The very definition of faith is "Complete trust". If you doubt, then you do not have faith. Faith comes AFTER doubts, and AT THE END of questions. When you have no more questions because you believe wholly, then that is faith. Faith is the result of the search for proof, and it is the zealot and the fanatic who have faith in something before putting it to the test. That is what is known as "blind faith".
That being said, I am an atheist Humanist. I do not believe in God, because the untruths and lies that I have found in religion have satisfied my mind to the conclusion that there is not and can be no God. I believe in mankind, because this world is occupied by man, and all advancements were made by the minds and the hands of men and women. The visible acts of any God exist in stories thousands of years old, and have convenient excuses as to why they won't happen again, and tell people that to question it or to question God (as your dilemma presents itself) is either heresy or blasphemy.
I believe in Man because it is very distasteful how every act of a man is attributed to the influence of either a great God or a great Enemy; if a man creates something useful and beautiful, it is because God was "working through him", and if a man does something low and wicked, then it was some Devil or another "working through him".
So where does that leave Man, when we allegedly have free will? All good things are God, and all bad things are some Devil, but without direct physical proof of the existence of a God or of a Devil, even religion points to the things men and women DO as "proof". Religion believes in one deity or another, but where is the belief in man and our accomplishments? When do we get the credit for our actions, and when are we responsible for our misdeeds? What are we, chopped liver?
As Marilyn Manson said: "I can't believe in the things that don't believe in me.", and I refuse to believe in any person or institution that tells people to stop thinking, or to only think a certain way, or that thinking a certain way is punishable.
My faith is in reason, because reason is our basic tool for survival. If we are cold, we don't pray for warmth, we make a fire. If we are hungry, we don't pray for food, we hunt or go to the market. We use our intellect to solve our problems. It is by the mind and the hands of men and women that mankind survives.
I believe in the nobility of the human spirit, and in mankind's will to prevail. Yes, men and women exist who do wicked things, but in the end those wicked acts are always snuffed out, because enough men and women grow tired of the tyranny and victimization, rise up and destroy the person or institution that is trying to harm them. We have protected ourselves from each other from the dawn of mankind, and we will protect ourselves from the bad ones amongst us until the final day that mankind exists.
With that, I am not trying to change the way anyone believes. There are religious forums on this very website, and I stay out of them because I won't offend people by entering their place of discussion and interrupting their goings-on, just as I wouldn't want someone of religion to interrupt anything I am doing to try and inform me of the error of my ways.
Moving on, I do not trust religion because religion has subdued the world multiple times, and every time that has happened, horror has resulted; when Sun worship was the greatest religion, human sacrifices were made. People were slaughtered like cattle for the blessing of the Sun. When Christianity swept the world, the only thing that had killed more people than the Inquisition, the Crusades and the paranoia of the Church was the Plague. People were again slaughtered like cattle "to save them". They were burned alive to allegedly save them from the "hellfire" of the afterlife. It was pure insanity, and it was all done with the greatest faith in God. The saying at the time was "God wills it!" Then, when the Third Reich attempted to sweep the world, it was done under the budding religion "Thule" that thankfully went defunct after the fall of the Nazi Regime. (Anyone who wishes to contest that statement, please message me directly and I will happily discuss it. It is a topic too broad to go into on this thread.)
History has proven it time and again: Any time religion becomes powerful, the horrors of persecution are in its immediate wake. The "unfaithful" and "impure" are identified and slaughtered under the justification that it is the will of God. Every. Single. Time. There is no example in history of a great religious era where the "unfaithful" were not persecuted. Although it also follows that mankind inherently gathers in groups and shuns "outsiders". This is also an historical fact, and anyone who wishes to talk about that as well, please message me directly.
I have defined faith, and I have outlined my personal belief, so I think anything else I say would just be redundant. If you want to discuss anything further, feel free to message me.
