Is "faith" a "dirty word" to all NON-Christians, especially Atheists?

Question

An Atheist just told me that "Faith is a dirty word, and people should be ashamed of it."
Is his opinion representative of most non-Christians, or is he a minority in his opinion?

Answer 1

It's not a dirty word of course, and he was just winding you up. Don't let it bother you.

The trouble with faith, though, from an atheist's viewpoint, is that it can be defined as believing something to be absolutely true in the complete absence of evidence. That, for the faithful, might be seen as a virtue. For the atheist, it is nonsense. It is a matter of perspective.

Answer 2

Its not a 'dirty' word but it depends who is using it and what context. Everyone has faith in something if not a particular belief system then a partner, political movement, sports team or even just that the sun will rise tomorrow.

What troubles people about faith is that some people will try and force their faith on to you, be it by persuasion or by threats.

Faith is nothing to be ashamed of, it is however a private matter and shouldn't be pushed into the faces of those who do not ascribe to it. The world is a big place and there is more than enough room for the millions of faiths out there.

Answer 3

Calling faith a dirty word suggests that it is lurid in some way - that's weird. About the most negative word I could ascribe to faith would be unfortunate. When I consider how devout or how much energy some put into their religion based on faith I wonder what these people may have achieved with that same passion if it weren't for their interest in church. If their strength of conviction and belief actually fought for something worthwhile. I'm not thinking of the many campaigns that Christians already adhere to such as anti-abortion, I mean where there energy and input could actually contribute to society, not create more stumbling blocks. I'm thinking humanitarian efforts that aren't influenced by religious dogma or doctrine.

Answer 4

I wouldn't go so far to say it's a dirty word. It can be a dangerous word. However, more importantly it is not a virtuous word as many play it up to be.

It should also be noted that Christians aren't the only ones with faith in a higher being. I doubt Jews would call faith a dirty word if they have faith in Adonai.

Answer 5

I know a few "dirty" words that you'll probably not hear me say, so I DO understand the concept, but I don't consider "faith" to be one of those words. It seems like a good usable word to me. I don't like using what I call "absolutist" terms such as "all, always, never, only" most of the time, since even one exception to an absolute makes the usage a lie. "Faith" is a word to describe a personal quality and I think we all have the right to our personal qualities so long as we don't use those qualities to hurt others. I would probably be sensitive in my communications with this atheist friend and not use the word that he finds objectionable, just so I could continue to be able to talk with him.
Many people don't see any distinction between "faith" and "belief". I see "belief" as a word for a single incidence where "faith" would be for a long-term pattern, as in "I have a belief and my belief gives me faith."
I do vastly prefer facts to beliefs and hope to faith. Facts tell me what I did yesterday and what I can do today, but I have to have some kind of belief to plan for tomorrow.
Faith is --for me--usually an avoidable word. I don't usually need to use it.
There are extremists in the world in whose mouths "faith" could indeed be a very bad, harmful word, but it is actually the other things associated with faith that do the harm, not faith itself.
Here are a couple of Christian quotes about faith from the memory of this old non-Christian:
"Faith, hope and love. Of these the greatest is love"
"Faith without works is dead."
And one of my own paraphasing:
With enough faith, you could move mountains. With some love, you could appreciate the mountains where they are.
It would be rare that a person would get through life without ANY faith of any kind, at least faith in oneself. Maybe that's your atheist friend's real objection: not "faith", but what the faith is in.
I find that people who want to make words dirty are often people who don't communicate well or people with closed minds. Closed-mindedness affects religious people and non-religious people alike.

Answer 6

There are other people of faith than Christians, they are OK with faith... But,

Many educated people equate faith with at least willful ignorance. I think this is because of the false controversies surrounding things like evolution, but it spreads out from there. They consider "because God says so" to be an irrational answer to any question, and it is non-rational: and on the face of it is not a product of logic. People who have no faith consider this to be non-rational even in regard to things that have no proof, and on which their own opinions are essentially non-rational.

Many people are annoyed by evangelism. I can kind of see why they are, since faith is a gift of the Lord and you can't give it to them... But it is hard to strike a balance between demanding that others display faith they do not have and being available in case they want to inform their faith. People who do not live by faith find it impossible to believe you are offering them a gift out of love, rather than pestering them to make brownie points in front of your religious friends.

All in all YES. Faith is a dirty word to most people who do not live by some religious faith, even though they must exercise faith everytime they hit an elevator button and *believe* it will take them upstairs safely. Or listen to the news (how do they know that stuff happened?) Or plan their weekend by the weather report (what do they know about weather forecasting and the location of the jet stream *personally*?)

Religious faith is not anti-rational. At the very least people who do not live by faith should recognize that the peoples of existing faiths have a lifestyle that has persisted for millenia, against competition by many other fly-by-night ways to run a community and a life. it has been tested against other options continually, and survived as a winning way. It has been selected for by human dynamics for thousands of years as a winner.

Chin Up! :) we are not of the world, merely in it.

Answer 7

Faith is the only thing which is common to all persons believers or not.
All people live only on faith in themselves or others. How can faith be a dirty word? Those who demaen any faith lives by only a faith that they are doing the correct thing though they do not have any scientific explation as to why most people continue to have faith.

Answer 8

There is a battle brewing on this issue. Sam Harris wrote a book called "The End of Faith" and Richard Dawkins wrote "The God Delusion". So yes, there is a concerted intellectual effort to turn faith into a dirty word.

The problem is that this can not be answered on religious grounds. You either ignore it and keep your faith. Or you have to show that no faith is, is faith in itself.

Answer 9

Difference between faith and dogma in my view.

I have faith that when I go to work my employer will in good will challenge me with harder work as I go along, faith they will pay me, etc.

Dogma is a bad thing. Dogma is a dirty word.

The best example of this is the Evolution v Creatioinism debate, because of the dogma surronding Genesis 1:26-27 and Genesis 2:7 some christians cling to Creationism,

but there are many Christians who are theistic evolutionists,

why?

Why do some christians believe evolution happened and some don't?

They share the same faith but not the same dogma.

When presented with legitimate scientific evidence a person who I would consider "normal" would change their mind. People of dogma have such high resistance they refuse to change their world view,

so in my view dogma is a dirty word, and talking to creationists who cling to a dogma, I don't like doing that really as much, very hard to trust someone like this for me,

I have perhaps 2 friends on Earth who are Creationists

Answer 10

I don't think faith is a dirty word no more than I think science is a dirty word; both are merely just words. To me, faith just deals more with personal belief. To say that faith is a dirty word and that people should be ashamed of it is an extremist position.