Faith is the basic tenant of every religion. They boast about it like it's an amazing thing to have, yet no religion or ideology has convinced me that it is. Lets look at it for a second.
Google says "strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof."
Proof. This is critical if you want someone else to believe you. If you have a spiritual revelation and feel the hand of God strike your heart one day, that's great. You believe that. But the second you say "I had this personal experience, thus you should join my religion", you're going to have to demonstrate why. Nobody should believe something based on fuzzy feelings someone has.
2nd point- "faith" breeds naivety.
"But you have faith that the sun will come up every day. You have faith that when you go to sleep, you'll wake up the next day you have faith when. . ."
No. No I don't have faith. In any way, shape, or form. I have reason to trust that the sun will come up- because unlike a God- I've seen it, other people have seen it, it's been verified to show itself every morning since the dawn of it being documented, and even if I couldn't see it, it's heat/radiation could be tested. You can't see air, but you know that it's there every time you take a breath.
I trust that my car will start when I put my keys in it because of various factors- I just dropped $1200 in it, it started yesterday, it's a reasonably new car, being an 05, and it hasn't had any real damage.
No reasonable person has faith. They can always see there's logical reasons why they do the things they do. Sometimes the factors just seem like so many, it's impossible not to have faith. But you rationalize based off things you know.
Having faith would be a person who isn't a physicist driving their car into a brick wall without an airbag at 90 mph and having faith God will stop their face from smashing into the steering wheel.
Having faith would be a person who plays Russian Roulette blindfolded, with all 6 rounds in the chamber, but believes wholeheartedly one of them will be a dud because Hoobajoo in the sky is watching them.
3rd point- People will boast about faith like it's the best holier-than-thou thing out there, but when someone has more faith than them in a different belief, it's terrible.
The faithful believe God communicates with them in a number of ways- telepathically, emotionally, subconsciously, spiritually, whatever. You hear God telling you to give to the homeless and be a good person. Someone else hears God telling them to be strong and don't let anyone trump their faith (insert Kim Davis here). Someone else hears God telling them to be a soldier, and fight to not let anyone seem superior to your religion (insert Muslims here).
When cherry-picking Bible verses, it's easy to go "my God tells me to be a good person". But other people with faith in their religious books will take out their own cherry picked verses and say "my God tells me to fight for his honor." How can you determine who is really talking to God? Because one is aggressive and one isn't? They're actually following their religion to a tee. They're doing as their book commands, backed by their unbreakable faith. Their book says in it that their religion will be the last one, thus they hear things from their God about final solutions.
Faith translates to "I know without knowing." I don't think I can ever be convinced this is a good thing to have. The higher the degree of faith, the more closed minded and defensive the person becomes. The more secured in their beliefs that hold no bearing on reality they become.
Faith is why we have grown adults who think the Earth is only 6,000 years old. Faith is why we have suicide bombers. Faith is why we have/had religious wars. My god has a bigger dick than yours. Why? Because I have faith that he does.
Faith is the bridge that takes a good hearted person to do bad things based off no logical connections.
