How Dangerous is Faith?

     I'm currently reading a book called The End of Faith, it's the kind of book where another atheist makes an attempt to "kill God."  Every once in a while I like to read something like this just to see if any of the ideas are new or if it's all the same stuff rehashed in a new format (for this book the latter would be true.)

     What really stood out to me was this statement, aside from being completely absurd it holds the key to many an atheists logic (well at least many of them that I have met.)

     "...the culprit is clearly the doctrine of faith itself.  Whenever a man imagines that he need only believe the truth of a proposition, without evidence-that unbelievers will go to hell, that Jews drink the blood of infants-he becomes capable of anything." ---The End of Faith, page 85

     Let us disregard the off beat comment about Jews here and focus on the problem with this logic.  Christians do not have faith without evidence, at least not all of us!  An atheist once told me that it is impossible to find proof for God, that evidence for God destroys faith.  Sort of like the Babble fish (The following quoted from the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy written by Douglas Adams;

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You do exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. Q.E.D."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God.  Atheists(At least a good amount I have met) truly think that is what God has said, maybe not in those words, but they think that comment sums up Biblical statements like Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

     What people discount is the many Bible versus that attribute the greatness of creation to God.  They discount the eye witness accounts to Jesus' death and resurrection.  Christians can have evidence that supports faith, it is okay, and I firmly believe that God prefers it that way.

     It saddens me that people will read this book and trumpet it as a great literary work.  Many already have including book reviewers for the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Economist.  I hope they truly made a mistake when they said things like "...I felt relieved when I read it, vindicated..."

Statements like this should never bring feeling of relief:

"The Gravity of Jewish suffering over the ages, culminating in the Holocaust, makes it almost impossible to entertain any suggestion that Jews might have brought their troubles upon themselves.  This is, however in a rather narrow sense, the truth."---The End of Faith, page 93

     The Holocaust is the fault of the Jewish people?!  This is a relieving thought to Natalie Angier of the New York Times.  I am sorry my money went to support this man, but I am encouraged to see no matter how much times change the argument against God will always be the same and always be wrong.