Christianity - True or Not?

rockpie wrote:

Phoenix: earlier you stated that faith was the antithesis of reason. but do you not need faith in your reasoning to believe that it is right? what you consider as reason might not be what others consider as reason so you need faith in your own reason, do you see? so how can faith and reason be opposites when the one needs the other?

As a human being, I am quite fallible. I can only do the utmost that I can, to the best of my ability. Am I always right? Of course not. But, IMO, to quote Harry Truman, "the buck strops here". I am solely responsible for my actions, and will take the heat when I screw up. The point is when I do screw up, I make a concerted effort to try to determine why I screwed up, and take steps to correct myself so that it would not happen again.

I consider myself a "work in progress", that will never be finished. I have a mind that can think through concepts. When I am proven wrong, I gladly modify my views.

Faith and reason ARE opposites. One consists of rational, analytic thought. The other depends on "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence".

I think that some people are confused with one of the definitions of faith. In some circumstances, "faith" can be a synonym for confidence. For instance, if every day of your life you have observed that the sun rises every morning, you might say that you have "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow. But that is not the same as faith in the unknowable, the supernatural. It is the confidence borne of experience.

I, personally believe that faith, in the supernatural sense, has no place in the world of a rational human being.

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You ask if Christianity is true or false. I ask which Christianity?

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rockpie, religious faith plainly is not rational. A fallacy commonly employed by religionists is assigning the quality of their concept of "faith" - which of necessity and by definition is falsely a priori, inherently and functionally irrespective of observed fact, inconsistent with Occam's Razor, wholly inductive, a self-defeating modus ponens/modus tollens argument invalid (see: Formal Validity) in that it perforce must proceed from the illicit, undemonstrated premise that there be a god or gods - to any empirically founded, rational, a posteriori, evidence-based worldview.

It is not "faith" which compells a planet to hold its orbit, for instance, it is physics, and no "leap of faith" is entailed in both inductively and deductively arriving at the discovery and understanding of the laws and principles of physics; the math works to confirm the relationships among the observed phenomena.

Before you even may begin to address the question of Christianity's validity, or the validity of any religion, for that matter, first you must demonstrate, objectively and in academically sound, forensically valid manner, that religious faith be differentiable from superstition.

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Phoenix wrote:

I, personally believe that faith, in the supernatural sense, has no place in the world of a rational human being.

Sometimes I wonder if the belief in the superiority of reason isn't a supernatural notion in itself. Emotion can never be rooted in reason, because they would make it unreason. Regardless of what humans know, they will always need something to believe.

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Cyracuz wrote:

Emotion can never be rooted in reason, because they would make it unreason.

Who is even discussing emotion? Emotion is simply a person's reaction to a situation based on what he has thought about the situation. For instance, let us consider an auto accident. There is a crowd around the accident. One person feels sickened, another curious, another compassion, another excited. In this case, the stimulus is exactly the same..........an auto accident. The emotion that each person feels is based on the thoughts and conclusions that they each person has had.

Emotion is not cognition. If one is intellectually honest, one can separate out one's feelings about a situation, and look at a situation dispassionately and rationally.

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timberlandko wrote:

first you must demonstrate, objectively and in academically sound, forensically valid manner....

Are you sure you mean 'forensically'?

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Phoenix wrote:

Emotion is not cognition. If one is intellectually honest, one can separate out one's feelings about a situation, and look at a situation dispassionately and rationally.

You were talking about the rational human being. Emotion is part of rational behaviour, and emotion, not intellect, is the aspect of human psyche needing faith.

I agree that the cause for emotion in your example was the same for all involved. But the specific emotion each individual experiences from the same cause is partly decided by what that indicidual believes in. Because in the end you have to believe something. The intellect can never chose one or the other. It can only inform the emotional human being who then makes the choice.

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cyberman wrote:

timberlandko wrote:
first you must demonstrate, objectively and in academically sound, forensically valid manner....

Are you sure you mean 'forensically'?

Yes, in the respect of relating to proper argument as used in courts of law, deliberative bodies, or other formal debate.

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timberlandko wrote:

. . . It is not "faith" which compells a planet to hold its orbit, for instance, it is physics, and no "leap of faith" is entailed in both inductively and deductively arriving at the discovery and understanding of the laws and principles of physics; the math works to confirm the relationships among the observed phenomena. . .

And I, for one, am relieved that no understanding of planetary physics is necessary to understand God's moral imperatives and the good news awaiting those who would search for them.

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There is usually an emotional component in rationality. Thinking is motivated, and motivation reflects drives, intentions, desires of some sort. Ideally rational cognition is not passionate, that would lead to distortions of various sorts.
And, yes, we must have faith in something. But that does not necessarily involve religion; it has to do more broadly with the underlying presuppositions of everyday functioning, the tacit, unexamined, unstated, and often unconscious foundations of thought and action.

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Actually I'd say that faith is all we can ever really have in something. Absolute confidence is absolute faith. No matter how much knowledge you have to sustain your position, no matter if knowledge is the prime mover in forming your position, you will hold that position because you 'believe' it is the right one, based on the thorough examination you have done. You may even be right, but you can never more that believe it. Any honest scientist will agree on this.

My point is that without our emotional capacity for faith, our reason would be useless. We would know, but we wouldn't care.

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Cyracuz wrote:

Absolute confidence is absolute faith.

It is one thing to have confidence in something that has a "track record". It is quite another to have "faith" (absolute confidence, in your definition) in something based on nothing more than wishful thinking.

IMO, one of the hallmarks of a mature adult is his ability to differientiate between possibilities, probabilities and simply wishful thinking.

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You are absolutely right. It is easier to believe in something that has a track record. But it is still believing.

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Cyracuz wrote:

You are absolutely right. It is easier to believe in something that has a track record. But it is still believing.

If I have met my friend on numerous occasions, and she has always been on time, I can be fairly certain that the next time that we meet that she will be on time. That evaluation is not foolproof, as there may be certain circumstances where my friend might be late. I can have a certain amount of "faith" (confidence, in this sense), that barring an unusual circumstance, she WILL be on time. Her timeliness in the past is the "proof" that one needs to evaluate that the person is prompt.

The entire issue of having confidence in something is not a black/white, either/or situation. There are always possibilities that the expected will not happen.

In the case of religious faith, there is no proof, no track record, nothing but a human desire to create a world where wishes become reality. In this case, "faith" is nothing more than wishful thinking. To me, belief in "salvation", "heaven", "hell" and the hereafter is about as real as Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

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Phoenix32890 wrote:

In the case of religious faith, there is no proof, no track record, nothing but a human desire to create a world where wishes become reality. In this case, "faith" is nothing more than wishful thinking. To me, belief in "salvation", "heaven", "hell" and the hereafter is about as real as Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.[/color][/b]

You would probably be the one to tell a child that there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy. Crying or Very sad

You must be part of the 20% of the population that does not have faith. That does not mean that the other 80% are wrong or foolish. Those who have had experiences of faith would not agree with you. Those who read the scriptures would not agree with you.

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Intrepid wrote:

You would probably be the one to tell a child that there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy.

Each person develops at a certain rate. I certainly would not tell a four year old that there is no Santa Claus. That belief is part of the magic of childhood, which is filled with wonder and joy about things that have no basis in reality. This is the part of their lives where kids believe in fairy tales, and far be it from me to spoil it for the child.

As the child matures, I would then begin to explain the truth to them, with consideration of their level of understanding.

There is a similar situation with the issue of sex. If a four year old asks where babies come from, it is utter foolishness to go into deep, involved biological discussions. At that age, they are unable to absorb such material, and a simple answer, that is at the level of their understanding, is appropriate.

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Phoenix wrote:

Intrepid wrote:
Who are the vulnerable people?

There are many kinds of vulnerable people. There are those who are struggling with addictions, alcoholism, emotional or psychiatric problems. There are those who are having difficulty making the leap between adolescence and adulthood, and are looking for "something" to fill a need of which they are not yet capable of filling themselves. There are those young people who are filled with alienation and anomie, who are ripe for any group which promises a better life, and the promise of a life after death.

There are older people, who never "made it" in life, and spend day after dreary day living from hand to mouth, with little hope of a better existence. That situation is much easier to bear if they are sold a bill of goods about an afterlife. It makes the life that they are living more bearable, if they think that they are looking forward to an eternity in "heaven".

In Afghanistan and Iraq today we see how poverty and hopelessness is driving young people to the radical side of the Muslim religion. Humans have a way of creating conditions that foster radicalism. It may be as tiny an entity as a family that fails to provide guideance, direction or love to the child leaving that child to turn to drugs and alcohol. Or it may be as large as a nation whose few leaders accumulate the majority of wealth for themselves and ignore the masses of poverty around them.

When I hear of a teenager who has turned to alcohol, drugs and crime the first thing I ask is, 'What were the parents like; what were they doing?'

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Phoenix32890 wrote:

Intrepid wrote:
You would probably be the one to tell a child that there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy.

There is a similar situation with the issue of sex. If a four year old asks where babies come from, it is utter foolishness to go into deep, involved biological discussions. At that age, they are unable to absorb such material, and a simple answer, that is at the level of their understanding, is appropriate.

Such as?

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Xingu- Agree. A child who is loved and nurtured by his parents is far less likely to fall in with a radical religion than one who has been abused, or emotionally neglected. If he has been taught self-confidence, self respect and the concept that he is a capable person, with the ability to chart his own destiny, and to accomplish his goals, he has no need for "pie in the sky".

Christianity - True or Not?

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