I disagree with this article. > This type of thing [faith] would not stick around within our societies were it not useful. Cancer sticks around but it's not u

I disagree with this article. > This type of thing [faith] would not stick around within our societies were it not useful. Cancer sticks around but it's not useful. > If I were in Nazi Germany, the rational thing would be to not help any jew. This is absurd. Depending on what you knew at the time, it may have been by far the rational thing to help jews. Because then when it's over, you could claim you were one of the few who helped, and wouldn't be as guilty as all the rest. > People who have faith have one absolute advantage over those who do not - their path is always clear. They know what they are doing, they know why they are doing it, and even when they doubt, they can always fall back in blind trust in some invisible thing. I fail to see how this is an advantage. Suppose you had a well-defined, crystal-clear path walking off a cliff. That's good just because it's clear? Also I'm not convinced that faithful actually have clear paths; they're just as confused as the rest of us, but they don't like to think about that. > And they are happier, because as each step along their route unfolds and turns out to be right, their faith increases and their belief that the problems will always be overcome with more faith grows. And this is where I suspect this author is simply a troll. Is it really the case that the faithful are happier than other people? This contradicts my experience. I think the faithful are probably no more or less happy than anyone else. Indeed, frequently faith is a source of unhappiness, like any time they are faced with something that contradicts their faith. This statements also claims "as each step along their route unfolds and turns out to be right", but actually they are right less often than rational people! And the author has ignored all the times when they turn out to be wrong. Being wrong more often than rational people isn't a bad thing? > Don't dismiss blind belief in something. It's an extra-ordinary tool. It's fundamentally human, and when you rationalize it away, you are are taking away one of those quirks that make us human - those strange things like love and laughter and revenge that should not be there, but are, and separate us from machines. Personally, I see faith as a meme, and we are seeing its tricks in action here. It's taking something that's not extraordinary or useful and making it sound extraordinary and useful. It's not, but it needs you to think it is to survive.