Transcript [00:00] Faith, faith, faith, faith. Why do so [00:02] many people turn to faith? People turn [00:04] to faith partly because it promises an [00:06] answer to one of the biggest questions [00:08] in our lives. How should we live? But [00:11] can faith actually distinguish between [00:12] life-serving moral answer and [00:14] life-deteriorating one? The thing is [00:16] that faith, by definition, means [00:17] accepting claims without empirical [00:20] evidence. So, think about it. If a [00:21] person can assert a life-serving moral [00:23] claim without presenting evidence and [00:25] call it truth, what stops someone else [00:28] from using the same standard to justify [00:30] the opposite? By what standards can a [00:32] person of faith who defends individual [00:34] rights on that basis argue against a [00:36] religious servant who claims that God [00:38] told them to eliminate someone's [00:39] freedom? That God told them that people [00:41] of certain race do not have rights? That [00:43] people of certain gender do not have [00:44] rights? That you do not have rights? [00:47] Both of them have already agreed that [00:48] evidence is not required to claim the [00:50] truth. Because faith has no filter, no [00:53] objective metric or criteria, I believe [00:55] it's therefore it's true can be used to [00:57] justify virtually any claim. And thus, [00:59] just imagine how the arguments between [01:01] two people with different belief systems [01:02] is supposed to look like. I am right and [01:05] you are wrong because my God said so. [01:06] Now, I am right and you are wrong [01:08] because my God said so. When one denies [01:11] the necessity of empirical proof to [01:13] assert truth, everything becomes [01:15] permissible. What you can defend with [01:17] faith, someone else can attack with [01:18] faith. And the dangerous part is that by [01:20] that standard, it will be equally valid.
When faith is the standard, everything becomes permissible. Once «I believe it» counts as proof, there's no filter—nothing to separate a harmless claim from a horrific one. That’s one of the dangerous parts of accepting faith as a moral guide—it can never tell the difference.
