Why FAITH in (any) GOD is actually NOT like having faith in a chair.

And yet again,
a Christian fundamentalist has claimed:
 
"Faith does work like that analogy of sitting on chair, we have faith that it the chair will hold us, we have faith that God will do the same."

---
To this, I reply ... 

 Normally, a chair's construction has earned our trust; based on:

* visual analysis of dependable materials and design,

* the logo of a proven-reliable company ... whose NAME and LOGO are NOT copied by countless of
rival counterfeiters using dangerously fake materials, (unlike all those rival theistic companies selling dangerously fake (yet convincing) God-chairs),

* a prolonged period of repeated successful testing (in the factory, and in public use), along with publicly available safety records and consistently good reviews,

and
* the way it behaves under our initial transfer of body weight onto the structure.

Also, trusting a chair normally comes with hardly any investment or risk.
It's already there. If it wobbles or creeks, we can find another chair.

In the very unlikely event
that it breaks as we're sitting on it,  there's really not much risk of life-altering injury.

 -Unlike the real-world risks of religion;
such as:

 someone raping your child at a religious camp,
or
members getting PTSD from the emotional traumas of religion,
or
your LGBT 12yo being driven to suicide by the God-approved bullying, 
or
even just the risks of making tremendous personal sacrifices in life ... only to realize decades later that it was a false religion, and you wasted so much of your life on it.

-And 
unlike the "Hell"-risks claimed by religions.

 Literal chairs ... simply don't have as much trust they need to earn.

 If we're paying attention, 
chairs earn all the trust they need to;
- unlike religious factions' "Gods". 

We're not trusting a literal chair with the quality, terms, and conditions for how we live the rest of our life.
So the trust we place in the chair, is actually minimal.

In a normal situation, it's very low investment and very low risk.

Rational trust scales
with:
a.) seriousness of investment and
b.) seriousness of risk.
The higher those are, the more any given product,  company, and salesmen must do,
to earn our trust.

The same simply can't be honestly said about any "God" on the market.

Religions don't jive with that ideal. They just ramp up people's emotions, using time-tested gimmicks to trigger feel-good (and feel-bad) neuro-chemicals, and say "That's GOD talking to you. Can you feel it!?"

----
Meanwhile, ...

When people join a religion (aka: embrace a religious narrative), ...
in almost all cases, they've only skimmed the contract they're agreeing to.

They haven't read the whole book, learned the whole history, gained a great understanding of the entire narrative, nor considered all possible ramifications for their journey.

They're making an impulsive emotional migration into that culture and narrative,
with:
unearned trust.
-unlike the migration we make into a literal chair. 

Whatever personal experience they've had thusfar, with a perceived-to-exist "God", isn't really good evidence of what they can expect in the future.

It's not even good evidence that the "God" they've been talking about ...
even exists.

This fact is attested to by countless people migrating between religions, sects, and doctrines every day;
- with all of those people saying "I can't believe how WRONG I was before, in my theology. But I sure am glad I finally got it right" (until their next theological migration).

Whatever "God" was before,
isn't what "God" is the next time.
---
So here we have:

Billions of people
playing musical God-chairs in a dark and chaotic room,
with repeating shouts of "Found it", followed by CRASH! BOOM! THUD! OUCH! .,.. false alarm.

Meanwhile,
countless
random, fallible game announcers (with collection plates in-hand) 
keep shouting:
"Better hurry. The music of your life ... this wonderful game of ours ... could stop at any time. And if your identity is not firmly seated in the one true God-chair when the music stops, you're going to hell! And it will be your own fault!
[because logic and justice be damned; just like all the losers are gonna be]

-which, again, is honestly nothing like having a well-reasoned, low-risk trust in an actually-existing chair.