All of us are at times irrational.
Agreed, and that is a good thing - except when we're trying to decide what's true about the world. Then, only rational, empirical thinking is desirable. But at other times, modes of thought based in intuitions such as moral intuitions or what is beautiful are preferable, neither depending on reason or empiricism.
I find the example of improvising on a musical instrument like an electric guitar instructive. The first part is rational - learning how the instrument is tuned, where the chords and scales are on the neck, learning music theory, etc.. One is in a focused mode then. But later, when the skills have been learned, and one is playing music, the mental state is very different, attention is not concentrated but diffuse, and one is thinking about what is beautiful, not what is true. The former is an irrational mode of thought, but since the word is insulting for many, maybe better called nonrational thought.
But that's where the money is in life - the passions, not the reasoning. Reasoning is just a means for arranging the passions, for facilitating more of the enjoyable experiences and fewer of the dysphoric ones. I like the metaphors of the horse and rider or the brush and the pigment to represent this relation of affective experience being managed by cognitive thought. They're both necessary for a good life. Either alone is disastrous. Passionless reason is dull, and in the extreme, the anhedonism of major depression - the inability to experience pleasure - leads to suicide or suicidal ideation. And passion without reason is eventually self-destructive.
So reason deserves to be exalted, but only as a means to an end. Absent the passions, it has little value except to prolong a colorless life.
assuming that most intelligent people actually do that, implies that the majority are not sincere.
Maybe you're familiar with Newton's Principia, in which Newton describes the celestial mechanics of our solar system mathematically. Unfortunately, Newton's math predicted that larger planets like Jupiter and Saturn would toss planets like earth into the sun or out of the solar system, and so, he added his god ad hoc right there where he ran out of knowledge, who nudged the planets back into position. This is when he reached the limits of reason and veered into magical thinking. That's when his work changed from compartmentalized reasoning that any equally talented atheistic scientist might have come up with into something radically different, and of course, wrong. Recall that Newton lived on the cusp of modernity - he was one of its authors - and was interested in alchemy. And of course, he was quite sincere, but his compartmentalization ended when his math did, and that's when he turned to magic and even put it in his book.
Then, a century later, Laplace supplied the mathematics Newton lacked, restoring the solar system to a clockwork needing no intelligent supervision.
Einstein faced a similar dilemma. If the universe were infinitely old, all of its contents should have come together in one place by now due to gravity, so, instead of the hand of God to restore order, he inserted a cosmological constant into his equations, which turned out to be unnecessary once it was understood that the universe is expanding. But Einstein didn't invoke gods notwithstanding his metaphorical usage of the word to mean the laws of physics. He added a mindless physical law, not a person.
There is clearly some underlying psychological reason for assuming the worst of people.. i.e. assuming faith is based on nothing but what might suit them, and not on sincerely seeking
Seeking the worst of people? He and I are describing them and comparing them to critical thinkers. Faith *IS* based on nothing but what is comforting or feels right or is believed because it comes from a trusted source.
Sincerity is irrelevant and isn't being questioned. One's epistemology is. It's pretty simple - faith is guessing and assuming that one's guess is correct. It isn't a product of evidence, and evidence doesn't impact it once a faith-based confirmation bias is established to defend it from contradictory evidence. It is not a virtue. It's the lowest form of intellect. It's what children do exclusively until and unless they learn to think critically.
From Pat Condell:
"[F]aith is nothing more than the deliberate suspension of disbelief. It's an act of will. It's not a state of grace. It's a state of choice, because without evidence, you've got no reason to believe, apart from your willingness to believe. So why is that worthy of respect, any more than your willingness to poke yourself in the eye with a pencil? And why is faith considered some kind of virtue? Is it because it implies a certain depth of contemplation and insight? I don't think so. Faith, by definition, is unexamined. So in that sense it has to be among the shallowest of experiences."
Rebut that if you think you can, and by rebuttal, I mean attempt to falsify it, not just dissent with or without what you believe instead that doesn't contradict what you reject with evidenced argument.
