No. Christianity is worthwhile because the Sistine Chapel is pretty. Whether or not the Christian god exists is undecidable and ultimately a McGuffin.
I grew up with a literalist/fundamentalist version of Christianity, and when I discovered the atheistic/materialistic/scientific worldview it came as a shock - I implanted on it immediately, the world made much more sense almost overnight and I lost all interest in anything remotely spiritual. Later on I discovered the rest of religion, and the intellectual shock was similar, but not much else changed. I still find the purely materialistic worldview perfectly satisfactory and I fully expect that it will continue to conquer everything in its path, up to and beyond the mind-body problem, but until then, and maybe even after then, I have no problem characterizing my lack of personal commitment to faith, God, or the spiritual as purely aesthetic. I can appreciate, to some extent, why other people prefer to believe it, and I can appreciate, to some extent, why many people on each side either can't or won't believe that sensible people could hold such obviously stupid and wrong beliefs. Every time I start to think that the religious have a monopoly on lack of curiosity, some atheist pops up and makes a spectacle of their own righteous single-mindedness. I prefer to cultivate a certain amount of genuine curiosity about, and appreciation for, the aesthetic preferences of the other 80% of the human race.
Well I take faith to mean "the belief in the existence of God." I doubt the comment intends to convince us simply that this belief exists (we know it does, and that many people hold it). An argument "for faith" is at the weakest something like "the belief in the existence of God is not an absurd one," and at the strongest "God does exist."
That's a pretty serious failure of logical aptitude, especially on a site like this. The point isn't that "god exists" but that "Russia is Christian" because of aesthetics, a somewhat important material fact.
No the point is that faith is meritorious because of aesthetics.
That Russia is christian because of aesthetics, and aesthetics are an argument for the merit of faith implies that the christian faith is more meritorious than, paganism, judaism and islam because it's the prettiest.
"Russia is Christian b/c of aesthetics" is one piece of evidence for the greater argument which is something like "these instances of inspiration demonstrate that faith in the existence of God is reasonable."
I grew up with a literalist/fundamentalist version of Christianity, and when I discovered the atheistic/materialistic/scientific worldview it came as a shock - I implanted on it immediately, the world made much more sense almost overnight and I lost all interest in anything remotely spiritual. Later on I discovered the rest of religion, and the intellectual shock was similar, but not much else changed. I still find the purely materialistic worldview perfectly satisfactory and I fully expect that it will continue to conquer everything in its path, up to and beyond the mind-body problem, but until then, and maybe even after then, I have no problem characterizing my lack of personal commitment to faith, God, or the spiritual as purely aesthetic. I can appreciate, to some extent, why other people prefer to believe it, and I can appreciate, to some extent, why many people on each side either can't or won't believe that sensible people could hold such obviously stupid and wrong beliefs. Every time I start to think that the religious have a monopoly on lack of curiosity, some atheist pops up and makes a spectacle of their own righteous single-mindedness. I prefer to cultivate a certain amount of genuine curiosity about, and appreciation for, the aesthetic preferences of the other 80% of the human race.