Lostcolony, I believe you are using a far more nebulous and encompassing definition for the word compared to dqpb who I think operates with a more concrete and narrow definition.
Lostcolony, I believe you are using a far more nebulous and encompassing definition for the word compared to dqpb who I think operates with a more concrete and narrow definition.
1. When faith is claimed to have a direct physical effect. For example, faith healing in which ones faith conjures divine intervention, or in the Christian Science sense where faith directly alters your physical reality, or in The Secret where faith in having something "attracts" it to you, etc. The malware in this idea is that it corrupts the very concept of evidence. If you try to find evidence that it doesn't work - by having faith and not observing the proposed effects - it's nullified by saying you just didn't have enough faith.
2. When faith exploits our innate social impulses. For example: Jesus died for your sins, how cruel of you to deny him. Or if you don't have faith you will be excluded from the club of Heaven and you will be permanently separated from all your friends and family who were true believers. Or when not having faith alienates you from your existing friends, family, and community. The malware here is that it short-circuits your natural process of observe->think->decide and turns it into observe->consider-social-contract->think->decide. If someone presents you with a good argument for why something is or isn't true, but it violates the social contract of your faith (ensuring your initial impulse is to feel guilt and fear), then you are short-circuited from thinking.
Back to politics, QAnon is an obvious example, but even something as 'comparatively' sane as trickle down economics suffers both of those as well (for the first, "it's not working" - "we just have to cut rich peoples' taxes more! And quit spending so much on social services!"; for the second, "we should tax the rich more and spend it on social services" "What are you, some sort of socialist?! This is -America-, the best goddamn country in the world! Love it or leave it!").
If dnub cares to explicitly call out religion, as a specific subset and distinct from faith, the arguments I'd make are largely the same. I see very little difference in the evidence between "I believe there is a knowable God(s) who would have me be kind", "I believe there is a concept of 'god' that would have me be kind", and "I believe being kind is the 'right' thing to do"; none of them rely on refutable claims.
Maybe what you mean is 'blind faith', i.e., a rejection of evidence contrary to what you want to believe, to which I will again point out is not unique to religion, by pointing to politics, and the quote of our past president "what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening", and the millions willing to accept that.