Don't let the door hit you etc.
Absolutely not true. Faith, by definition, is believing in something without absolute proof, or having reasonable assurance that something is true. There are a lot of things in life that we believe in without absolute proof. For example, most of us believe that the earth rotates on an imaginary axis to give the effect of the sun rotating around the earth. We believe this to be true because many authority figures in our lives have faith that it is true and have passed that faith (reasonable assurance) on to us. How many of us have seen an electron? None, but we still believe in electricity and use it to enhance our lives greatly.
Wow ... that comment is insane on several levels ... faith is by definition the surrender of reason ??? What ?!?
From a Forbes reader:I would also point out that faith is by definition the surrender of reason; the one thing that most clearly separates humans from other animals!Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. - Saint Paul, Letter to the Hebrews 11:1 (King James Version)
The author would have us live in a morally depraved country where anything goes so long as a religious authority can justify it using some ancient text. No thank you. We dont need an American Taliban!Seen one ancient text youve seen them all, eh? They all say the same things? That is a prejudice, defined as a vagrant thought with no visible means of support."By their fruits ye shall know them is biblical - but is it an abandonment of reason? To the contrary, it is precisely logical. If I find a pear growing on a tree, its not going to matter how many times you insist its an oak tree - the thing speaks for itself. Likewise Christianity and the American polity - this polity is the fruit of Christianity, not of Islam. Islam has been the established religion in many countries, and it has never produced anything approximating a democratic republic except for Turkey, which is reverting to type even now. It is an absolute slander of Christianity to associate it with the Taliban. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that belief in any serious similarity between the two represents an abandonment of reason.
Anyone who would believe that would also probably believe that the Israelis had initiated the war with Gaza, and was committing war crimes by attacking civilians. Well, guess what! The Geneva Conventions are a prohibition of the type of behavior - using human shields, for example (which is precisely the intent of emplacing military rockets cheek-by-jowl with civilians) which Israels enemies routinely engage in in the hope that Israeli counter fire against said batteries will kill civilians.