Faith

"Faith is believing in what you know ain't so."
Mark Twain

". . . faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1)

". . . faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1)

Re: Faith


Well Jeremiah, technically speaking no it's not just a twist of logic that makes the unbelievable more believable. If you look up the definition it's not merely about "faith" in God.

It can also be:

allegiance to duty or a person : LOYALTY b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions...

As well as:

something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs

Edit: (bad example) So, if you believe you will see the sunrise tomorrow... you have faith. There's really no guarantee that you actually will... However after a pattern of a lifetime of seeing it s it's pretty safe to believe that you will continue being able to see it. Is it unbelievable to believe that? There are no guarantees in life though. You could be struck blind today. You could be in a bad car wreck and end up in a coma for three months. As far as I know I have never received a reward for believing the sun is going to rise. Or believing that I'm going to wake up in the morning. Or believing anything that isn't necessarily guaranteed. So... it seems to me that your mind could quite possibly be just as "malleable" as mine, based purely on the standards you yourself have set up here....

Just a thought though...

Faith can be the cornerstone of a productive and fulfilling life, as long as it is directed toward its object.

But if someone decides their faith trumps the faith, experience, or thoughts of those who do not share his or her convictions, there are going to be problems.

Faith requires a leap into the unknown. Civilization requires solid ground.

I submit that it cannot be demonstrated in objective, forensically valid, academically sound manner that religious faith be differentiable from superstition.

Excellent . . . i think i'll quote you.

You're right, it would be virtually impossible to prove such a thing to a person (not speaking about you specifically timber) who does not believe in experiential evidence.

I rather wonder what you intend by "experiential evidence." Do you assert that all theists have met god? What kind of clothing does she prefer to wear?

LOL cute setanta. I always envisioned her with long flowing blonde hair, a pink sundress, standing at the pearly gates with arms open wide.... NOT...


That's not what I meant at all. Simply put I meant that "theists" in general believe in God based purely on "experiential evidence", and or basically what "non-theists" commonly call superstition, eh? It has nothing at all to do with having "met" God necessarily. More having had certain experiences that they attribute to God, therefore serving as evidence to themselves of His existence.

However, in most cases, concerning experiences, there is no "objective, forensically valid, academically sound" evidence as seen by the "non-theist" since in most cases there is no physical or scientific proof of any certain experience being able to or having happened to a particular person.

Therefore, it is written off as being all in one's mind or imagination. Which I guess would fall into the "programmed behavior" category, which would bring us right back to my previously unanswered question from another topic:

Hep, dunno if you realize it or not, but you do a fair job of proving the case for the proposition that "religious faith" is psycopathic; your "experiential evidence" itself is indistinguishable from delusion. Carried to its logical extension, "the religious experience" equates to hysteria.

I agree with this. Well put.

For some people, there seems to develop a strong link between faith-God. A link that becomes a set concept, a welded unity.

Faith can apply to any aspect of life. I am all for a divorce in equating faith with faith in God exclusively.

Faith can be useful. Needs to be useful, bc we all employ some faith. It makes sense (to me anyhow) to check your surroundings, strategy, and conclusions before taking that faithful leap into the unknown.
A fool closes his/her eyes, runs like mad, and jumps.

In my mind, an equally repugnant example of faith would be a scenario where a woman chooses a man with a horrid history of cheating and deceit. She ignores his cheating (I have faith he really loves me, he is changing, it's all for a reason). She loses her 'brain' because she wants to believe something so bad.

It could be argued that blind faith is not true faith at all. It is merely stupidity and denial.

LOL maybe it is Timber... maybe it is...

Seriously though, while I can understand why you would say this I need to disagree. I guess you could say that if experiential evidence was limited to "religious faith", but it's not. It is just one of the greater extensions of it. Experiential evidence holds true in normal day to day "faithless" life as well. If you touched a hot stove as a child and burned yourself, you would have learned through that experience, if you have half a brain anyway, that doing so will get you burned, right? How do you know? Because you did it, you experienced it. Does that then fall into the delusion category as well to those who have never touched and been burned by a hot stove?

I submit there's a bit of difference between a painful blister and a comforting thought. The insurmountable logic problem with your proposition - the religionist proposition in general - is that it cannot be demonstrated through any external, non-self-referential paradigm. All that may be presented is personal conviction - and regardless how fervently held, regardless how widely held, personal conviction does not, cannot, equate to evidence.

Whether or not there is or even may be a god or gods, whether or not ANY overt manifestation of the religious proposition, not merely that subset of the Abrahamic mythopaeia known as Christianity, but ANY, might have validity or intrinsic worth, no logical, objective, forensically valid, academically sound argument may be made for the core, central, foundational religionist proposition. The situation pertains inescapably; the supernatural is apart from, exempt from, contrary to, logic and evidence. It - the supernatural - simply cannot be demonstrated, while, to the converse, though nothing rules it out, nothing indicates it exists and much indicates it does not. Much better argument may be made that religion and sprirituality are human constructs, psychoanthropolological artifacts of our development of culture and society, than may be made in favor of any aspect of religion or spirituality.

Of course there is a bit of a difference, however the end result is still the same... experiential evidence. Its the same as 1+3=4 and 2+2=4. It boils down to different ways of finding the same answer. Neither math problem is wrong. How you go about coming to that answer is just a matter of preference really. See, here's the problem with what you say: in order for "experiential evidence" to be "valid", so to speak, to some it does contain self-referential material. Of course we both know that.

And, if you'll note, you did not use that term in your original post. Though to some it may not be counted as evidence unless the experience had been theirs. Correct? However, you really can't "devalue" experiential evidence because everyone has had it in one form or another at some point in their life. So to "devalue" it regarding religion, yet allow it to have value concerning other area's of life would not be a very "objective" view on your part, which was part of the basis for your original argument.



Well Timber, you could be right about that, but really it boils down to perspective. You look at things from the scientific perspective correct? However, let me ask you this... can science explain everything? I submit that it can't. It might be trying to, yet there are still things I believe that science just does not have an answer for. Correct me if I'm wrong though. So based on this ideal of mine I then must say that unless and until science can explain everything there is still room for the possibility of there being something more than just what we see. Therefore putting a hole in science itself, if you ask me.

After all, the "requirements" from most people is that supernatural things must be demonstrated in an objective, forensically valid, academically sound manner. However, even science itself cannot do that for everything. So it seems to me if it had to be objective, then I would suppose the objectivity should come from both sides. Meaning not ruling out experiential evidence. (I'm sensing a landslide coming on...)



It is only contrary if you rule out experiential evidence. However, experiential evidence is not always lacking in logic. After all, if you do something, get a bad result, therefore choosing not to do it again, that would be using logic. Hot stove + bare fingers= burn. Though that "kind of" logic doesn't seem very scientific eh? So lets make it scientific then: 100 degree stove + bare fingers = 1st degree burn. 200 degree stove + bare fingers = 2nd degree burn. 400 degree stove + bare fingers = 3rd degree burn. No matter how you add it up you will still get burned. The end result is still the same whether there's a scientific theory behind it or not.

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to get under your skin. I promise. I'm just presenting my way of thinking.

Faith is the acceptance as truth that which one does not understand or cannot prove.

I have faith that the lighting of the room will change when I flip the light switch. I don't understand how it happens but I accept that it somehow works on faith. There is enough experiential evidence for me to state it as a truth. For some, there is experiential evidence to have faith in a god, but I disagree that most people with a religious faith have experienced god. I think, for the most part, those with a religious faith were raised from childhood with that faith and accept it as truth in the same manner as they accept the mathematical statement one plus one equals two as fact.

When you believe in things
You don't understand, you'll suffer
Superstition ain't the way . . .

Exactly JB! You hit the nail right on the head. You are correct in saying that most of those with religious faith grew up with it, rather than having "experienced" it necessarily. I hope that's not what it sounds like I was saying, because I know that what you are saying is right. Most haven't. However there are things that have happened to various people at various times that they contribute as evidence of God's existance. Some I think is valid, some is not so valid. There's a lot of religious "hoopla" that happens now-a-days.

There are a lot of "tv ministries" that are nothing more than a sales pitch to put some money in the pockets of some "high standing religious leaders". When I talk about this kind of stuff I don't contribute much, if any, credit to such "ministries". Those kind of "experiences" are manufactured for a specific purpose. It's sad really. Anyway, thank you. That was a good post.

I'm not convinced any of it is valid, beyond not having the capacity to understand the evidence. Take my example of the light switch. It isn't that an explanation doesn't exist, it's just that I don't understand it. Early man didn't understand volcanos, earthquakes, or lightning so he created rituals and sacrifices in an attempt to appease an angry god. If the ground stopped shaking for a while, he decided the ritual was successful and had enough experiential evidence to define his truth. That doesn't make it so, it simply allows him to be comfortable with his surroundings and proceed in ignorance the same way I'm ignorant about the workings of the light switch.