What is faith?

Re: What is faith?
Welcome to Able2Know Adam.



Yes, certainty doesn't exist so everything rests on faith to some degree.



Faith is necessary for any attitude at all.



We have no choice, if you exist you have faith about something.

To explain my answers it is important to understand that certainty doesn't exist, while you may be thinking of blind faith of the religious variety I am talking about teh little grains of faith one must have in order to believe anything.

There is no way to prove that you exist, there is no way to prove (NOT even DNA) who your parents are.

Every belief you have requires some degree of faith.

For example, if you believe you will die one day it is probably supported by the fact taht everyone seems to die and you don;t think you are an exception.

But you can't be certain that you are no exception and, heck, you may live forever.

So while the evidence points toward the belief taht you will one day die you don't know this and if you believe you are mortal you use a small amount of faith.

Now it's not the same amount of faith taht one needs to believe in cartoonish gods but it's faith nonetheless.

I think faith is pretty much a human universal. You may not have faith in religion, or any god of any sort, but you have faith in the validity of the discoveries of science, even though mistakes have been made before, you have faith in the honesty of your very close friends, you have faith in the general logic of the world at large. If we didn't have faith in something, we'd all end up insane.

Although I agree with Craven in his sophistic analysis of the word "faith" -- I doubt that is what your teacher is looking for.

In my estimation, faith, as used most commonly by religious people about their religious "beliefs"...is one of the most over rated human activities imaginable.

Essentially, "beliefs" are guesses or estimates about some unknown thing.

Faith, is insisting that the guess or estimate is correct, despite the fact that there is damn near no unambiguous evidence upon which to base the guess.

Faith, as most commonly used, is, in my opinion, a net negative for humanity -- not a positive.

(Well Frank I didn't think I'd be agreeing with you on this one but I like your "net negative". I'm just wondering how this is could be in accordance with your usual seemingly neutral agnostic stance).

In general I agree with Craven. Godel the mathematician showed that in every logical system there is at least one statement which is axiomatic, i.e. whose "truth value" must be assumed from outside the system. Since human beings uniquely seem to have a concept of time and their own mortality their cognitive needs are often focused towards prediction and control of their environment and based on "confidence levels" in socially agreed working hypotheses. "Religious faith" is by extension an attempt to extend their environments beyond the normal limits of physical reality and death, but unlike in non-religious faith "evidence" is generally not of consequence . However religious faith should also be seen as having a price i.e. a trade off between "control" on the part of the individual and "control" by an external deity. Such control is also viewed as being delegated to "spiritual leaders" who act as long term presidential figures within the social hierarchy of a religious/tribal subculture, and a mouthpiece for specific world views.

So my agreement is with "faith" as a net "negative" because the average human being cannot see the difference between "working hypotheses" and the myth of "truth". They cannot see the political power structures perpetuated by their leaders. And such confusion reinforces the belief in the superiority one's own world view which is usually conditioned by "in group" rearing, and is consequently used to rationalize our primitive tribal instincts at a cognitive level.

I guess miracles do happen, Fresco.

In any case, I want to be sure you and Craven do understand that I understand, and agree with, your point that "faith" is a necessity to all supoposed "knowledge."

But I am sure both you and Craven see the difference between the kinds of "faith" assessments I have to make in order to come up with "DNA can establish that my father is in fact my biological father"...

...and a theist coming up with "I have faith there is a God and that God is described in the Bible."

I must say that I enjoy those moments when I can be shoulder to shoulder with someone with whom I so often disagree.

Peace!

truth
I too agree that all thinking rests on tacit presuppositions. How else can we proceed? I was watching NOVA'S cartoonish description of "string theory" last night and it occurred to me that those theorists have "faith" that their theory will someday be tested. Right now it's not even falsifiable which insults the theory's standing as scientific. They also have two other kinds of faith (tacit assumptions): (1) that their mathematical conclusions have correspondence with the physical reality of nature's big picture. This is similar to the Correspondence Theory of philosophical rationalism, i.e., that what we can LOGICALLY conclude about the structure of reality must, because of its logical virtue, correspond to the "logical structure" of reality. And (2) They assume that physical reality "out there" can be described as if our consciousness were not an intrinsic part of that reality. I cannot imagine a thorough description of the Big Picture (They refer to their search as for A Theory of Everything) that can exclude consciousness, what sometmes appears to me to be the Universe trying to see or understand itself. One might argue simply that the vibrating strings are vibrating our thoughts (as well as everything else) and that therefore consciousness IS included. That may be so, but I would like to see the variable of consciousness included in their description of the physical universe more explicitly. Just a thought.

JLN

Agreed...Have you looked at David Chalmers website on "consciousness". I think he is a prof at U. Arizona. There is some interesting stuff there.
(I'll try it myself later via Google)

Faith
I imagine that the word faith is most commonly used in connection with religion. It generally refers the the belief in things in which no sensible person would ordinarily believe. That is, it is, belief without evidence.

The NT tells us that "Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, and the substance of things not seen." (Heb. 11:1). Think about that one for a while. What is the evidence for those things not seen but in which we believe anyway? Faith is said to be the evidence. In other words, there is no evidence. What is the substance of those things that are not seen? Faith is the substance of those things which are not seen. In other words, there is no substance to those things not seen.

Faith, in this usage is a sort of heroic religious exercise.

Having faith is different than believing in the findings of science in spite of the fact that there is always a linguistic disconnect between our thoughts as expressed in language and the thing about which science is making some statement. I'm not up on the latest justifications for believing in science, but certainly, our common sense tells us that the sun will rise tomorrow at a given moment in a given place, and that there is a difference in this sort of knowledge and a statement such as "the battle of Armageddon will be fought within the next five years"; or for that matter a statement like "the universe was created and is sustained by an all powerful, all knowing, omni-present, good god, who created humankind and infused it with a moral nature capable of sensing what god expects of it and of doing exactly that, except that humankind became flawed, or sinful, as a result of an act of rebellion against god, and is, therefore, in need of redemption which god has supplied in the form of his son, our saviour, who died for our sins, was buried and arose on the third day, and ascended into heaven, etc., etc., and who is working behind the scenes through his servant, Shrub (whose existence was foreshadowed in the talking, burning shrub which Moses encountered on Mt. Sinai) to bring on the battle of Armageddon sometime soon, during which, to the glory of god and his shrub, there will be death and suffering beyond all imagining." Thus endith the statement of faith. Somehow, I hope we can see a difference between science and statements of religious faith.

By the way, welcome, Rip.

Spirituality without faith
Some of you may appreciate the naturalist's view of spirituality without faith. I know I do. This is quite long, so I won't paste the whole text here, just a link. (from the home page, all pages are accessible, and some are very enlightening. :-) )

http://naturalism.org/spiritua1.htm

Enjoy!