from a google group I found today:
It is superstition and magic -- faith -- that sustain all life,
actually. Very few of us would bother getting up in the morning if we
did not have faith that we were going to have a productive and/or
entertaining day. Without faith that there is a future, there is no
reason to continue living.
Even the vaunted "scientific method" is, in the end, religion -- a very
*useful* religion, that has resulted in lots of nice goodies for many
people, but one that is fundamentally based upon an unprovable religious
belief (that the world is rational and can be explained via logic and
mathematics).
I suppose we could differentiate between useful religious beliefs
(such as those which increase the wealth and peace of the Earth) and
non-useful religious beliefs (those which decrease the wealth and
peace of the Earth), but then we would in turn be practicing yet
another religion -- Utilitarianism -- which, similar to all other religious
beliefs, is a matter of faith.
Even you practice a religious belief based on faith rather than
anything provable -- faith that religion is bunk. You are a recursive
function, my friend, practicing religion at the same time you decry
it. Interesting.
As for me, I pick and choose the beliefs I will accept on faith in order
to discard those that are unnecessary drivel or which contradict what my
eyes tell me. But even that faith in my eyes is faith, not reality, since
quantum mechanics tells us that the very act of viewing changes reality.