31- You emphasize so much on doubt and that your mission is to make people doubt their beliefs. Don’t you think that this isn’t polite? It means that you only cause confusion. 

Teaching people to doubt is not impolite. Teaching them to have faith is impolite. We come from a religious culture that has all its values upside down. 

What is faith? Faith is belief in something without evidence. Once you have the evidence it is no more faith but knowledge. For example, there are people who believe in the Bigfoot. The Bigfoot is said to be a human-like (humanoid) creature living in North America. There is not enough evidence of the existence of such creature, yet some believe that it exists. If this belief is strong it becomes faith. 

But what will happen if we actually find such creature? Do you say that you “believe” that Bigfoot exists? No, at that time you “KNOW” that it exists. Knowledge is based on facts. Belief is based on hearsay, suppositions and lack of facts. Primitive people invented myths and believed in them. They built religions around them. Even today some people believe that snakes are gods, some believe in cows as sacred beings, some believe that rats are the spirits of their ancestors, others believe that a black meteorite fallen from sky is sacred. Muslims believe that Muhammad split the moon, they believe that he performed Vudoo as soon as he was born and started to praise Allah. Jews believe that Moses parted the Red Sea, Christians believe that Jesus rouse from the dead and ascended to heaven, etc. All of these religious people believe that Noah collected all the living animals in his ark while the whole earth was flooded for 40 days. They don’t doubt the absurdity of these beliefs. How could the polar bear go to Canaan? Who informed the Australian Kangaroos to head to Middle East? How these animals got there? All these stories are absurd. There is no evidence for any of them, yet people believe in them, because belief does not require evidence.

Take the example of Mi’arj. Is this scientific? If God is supposed to be omnipresent, why Muhammad had to go somewhere else to meet him? Is Jerusalem the gateway to Heaven? If Muhammad traveled on a winged steed in one night to get to heaven then the heaven must be a physical place close to Earth. You cannot travel outside the Earth’s atmosphere with wings. Wings will only take you were there is air. With so many mapping, air travels satellite photos why we haven’t find this heaven? If heaven is not a geographic place but a spiritual realm, why Muhammad needed the winged steed? The hadith says that Muhammad met Allah from behind the curtain. If Allah was behind the curtain then he cannot be omnipresent. An omnipresent god cannot be behind, in front, under or over anything. He is everywhere. This whole story is so naïf that it is mind boggling anyone still believe in it. But faith blinds. If someone said a similar story about someone else, no Muslim would believe it, but since it is about Muhammad, all lies are truth. The bigger the lie, the better it is.    

These charlatans calling themselves prophets wanted to keep people ignorant. They did not have our interest in their heart. They were a bunch of liars and impostors. They kept telling you it is not up to you to test God, but God must test you. They praised people for believing without questioning. The stronger was this belief, the better it was. Of course it was better for them, because people did not dare to question them and expose their lies. Now that we are mature, we have to ask these questions. We have to become skeptic and doubt whatever we were told and accepted as true. This does not mean to reject everything. It means we should ask for facts and stop believing things for which we have no evidence. It’s time to “know” not to “believe”. Doubt is the path to knowledge. If you don’t doubt you don’t ask and if you don’t ask you’ll not learn. The world owes to men and women who doubted. We owe to Galileo to Copernicus to Newton, to Darwin, to Einstein and to all those who doubted what they were told and found the facts. Now we no more BELIEVE that the Earth is flat but we KNOW that it is round. 

[This subject is explained in more detail under the section FREETHINKING]

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