Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breath life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded, not of thinking, rational men.
Terry Goodkind, “Chainfire” Chapt 48, pg 489
Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child-mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be, in later-years, relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so; since a superstition is so intangible you can not get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.
– Hypatia of Alexandria
