"Faith-Based" a Bad Word to the Progressive Left

The Kos Kids had a bad day yesterday when one of the diarists posted an item claiming that the U.S. Navy was about to participate on an attack on Iran. The source was supposedly a deck officer on an aircraft carrier. Needless to say, if an officer was revealing confidential military plans to a kook at Kos (or anybody else, for that matter), it would be considered treason. No reasonable person could have read that report and considered it plausible...which explains why it was such a success at Kos.

The diarist offered no supporting proof, and as it turned out, the whole thing was an internet hoax. When that became obvious, Kos pulled the diary along with its 1,300 comments (you can still read most of the post at LGF). He then posted a curious piece on how the "progressives" need to avoid "faith-based" posts, or posts based on one person's word without links to verifying stories. To support his contention, he offered this:

Let's just use Christianity as an example. The same thing happened in the days of the Roman Empire -- missionaries came to cities and towns and claimed that a man named Jesus rose from the dead. The problem is that they demanded that you believe it based totally one faith. All we had was their word for it. Yet, within three centuries, the Roman Empire was officially Christian.

And this demand that people suspend their critical faculties and convert led to some of the ugliest persecutions known to mankind, such as the Inquisition and the religious wars of Europe. Never mind that it is patently absurd to think that Biblical fundamentalism is real, because under that logic, people halfway around the globe could never be saved because they never heard the message that Jesus died on the cross for their sins. The fundamentalists go so far as to believe that if we do not suspend our critical faculties and embrace Jesus Christ as our lord and savior, then we will go to hell.

We become vulnerable to faith-based reasoning when we suspend our critical reasoning faculties and we want to believe something.

I agree that you can get into trouble following wacky internet rumors, but to try and tie his diarist's suspension of reality to Christianity is more than a bit of a stretch. However, to the "progressives" it makes perfect sense...and that's scary.