We all come with assumptions—even the scientists. Love is merely a “construct” to someone with a materialistic world view (matter is all there is). But this assumption is not scientifically testable any more than the existence of God is. There is an illusion lurking here, and that is that any of us can be assumption-free, or prejudice-free, and systematically build up knowledge from “nowhere.” We’re never nowhere. Recognizing the illusion for what it is does not invalidate science, but it does cast doubt on an unacknowledged scientism.

I cannot reason myself to a conclusion if I am forced to take assumptions based on faith along the way — and in this context, by “assumption based on faith” I mean “that which cannot EVER be known, only believed”. We can infer much about the universe with small assumptions built on testable predictions, for example. Your metaphorical “heart” is simply an abstract construct — emotions are the byproducts of neurochemical exchanges, as painful, wondrous, or bizarre as they may be.

The fact that people are willing to die for their faith but not for their love of chocolate merely underscores my feelings regarding its irrationality. Consider the actions of uber-fanatical sports fans — the hooligans or the Brazilian soccer fans, etc. that will engage in violent, sometimes murderous behavior, because of their fervor. Their devotion is to something tangible and yet you would be hard-pressed to call their actions “rational”. (“My sports team won/lost therefore I should set things on fire.”). When you introduce individuals whose objects of devotion are INtangible, the irrationality of it becomes even greater.

Granted, the vast majority of people of faith are not setting things on fire or acting fanatically destructive — but the core basis is the same.

Pathways to truth cannot be found through faith, simply because that which requires faith cannot be KNOWN with certainty, only BELIEVED with fervor. For someone with faith, no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince them they are wrong — the only way for a faith-based belief to change is for the the believer to arbitrarily decide that they no longer believe in it. This is not a pathway to truth, it’s a jump to conclusions. Confirmation bias serves to amplify the fervor, but it does not make the belief any more valid.

The pathway to truth is carved away, like a sculpture. By eliminating those things which we know to NOT be true, we asymptotically flesh out the truth within. We can make educated guesses based on reasoned assumptions “X and Y are true, so I bet Z is true also”; but it would be completely irrational to state “Z is true” without making any reasonable efforts to disprove it, and carve away the chaff around it.

Defining faith as an irrational illusion doesn’t help the conversation. If that’s what faith is, then I reject it too. But I don’t think that’s what faith is. And I certainly wouldn’t share your description of irrational illusions as a “beautiful thing.”

I think there are good reasons to have faith/belief in some things and not others. You reject faith altogether, yet you say that to mix faith with reason is an error. According to whom? Is my heart off-limits to my brain? Pathways to truth and understanding are many and varied; this reality is perhaps not as cut-and-dried as you would like it to be.

People die for their faith. They don’t die for their like or dislike of chocolate. There’s more to the picture than you’re willing to take in.

The only thing that is evidence of is that millions of people have faith in a particular religion. To assert that it means anything beyond that would simply be an appeal to popularity. If you were to take Schroedinger’s Cat and ask 10,000,000 people whether they think it’s alive or dead, do their opinions change the hard facts of whether it ACTUALLY is alive or dead?

Faith, by definition, is a belief in the ABSENCE of evidence. It is the determined irrationality that makes faith a beautiful thing. Attempting to rationalize faith is an error, and is more or less not possible — some people believe it because they want to believe it — that’s it. Faith also does not need justification, any more than stating that you like chocolate does.

That said — I would tend to side with McGinn on this — religious explanations were invented by man to help us make sense of things that are outside our realm of knowledge or ability to know. There were many religions that were around long before Christianity was even conceptualized, and the fact that Christianity & Islam are the flavors du siècle does make them necessarily more factual or truthful. The fact that so many people across the world believe in both of those particular faiths could be simply attributed to the fact that we have a better infrastructure now — it’s much easier to spread those religions nowadays than it was back when the Greek Pantheon or Zoroasterism were popular.

But really, the main issue is this: your faith should neither be bolstered by how many people DO agree with you, nor threatened by how many people DON’T agree with you. It is what it is.

Doubting or challenging the illusion will only make it stronger if you continually reassure yourself that the illusion is real.

“not evidence of anything”? Of course it’s evidence of something. Maybe it’s evidence of one of the world’s most successful conspiracies, or evidence of a particular flaw in human nature (tendency to believe in something like God). My point is that it should not be ignored in such discussions. To do so reflects a very narrow sort of inquiry and/or makes one sound immensely ignorant. The widespread existence of belief too has to be addressed (which, to his credit, McGinn does later in the interview in his discussion about “cosmic loneliness”).