Christianity is not about learning, it is about believing. It does not matter what you know, according to Christian theology, only who you know. The notion of childlike faith is often praised by conservative and liberal Christians alike, for as Jesus declares in Mark 10:15, "anyone who will not receive the kingdom of god like a little child will never enter it." To believe like a child means to believe without question. As a young child places its full trust in its parents, without the need (or possibly the capacity) to understand the situation, believers consider it virtuous to place their full trust in god and rely on him with similar conviction. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart," Proverbs 3:5 reads, "and lean not on your own understanding." In this article, it will be argued that childlike faith is an immature and harmful way to approach life, and it is also immoral and senseless for a superior being to require from us.

I. Caging the Mind

The Christian god seems to particularly enjoy taunting its creations, dangling carrots in front of their faces, just out of reach. In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge (remember, Christianity is not about learning), yet they finally succumb after being persuaded by a deceitful talking snake. Allegedly having no knowledge of right and wrong until after eating from the tree, how could they have known the snake lied to them and that listening to a liar is a bad decision? Nonetheless, god punished Adam and Eve. As the all-powerful creator, couldn't god have omitted the tree altogether, or at least made the forbidden item the most unappealing thing in the garden, such as a putrid swamp of feces? Instead it seems like god just played a cruel joke on the man and woman, knowing their curiosity and knowing the snake would get them to disobey, while providing no comprehensible incentives for obedience.

A very apt comparison may be drawn from the Genesis story to the Christian perspective on thinking. While god has supposedly given us these brains with which we can resolve so many problems, we are forbidden from using them to contemplate god in any critical light. Those who do partake of this 'fruit' may reserve themselves a seat in fiery torment for all eternity. Believers embrace this perspective and verbalize it through familiar adages like, 'His ways are higher than our ways,' emphasizing that reason and logic - despite their tremendous track record in medical science, technology, space travel, and so on - are limited when it comes to religious issues, and almost entirely inapplicable to god. This is not just a line of defense employed by modern Christians, but a teaching found in the bible itself, as believers are to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Why would the creator give us the powerful problem-solving minds that we have and expect us not to use them? Could it not have simply made our minds incapable of pondering the logically dubious aspects of religion and god? Perhaps that would have interfered with free will, some might say, but there is an even better point to raise: the Christian god could have at least kept its actions perfectly consistent with logic and with all standards of morality. It may seem like a hefty task and an even downright arrogant suggestion that god should concern itself with human wishes, but it makes more sense when we note a few of the important attributes given to the Christian god.

II. Building a Case for Belief

First of these attributes is omniscience. If an all-knowing god exists, it knows all the logical fallacies, logical contradictions, the various standards of morality, and what the best evidence for its existence would be for every generation of humans that has lived on the earth. It would know about the problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma, the inconsistencies and errors in its holy book(s), and all other objections to faith, before they had even been thought up. It would know about science too, including multiple ways of verifying, testing, and securing its message in order to make it all the more compelling. This all-knowing god would easily have the advantage over us humans, finite and limited in knowledge as we are.

The second attribute to consider is omnipotence. If an all-knowing and all-powerful god exists, it has the capability of putting its knowledge to work in an untold number of ways, to craft the most appealing case for belief. With its omniscience, it would be able to ponder a wide variety of options before implementing anything, knowing exactly how its actions would turn out. It could plan virtually anything to increase the reliability of its message, including appearances in the 21st century, when countless opportunities to witness and document its appearance would be available. An all-powerful god would have a definite advantage over us humans, as we are of limited power.

Attribute number three is, of course, omnipresence. If an all-knowing and all-powerful god exists that is able to be anywhere, or everywhere, all at once, it can amass the most useful knowledge available and put it into action instantaneously all throughout the world, by practically any means. The truth is that any one of these three attributes would be sufficient to construct a very convincing case for belief. If you were not omnipotent, you could still use your omniscience to figure out what to do in what timespan, and if you were not omniscient, you could still use your omnipresence to listen in all over the world and stand a very good chance of making a nearly irrefutable case.

What would prevent a god of this power and ability from doing all it could do to remain consistent with logic and all standards of morality? What would keep it from making its revelations as clear and indisputable as possible? A god that wants us to believe in it, and threatens to punish us if we don't, would arguably do everything in its power to convince us. In fact, this is what many Christians believe their god has done.

III. His Best Wasn't Good Enough

According to the bible, god is "not wanting anyone to perish" (2 Peter 3:9), and "since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). God wants us to believe, as these verses explain, and he has supposedly gone to such great lengths to reveal himself that we are "without excuse." However, to be blunt, this claim is a laughable one.

Did the Christian god try so hard to keep its actions consistent with moral standards? It hardly even behaved by its own standards for the Israelites! When so many people today will look on the stoning of disobedient children (Deut. 21:18-21), the murder of the firstborn Egytpians (Exodus 11:5), and the slaughter of entire tribes (1 Samuel 15:2-3) as grossly immoral commands, could god not have done without them and fared better by keeping his laws and instructions consistent with standards of morality that virtually all his creation would recognize? Surely an omnipotent god could find other ways of accomplishing its goals that would not have to involve brutal violence.

But what about god's plan of redemption with Jesus? While the Old Testament god shows no regard for morality, the New Testament god shows no regard for reason. Instead of doing things reasonably and morally from the beginning, the all-powerful and all-knowing creator decided to institute a system of barbaric laws that would be supplanted hundreds of years later by the death of his son (who is also himself) on a cross. All of this would result because of Adam and Eve's disobedience in the garden, though they were yet unable to comprehend the meaning of right and wrong. If it seems confusing, just don't think too much about it - have the faith of a child.

However, our species has matured past the usefulness of dictums and prescriptive rules. We are no longer children who take our parents' every word as fact. We require justification for many of our beliefs, even if some of those beliefs remain isolated and privileged, or if the justifications we find are not rational. We cannot hold beliefs that are false, and though the reasons and methods we employ may vary greatly, we all think we have some basis for the truth of our beliefs - whether that basis is experience, intuition, or anything else. For god to demand that we surrender our intellect and moral judgment when it comes to the troubling questions of belief seems to show complete ignorance or apathy to the plight of human beings. It strongly suggests the creator either doesn't care about, or doesn't understand, its own creations.

IV. Childlike Faith Leads to Childish Behavior

There is no shortage of examples of how a childlike devotion to scripture, the church, a religious leader, or religious teachings can produce unfortunate consequences. Believing Christians had a right to possess the 'holy land,' the religious institutions of the medieval ages sacrificed many lives in their fight for control of Jerusalem. The inquisition movements and witch hunts of Europe also destroyed many lives in their quest to squelch out heresy, which they believed was sanctioned in such passages as Exodus 22:18. In more recent years, there are cases of people like Deanna Laney, who killed her children after being 'told by god' that they would be raised from the dead [1]. In all these instances, strict obedience was practiced and the end result was only horrible tragedy.

Some believers may protest that these are extreme examples of misguided people, but while the events were indeed extreme, the notion that these men and women were all lunatics who were wrong about what their faith was telling them is not as certain. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, according to the bible. That Isaac was spared before it was too late does not matter either, as Ms. Laney likewise believed that good would come from her action because she trusted god. The decimation of 'heretical' nations in the Old Testament also makes it hard to argue that the crusades and inquisitions were misguided and un-Christian endeavors. The simple truth is that every religion is open to a variety of interpretations, no matter who or what is relied on as the authoritative source. Apologists may say people like Ms. Laney were not following the 'true' faith of Christianity, but neither side actually has any more demonstrable access to this so-called authentic faith than the other does.

Childish behavior doesn't only mean violence and death, however. It may mean poor decisions that will have negative repercussions in the long run, such as policies that could come from U.S. Representative John Shimkus' belief that god's promise to Noah means climate change will not turn catastrophic [2]. It could even be something as unexceptional as a person refusing to admit fault when proven wrong or shutting down conversation to protect cherished views. Childlike faith has led untold numbers of apocalyptic prophets to deny their mistakes when their predicted date for Armageddon passes by like any other day (Harold Camping is, of course, the latest example).

Not every believer who practices childlike faith will show childish behavior, though, because the degree to which one is childlike in faith varies depending on the person and circumstances. In fact, I would venture a guess that the majority of Christians, even those who claim to live with childlike faith, do not actually do so most of the time. Medicine is trusted over the healing power of god. Law enforcement is trusted over the protective hand of god. Often it seems that childlike faith is maintained only in trivial matters or when something is outside of one's own control. But the more childlike faith is relied on, the more likely it will be that a person may slip into childish behavior. This is because, rather than directly dealing with an issue, faith is a shot in the dark. And nothing about carelessly throwing all concern to the wind and walking blindly is mature behavior.

V. Leaving Childish Ways

Faith itself is a childish thing. It does not question, it does not think, it does not doubt, and so it does not solve. Despite what apologists may pretend, All Faith is Blind. Taking things on faith has never delivered verifiably useful knowledge. Faith is simply a way of maintaining a belief when evidence and reason have failed to support it. It's the prized possession of the fearful child inside us that wants comfort and stability, safety and hope. While aspiring to these things is good, the child wants certainty and wants to have his cake and eat it too. But reality is not sugar-coated. Good doesn't always prevail, the lost aren't always found, and truth is not often in black and white.

Maturity means taking reality on its own terms. As wonderful as imagination can be, there is a time when every child must face the real world and trade in their security blanket for the more reliable survival tool of critical thinking. A father who teaches his child to rely on the security blanket raises an inept and vulnerable child that is unprepared for reality. When the child ages, the responsibilities laid at his feet will be met with childish solutions, and nothing good will come of it. The childlike faith of Christianity has provided the human species with a long line of childish solutions that have turned out nothing of true, lasting value in our history. It is time we do away with these childish things and come together to face the real world as mature, responsible individuals.

1. Usbourne, D. (2004) God told me to kill boys, says mother. The Independent. Retrieved June 14, 2011.
2. (2010) 'The planet won't be destroyed by global warming because God promised Noah... Mail Online. Retrieved June 14, 2011.