Quote:
Originally Posted by Timmy
Is faith good? Is a lack of faith evil? Or does it depend on what we have faith in?
It depends entirely on what we have faith in! Or does it? Well, we learned in my first post (about Thomas's bum rap) that we should always believe what we are told, without "seeing". We will be blessed. OK, I'm having some fun with ya, here. Of course it matters what we believe. Of course we should not believe everything we hear! That would be crazy. No, we must choose carefully what to believe, and what to reject. (I'll leave that choosing as an exercise for the reader!  )
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That wasn't a very good answer, was it? Not complete, anyway. Didn't address the second question: is
lack of faith
evil? I would say no. Not in general. And certainly not if the lack of faith is justified! Would a lack of faith in the Quran be evil? Or the Book of Mormon? I think you get my point.
Now, to explore the first question further, would it be evil to
have faith in something that isn't really true? Now that's a bit tricky. If you were simply mistaken, I wouldn't call it evil. Just mistaken! But suppose you actually know that it's not true, and yet you have faith in it anyway. That's kind of weird, though. Can that even happen? Could I have faith in leprechauns?
But how about this: suppose you know something isn't true, but you
act like you have faith in it. You
pretend! Is
that evil? Well, I don't think I'd go that far. But it's probably not exactly good!