I'm not necessarily trying to defend religion here. I personally am struggling with religion in general myself, and agree with the OP that euthanasia should be legal because that's a person's choice. I just want to point out that I agree with you that it's stupid to believe things without evidence, but that's not what faith is supposed to be. True faith weighs the evidence and chooses to believe something despite not having complete proof - it doesn't mean they have no proof at all. Everything requires faith at some point in time - for example, evolutionists have faith that science is reliable and always produces logical conclusions, and moreover, trust that their own minds are able to observe absolute truth even though they supposedly simply evolved from nothing. In other words, if you argue that belief in God is only a product of evolution, you have to conceed that your belief in no God is also the product of evolution, and is no more valid than a belief in God. Everyone who tries to disprove something has faith that their own beliefs aren't disproved by the same thing. If you're interested in reading about it, take a look at Timothy Keller's book "The Reason for God."
At any rate, whether you believe there is a God or not, I would also like to say it's ridiculous to try to convert people/get as many converts as possible in expectance of a reward from God. Sadly, there are many people who live this way, but I've met a few people who seek to make converts not for a reward, but because they genuinely care about other people. After all, if someone you cared about was restling with hopelessness and you had a way to make them happy, wouldn't you want to share that way with them?
Not that any of that proves or disproves God, just sharing a bit of nuance because even if God doesn't exist, faith isn't evil or stupid - it's necessary to believe in anything at all.
I'm terribly sorry if this post made no sense at all, I have a habit of getting carried away with pointless argumentation and tbh I have absolutely no clue what I believe
I'm not going to entertain the idea that the faith I have in my senses not being compromised and hence belief that I even exist is remotely close to faith in a God. I've been religious before and I know precisely the logic chain behind the belief, and over time as I grew up, it convinced me less and less, rightfully so.
You're firstly mixing up trust and faith. Trust is a provisional and evidence-based stance that is open to revision just like I trust my eyesight until I am given reason it's compromised; trusting a result produced by science while expecting replication and willing to drop it on counter-evidence. You can quite literally replicate all scientific discoveries yourself if you really wanted to and no longer need that trust.
Faith is fundamentally different to the above. Faith is endorsing a claim without evidence. A sort of "this is my faith and it is what it is, you cannot prove me wrong" and if you are so steadfast on zero revisions / dispute all counter-evidence, then that is a terrible thing.
Religious slop is always full of category mistakes. Methodological reliance isn't faith. It is earned trust from a track record of prediction, replication, error-correction, and all of mankind's progression. If science just didn't work, so would all reliance, and progression wouldn't be possible. The bottom line is, science is
trusted and God is blindly followed on incredibly poor evidence. The evidence for God is seriously similar to that of the tooth fairy, unicorns, and leprechauns. Freud's psychosexual stages are more reasonable to believe in, by far.
Faith doesn't weigh the evidence. There is no true evidence to weigh in God's favour. Believing in God is a terribly evil thing: you at some point must give in and say "I believe this wholeheartedly, it is true, right, and I will not be shaken by anything else". That is what faith is. It's why Christian and Muslim scholars infamously preach that if science somehow disproved God (it can't), then science is wrong.
Evolution is why we think, obviously, but the point is far simpler. We then establish warrant to think that which is why science and philosophy/maths has propelled us into civilisation. When we believed in God mindlessly, we didn't get anywhere.
Faith is absolutely harmful. Once a high-confidence, unfalsifiable belief claims authority over your life, you'll be in trouble. Coercing because you care is silly. You can be sincere yet still wrong. Religion only exists by anchoring the belief in claims that won't be surrendered despite counter-evidence.
It is worse than deadly diseases. Countless have died at the hands of it and it's impossible to eradicate.
