we discussed briefly the dichotomy between Faith and Belief.

Faith, as I said, just is, and cannot be proven or disproven. You need not have faith in the transmission of your car, because the engineering behind it is quantifianble and verifiable. You may not understand it completely, but it is possible for someone to understand it completely.

Faith- true faith- also requires nothing of you, places no demands on you. You don’t have to do any external action X (Like, be circumcised, or kill a Jew, or grow a beard)to acquire it, nor to maintain it, nor to prove it to others, because by definition it is something that cannot be proven.

Faith also is constant and consitent, and exists outside of your acceptance or abandonment of it. When you accept it it is there, when you reject it, it is still there, and when you accept it, again, it has been there, unchanging. Your faith does not leave you, you leave it. Your faith does not come back to you, you come back to it.

Contrast this with belief. Because, for instance, Belief requires you to- for instance, compare your belief to the belief of others. it is possible for you to believe one thing, and for another person to believe an utterly contradictory thing.if you have something you call “Faith” and your “Faith” contradicts someone else’s “faith”, then that is not faith, but belief. That is the simplest litmus test I can establish.

I could, for instance, say that I have Faith that the universe has a creator, and that the creator’s thoughts and actions are utterly beyond my comprehension, but even that would be quantifying something that cannot be quantified, and drag something pure and ethereal into the level of something mundane and earthly, just to try to wrap inferior human minds around it, so I won’t and don’t do that- especially as that action in itself invites others to dispute it. To attempt to quantify faith can only sully it to the level of belief.

True faith doesn’t need that, and never will.

Belief, on the other hand, must be vocalized, and each creed has it’s own set of beliefs which can be vocalized, and if anyone disagrees with that set of beliefs, they will establish new ones and vocalize those new beliefs.

Most of the division among humans is a result of dispute over those beliefs. Sure, beliefs can be innocuous, but in the main, they are toxic, and cause toxic effect. Especially when those beliefs are given divine power, and the backing of a supposed divinity to commit acts of war, oppression or physical violence against those who believe contradictory things.

I need to flesh this out more, but I hope that people are beginning to understand why more and more, I find belief to be inherently toxic.