion with someone you will probably have heard the line “you’ve just got to have faith”, this is usually the last line of defence once you have swatted away all their arguments and dubious evidence. My usual response to this is simply “why?”. The very definition of faith is a strong belief based upon spiritual convictions rather than proof; why is it so noble to believe something without any evidence? Unfortunately the response to my question is usually as inane and convoluted as the initial statement, usually along the lines of: “because salvation comes through faith in Jesus”, and questioning this usually brings us back to “faith”.

Why is it that faith never seems to be questioned, due to the nature of faith alone you would think people would occasionally wonder to themselves “is my belief valid”. I came across a way to try and fight back against this today ( I would love to claim it as my own idea but the origin is actually from JT Eberhard), a simple question that will hopefully give a moments pause to the devout theist: “what differentiates your faith from gullibility”. I would like to believe that this would work, that it would point out to the believers that their faith is an unfounded belief, however, I am a cynic, I imagine after a short pause you would probably still get hit with some banality, some excuse for the theist not to question their precious faith.

“Science adjusts it’s views based on what’s observed, Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved”

                                                            - Tim Minchin

“Faith means not wanting to know what is true”

                                                            - Friedrich Nietzsche