all my beliefs are rooted in evidence, and not in faith. Why do I think this way? It seems almost silly to ask such a question. Does it really make sense to base your beliefs on things for which you have no good evidence? "Faith in God" is not the same as belief in science or friends or even everyday assumptions like "a fish did not write this essay." Having faith that you believe in something astoundingly incredible that is both unproved and unprovable is true. That is simply not reasonable to me. I will never base my beliefs on such stretches of imagination, because it so easily leads to error and self-deception. Though my heart may tell me many useful things about me, only my mind has anything useful to say about the outside world. Moreover, it tells me that God, like talking fish, is the grandest of fictions. I suspect that many people think they need to believe in a god for life to have meaning, and this may very well be the only reason they believe in God. More than a suspicion, this theory has been confirmed several times by the open admission of believers with whom I have spoken. However, it is not rational to believe in something only because you need to, especially when it stands a good chance of not being true. It is unwise to build an emotional investment in any idea that could be wrong, lest you bind yourself to a bad idea that can mire you in error and misery. We can all easily see that a compulsive gambler "needs" to believe that he'll win in order to keep placing his bets, but that need has no correspondence with the truth. If the odds are 10 to 1 against, no matter what a gambler needs, he is not likely to be right about winning the bet. Since I have always lived my life with meaning and joy, without needing a belief in God or an afterlife, I know that such beliefs are unnecessary. And I have also personally encountered hundreds of other people who find ample meaning in life without needing to b...
