Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Religion is induced insanity.
Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic.
Faith itself is a horrible mechanism that stunts the growth of ideas. It also stunts the act of questioning, and it does this by pushing the idea that you have to have faith - and that nothing has to be proven.
Faith is not a commodity that you either have or don't have enough of, or the right kind of. It's an ongoing process. The opposite of faith is despair.
Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.
I think when you're dealing with faith, you want to be as responsible and sensitive to the material as you can.
My simple point is that I judge a person's faith by how they live their life, not by the tenets of their religion. I've watched the holiest of people walk past somebody in need or treat their staff mean. To me, the beauty of faith is only seen when people live it consistently or struggle to do so.
I think that the practice of religion allows one to discover emotional and psychological truth of a kind not available in the secular world.
Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.
Faith is something that's been created to help people get through life.