Belief is the systematic taking of unanalysed words much too seriously. Paul's words, Mohammed's words, Marx's words, Hitler's words - poeple take them seriously, and what happens?

What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history - sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devoting counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church's inquisitors and crusaders.

Faith, on the contrary, can never be taken too seriously. For Faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good Being. Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.