A Hollow Foundation

I get awfully confused when people say the word "Faith."

Not quite as confused as I get when people use vague phrases like "spiritual" or "rational" but I find that more often than not I don't know what people are talking about.

Here's my basic definition of faith: A belief without supporting evidence or proof. Am I wrong? Is the word not being used this way by the faithful? Maybe someone can help me out.

In any case, if my definition is correct... what's so virtuous about it? I mean seriously, if you're faithful in religion or whatever else, apply this principle to almost anything else and it wouldn't even make sense to you! I believe in x in spite of having no evidence to support my belief is not a responsible or enlightened way to think.

Despite often having no real evidence to back up certain beliefs, there are lots of reasons people give for holding those beliefs, and as of yet I've not heard one that passes the test for being a reasonable argument. Am I talking to the wrong people? Do the faithful just not take my criticism seriously because I'm not on their team? Maybe I'm not supposed to understand it.

Some of the reasons I've been given for believing in a god are as follows (and you can substitute god in for almost any supernatural claim and the same criticism will hold true)

• You can't prove he DOESN'T exist!! True, I can't. However, this is an argument from ignorance -- we can't use knowledge we don't have to make a positive claim, nor can we use a lack of refutation as reasonable justification for belief. Using this logic, I can claim that anything exists simply because we have no evidence to say otherwise. Don't believe in unicorns? Well you can't say there aren't any. Would I be justified in believing in unicorns? Probably not.
  
  Unfortunately, that's kind of the standard analogy atheists like to give to make belief in god seem ridiculous. It's not a very good analogy, as omnipotent supernatural beings that exist outside of time and space are in no way analogous to natural beings that may or may not exist in space in time. However, the fact that we have no evidence for either one of these things is the most important point to stress here.
  
•  If there's no god, how would we know right from wrong? This response always seems a little dishonest to me. Most human beings know full well that they have a knowledge of right and wrong, and it often doesn't mesh with the scriptures themselves. So, rather than modify their morality to fit the scriptures, the scriptures must be reinterpreted to fit the modern morality. It's a tale all too common. I was once told by a friend that without his faith in god, he would just go out and kill and rape whoever he'd like. I didn't believe him. Why? Because there are real world consequences for that kind of crap that no human being in his right mind would accept (incarceration, the loss of respect and love from friends and family, the empathy the attacker would have on the victim, the painful and not always successful process of rehabilitation, the shunning of the attacker by society even after time is served, etc.) Knowledge of right and wrong is something that's clearly a secular thing (separate from religion), and that's a good thing! In fact, it doesn't even have to have anything to do with religion! In any case, even if we had no way to tell right from wrong without a divine authority, it still would not prove that that authority exists.
  
• I have a personal relationship with [insert messiah here] and without him I would still be the horrible human being I used to be! This argument is often heard after someone goes through a difficult period in their life, and converts to the religion of their choice. "Being saved" basically. I have a lot of sympathy for this form of belief, though I still disagree with it. The main reason is that it's simply an anecdote, with all the biases in place. When someone is in a bad place in their life, there are many avenues of rehabilitation, and religion likes to set up camp in that territory. It works. Just look at the popularity of Alcoholics Anonymous, a religion disguised as drug rehab. The logic falls apart when you realize that this particular argument assumes its assertion right there in its premise: "I believe in god because I have a relationship with the god I believe in." Would that be good enough for any other belief?
  
• You just gotta have faith

When all is said and done, it seems to come down to this. I've left out all of the anti-evolution arguments that people use, because those are all buried as far as I'm concerned. If you don't believe in evolution, just bring to mind any of your favourite anti-evolution arguments and cross-check it with talkorigins.org.

Anyway, once you start telling me that you believe in god because of your faith, and that that's a good thing, there's one last step you have to take before you convince me your argument is valid: convince me that faith is a good thing, a good way to construct a philosophical reality. Good luck with that, based of the definition I've given (which I'd still my faithful friends to clarify). All the logical fallacies, bad evidence, philosophical filler and scripture you can lay on top of your belief simply does not change the fact that the reason you believe what you do is based on faith. That's a hollow foundation, and all the justification in the world cannot change that without fixing the foundation with scientific evidence. Judaism alone is a huge pill to swallow without evidence for the truth of its scriptures, and piling Christianity, Islam or Mormonism on top of that certainly doesn't help the case. (I exclude other religions from this criticism based on my unfamiliarity with them, not because they are unworthy of criticism. For all I know, they're just as wrong).