Faith – The Ultra-Thin End Of The Wedge

Perceiving reality requires no effort: reality becomes apparent whenever it is encountered. It is ubiquitous – reality never doesn’t exist, even when it is ignored. Reality is the thick end of the wedge.
Faith is the practice of expecting an outcome without a basis in precedent, evidence, or logic. Faith necessitates will: when practicing faith, one must will oneself to believe in an outcome, without indication that the anticipated outcome has any reasonable chance to occur. What is reasonable is what is probable. The probability of an outcome increases as unfolding events accumulate toward the outcome. As more evidence comes into play, the likelihood of a particular outcome becomes more certain. Faith requires a suspension of reason; a baseless certainty that an outcome will happen, against the overwhelming certainty of another more likely, or even, opposite outcome than the one hoped for. Faith is the thin end – the ultra-thin end of the wedge.
Belief in the existence of gods, deities or other supernatural persons or phenomena is an act of faith. Legends passed down through the centuries, from religions that were, themselves, based upon even older legends, which continue to the present day, owing to nothing more substantial than the “word” of ancients, whose sobriety (and judgment) cannot be verified, can only be believed through the practice of faith, as the contradictions such legends have with logic otherwise preclude their practice.
Neither does mere antiquity confer validity, nor does mere novelty preclude it: it has almost certainly always been true that humans with ambition and a deficit of conscience will perpetrate a fraud in service of said ambition. Despite advances in the human condition, physically, intellectually, technologically, or otherwise, such behavior is as present as ever. There is no basis for concluding that the “ancients” were any more honorable than people today. Indeed, it is likely, considering behaviors that have, over time, gone out of favor, such as torture, slavery, etc., that the “ancients” were less honorable than people today, who are more enlightened. Considering, too, that, in examining mankinds’ history, there is a perceptible trajectory from ignorance toward enlightenment, it is as likely that people will, in the future, be even more enlightened, as it is to believe that, were one to travel backward in time, he would encounter greater ignorance. It simply makes less sense to base ones views on the comparative ignorance of the “ancients”, than to use reason for the betterment of mankind.
The thick end of the wedge is readily apparent; the thin end tapers off into nothingness, the only end of the wedge where faith is comfortable.