Role of Religion

[Eye 'n' Teepee]

Moreover, the analysis of belief and truth applies to facts as well. It is a fact that there is a chair below me and that it will support my weight. But, I must place belief or faith in that fact before I sit down and the fact is proven.

You could infer that the chair would support your weight by the design of the chair and your previous experience with other chairs. Of course, you could still be wrong this time, and the chair might be designed very poorly (or you're really fat).

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The existence of a chair that you can see and touch is not an extraordinary claim to make. On the other hand, the existence of an "invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do every minute of every day" (as George Carlin so greatly put it) is a claim with much greater implications to our perception of reality. If beliefs like this weren't so heavily ingrained in our culture and indoctrinated into our children, a person making such a claim would probably be thrown into the looney bin. I mean, even Christians laugh at Scientology, for example, without realizing the great irony in their doing so.