You HAVE to believe, Part II SouthStar started a thread on this topic, but in this one, I would like to lead the discussion in another direction. One is likely to get this kind of instruction from a believer: This is arguing from an ex-post position. From the position of someone who already has faith. Someone who does not have faith yet will not gain it following such instructions. Such instructions make a non-believer feel even more powerless and stupid than they already feel. We cannot demand from a person to do something that cannot be done deliberately. We cannot demand from someone to admire, love, hate, fall in love, fall asleep. We cannot demand from someone to doubt, trust, believe. We cannot demand from someone to have courage or show character. Saying, "You have to have faith" is demanding from a person to do something that cannot be done deliberately. However, it seems possible to have faith, even if one has not been raised in a religious family or has not had certain experiences that could be termed as "life-changing". So the question here is: How does this happen, how does this take place that one builds faith? One can often hear that "all it takes is a little faith to start with, a mustard seed of faith". But someone who is without faith cannot will oneself not even into that mustard seed of faith! What about those people? I am intutively sure that there is a way even for a person without faith to come to build a faith of one's own. I am hereby calling upon all those who have faith to carefully ponder how they came to their faith, and tell us about those beginnings. I am emphasizing though that you must keep in mind that now, you are speaking about the past with the benefit of hindsight. Very likely, you may answer with something like, "I first had a little faith, I didn't believe, but I prayed anyway, and so it happened." No. This is the benefit of hindsight speaking. I want you to think more thoroughly, more carefully. Those that are non-believers *now* do not have that benefit of hindsight. And instructions given by some who has the benefit of hindsight do not help a non-believer to build faith, or help them only incidentally. When you say, "You have to believe" -- what is that you are really saying?
why, what has having faith done for anyone, The word "faith" when applied to religion is being grossly misused. Faith is believing that something is true even though there is no evidence to support it. Absolutely no scientific claim made in the world is believed to be true by the scientific community, the press, and the majority of the public, including even the most rabid xians/muslims, until other respected and acknowledged scientists can repeat the experiments and come up with the same results as those who claim new discoveries. Even with the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence supporting evolution, xians/muslims fight tooth and nail in their vain and pointless attempts to discredit all of evolution's applicable scientific evidence. How is it that the wild and entirely unsupported claims of the xians/muslim about blood gods, demons, and pits of fire are so easily swallowed by so many and contested by so few? Due to the fact that there is no evidence to support the validity of Xianity/islam, and that there is such a huge amount of evidence directly conflicting with Xianity/islam, the word "delusion" is more appropriately applied where the word "faith" is much more commonly used. Having a delusion is believing something is true even though there is no affirmative evidence to support a contention of belief, and/or the existence of significant evidence to the contrary of the professed belief. xians/muslim have no "faith in God", they have a delusion of God. They are, quite factually, mentally ill. thanks preach
Apparently, you don't know all that much about yourself. When you go to school, and you do your studies, you are acting on your faith. You are actively believing in yourself that you can manage to study through the material and pass the tests well. No matter what IQ or other abilities you may have -- unless you proverbially "believe in yourself", unless you "have faith that you can do it", you won't get yourself to studying (or you will do it because your parents force you to). This is what faith does for you.
My grandmother showed me love. My mother too, but that was more expected and insisted upon, I think. This is only the tiniest part of my faith, but that experience was probably the mustard seed. (please no responses that this is sociological because I have many other reasons for faith now, this was just my first conscious experience) Maybe if people spent less time killing each other to force their beliefs, and spent more time loving, there would be a lot more faith in the world.
I usually say this, but I elliminate the "have to". I say everyone has faith, just like pavlosmarcos. My current conclusion lies in the realms of faith being divinely granted. That is; God allows every human the ability to believe without absolute proof or certainty. There is no other way we can function in the world: without faith we cannot function as sentient, loving human beings. I think I was born with it (as implied above). The question is what I end up having faith in most? That is affected by evidence through experience. I often wonder which is the precursor. Evidence or faith? I have concluded that faith is the precursor (obviously). Evidence strengthens faith; faith 'strengthens' evidence (in the percievers eye). The Star still has faith... but faith in what/who? The way I see it; Humanity is on a quest for truth. Some think they have given up by saying there is not truth (a truth)... On our individual quests for truth we put our faith in different things. I think that when we put our faith firmly in God then we will see the "true truth" if you will. How? Have an open mind (learn) and an open heart (tolerate). Right now I don't know what I see/know (is it 'reality'?)... Is Jupiter really spherical or is that an illusion created by some weird space-time effect? I know that it is (must be) God's truth to me. I see/know what God allows me to see/know. That is all I need to know. Faith allows us to believe and accept. Without faith in evidence there is no way you can accept that evidence as true. Without evidence, your faith is of no substance. You can have faith in a "pink monkey-elephant-lion" hiding in the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. But what is that without acceptable (to the individual) evidence? This compares in no way to faith in God... or it shouldn't. Evidence for the presence of God abounds... at least for me.
Faith and confidence are two different things because the criteria are different. For example, I don't have 'faith' that the sun will rise each morning, I have confidence. So, is it possible to have confidence that there is a god?
speak for your self dumbass, so you know what non believers think,...feel like? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!somehow I doubt that,unless you wanna claim to be the all knowing ONE. if anything, atheists having logic/reason on their side can only feel superior to the brainwashed ones=theists. open skull,remove brain,replace with mush! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! why would they want to do that? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! we all can see the scientific evidence for evolution/age of earth due to the geological fossil records theres no way any normal logicaly thinking person can accept the "buybull" story as the truth,in fact it had been disproved,refuted and totaly destroyed over and over so many times and still your religious morrons keep deluding themselves by clinging to this idiotic faith, why?
Water, You are wrong in every respect. I can study with no expectation that I will learn anything. Faith is not required. If I do learn something then I will have some degree of evidence that it could happen again, at that point I have evidence and again no longer require faith. No it doesn’t. That is a non sequitur. Faith is never required to achieve anything. And faith here means religious faith – belief without evidence. One can always withhold action if evidence is not present. This is not to be confused with taking a risk. The difference is that faith holds that the belief is a certainty whereas a risk represents the possibility of failure.
Water, I once had religious faith and strenuously attempted to persuade others to believe as well. But that was several decades ago. Losing my faith was an inevitable result of my apparent objective analytical outlook. But how did I acquire faith in the first instance? I surmise that it must have been a temporary phase resulting from my approach of experimentation to see what works and what does not work.
Which experience? That your grandmother and your mother loved you? * * * On what do you base that everyone has faith? This -- "There is no other way we can function in the world: without faith we cannot function as sentient, loving human beings."? What about those who don't feel that they have faith? I agree. That we accept scientific methods and the evidence gathered by their use, simply takes faith. By "The Star", you mean SouthStar? Agreed. * * * Faith vs confidence? I'd say that faith also encompasses confidence. * * * If, to you, religious faith, is about fundamentalism, then I have nothing to say to you in this thread. * * * Why, thank you for your utterly nice words! If you are of any scientific mind, first gather evidence about who I am and what I believe, before you call me a "religious moron". * * * And you are still on your ego trip. You *can* study with no expectation that you will learn anything, sure. But schools don't set out with such an outlook. Schools have aims: and that is to to teach the kids something, to have the kids learn something. People have expectations, values, preferences, and they act according to them in their lives. No. If you do learn something, you will maybe have confidence or faith that you may be able to learn something again. If something happened once, this is no reliable evidence yet that it could happen again. Of course not. Because you are a robot and you have no emotions, no values and no preferences. You like to do things that either will work out or won't work out, but it is all one and the same cheese to you. I don't agree with your qualification of faith as "faith holds that the belief is a certainty", this is a strawman. You have brought up the term "risk" just to relabel, in order to avoid a word you don't like. You "surmise that it must have been" something. This is not a good enough answer. Think deeper, think analytically. Try to think away the benefits of hindsight.
Honesty, nobody HAS to do anything. Christ explained it using the Parable of the Sower and the Seeds. Many of the seeds will fall into unproductive areas or get swept away to waste and will not and are not expected to ever produce. The Sower is not yelling to them that they HAVE to grow. To hell with them! There are enough seeds that WILL grow. We need to remember that the World is a kind of Spiritual Filter. The Good and Holy people will rise up and through all the meshing that keeps the coarse and evil people trapped below. So it is not in the interests of God to rip up the Filter to allow all of humanity into Heaven. They would ruin the place. So I would think that God would be pleased that you DON'T want in the program.
Marc, A question for you: If you think that everybody already has faith -- what do you tell those who think they don't have faith? How do you prove to them that they do have faith?
I was giving a possible place where the "faith" part of my belief system was planted. It may just be the first thing I can ascribe a higher meaning to. It may have been the realization that there was love beyond the expected. Do you want to throw that out because it didn't happen to everyone, so we can find one way to "faith"? Ok, let's try. The things I "know" from my understanding of the universe fit together with the things I have "faith" in often, but sometimes they don't. When they don't, I question them. The "know" and the "faith." Apparently it is strange to many people here, but it is not because of ignorance that I have "faith", or "belief". I laugh when an atheist who hasn't looked into these questions deeply, who is actually relying on many suppositions, tries to question my intelligence because they have finished their homework early and I am still writing, so to speak. But why do I waste my time on that? We can figure out who is thinking and who has memorized their lines pretty quickly. I've got a pretty good idea of what is reasonable and what is not. I've got a good sense for which of my ideas are tenuous and which are solid. Maybe the faith I have now was planted when they put me in the advanced class for elementary school, or when I learned how to trust myself. I would love to be able to use "common knowledge" to prove my faith to myself, but I don't think this is possible for anyone who has delved deeply into these questions. I could be wrong. If someone can say they know everything they need to know then I suppose they can be without doubt. I will continue to search with the pre-supposition that we don't have all the necessary evidence yet to "prove" or "disprove" some of the theories. I know that the true great thinkers have always fought about the scientific theories, not just accepted them, and came up with their own when not all of the "accepted" ideas seemed acceptable. If Bohr and Einstein fought, and Einstein still searched for one theory to unite them all, who am I to judge? I surmise that there is a possibility for one theory, because neither seems to be perfect yet, and until the time one flawlessly describes every possible situation, we'll use two. Now that I think about it, the point where my current faith was planted may have been when I found out that scientists are proven wrong by later generations of scientists throughout history. And also, one theorist from a way earlier generation turns out to be right even though most of their ideas are still discounted. This is probably my only unassailable idea - they thought they "knew" how it all worked then, what makes now so different? Maybe these are just the things that allow my faith to live and not the faith itself. If you want to ask where the faith comes from, I think it comes from God. I don't think it is possible to come to God without being called. I blame God. But I also blame mankind, I also blame myself. I will hold these two opposites in my head until one is shown to be flawless, because just one or the other doesn't make sense to me yet. Can fully believing neither of two opposite ideas be called faith? I think Einstein had "faith" in finding a unified theory. Does that make him a dumb-ass. That is another place to look for seeds. Faith is trusting, or at least hoping for, what you do not know. The word "know" is a funny one. I "know" my dog will not type this for me as I dictate. If the word know is discounted enough to accept the idea that he will type for me then it has no value at all to me, it is impossible for me to believe with my previous experience and information this will happen. If God snapped God's fingers and created a new brain for me, or created a new universe where this was reasonable, I could have faith in it, but I don't even believe any God would bother. I will use the term "know" for the understanding that it is so close to impossible that I will ignore the "close to" and call it impossible. If you say I don't "know" a meteor won't hit the earth tomorrow, technically I would agree, maybe the pentagon is covering that information up as we speak, but I'm 99.999... percent sure it isn't going to happen. I still don't call this "faith," because there is such an exponentially vast preponderance of evidence for it not happening. It still goes into the "know" category. I am sorry I am not able to be more definitive on this matter, but I have said enough and I am interested to hear your ideas about yourself now.
Water, Because there has been past evidence that schools can help children learn. Faith is still not a factor since we have evidence. And the confidence comes from the evidence that I have learnt before. This is inductive reasoning and isn’t the blind faith typical of religions. That is true but it is evidence nonetheless and again not the blind irrational faith of religion. When we consider the millions who have learnt then again that is overwhelming evidence and obviates any need for faith. Do you understand inductive reasoning? Using logic to make decisions does not exclude the ability to experience emotions or to hold values and have preferences. In contrast the person who chooses, thinking something imaginary is a certainty, is simply irrational. I suspect you have not discussed faith before. I understand your mistake. From Webster:- faith : firm belief in something for which there is no proof. belief : conviction of the truth of some statement. If you believe something is true it implies you have no doubt, i.e. it is a certainty. Faith is then simply a conviction that something is true (certain) despite the absence of proof. “Risk” has a qualitative value quite distinctive from “faith” and was used here to illustrate the irrational nature of blind faith. It was deliberately not an attempt to relabel “faith”. Please also be aware that the word faith has multiple meanings and you are mixing and confusing the different usages as if they all mean the same thing. The word is often used to mean confidence or inductive reasoning – this is quite different to the blind faith of religion where no induction or evidence is involved. Tough! That’s the closest I can get.
Yes. Others will call it all kinds of things. I've been through a few discussions with some people here on it and have yet to convince them that it is not "Blind Faith as opposed to Faith" - that was the first argument I saw pitched... I dont' think there's anything called blind faith - "blind faith" is insanity. Then it evolved to "a gamble"... that one seems to have stuck. I've also seen "a hypothesis". It all seems to boil down to a sort of hope. The whole time I've been a member at this site I've been trying to convince people that everybody has faith - even the atheist. I'm not sure if I've had even one success just yet... who knows... I think it's like trying to convince someone that God exists through what you call evidence. It can always be interpreted another way. Mostly I think people like to think they have no faith because faith is often related to religion. Obviously those whose aim is to defame anything religious will ultimately deny having any such "delusional religious 'fantasy-trait'" as faith - especially the atheist. Yes. I like to define faith as "the ability to believe". I've often been told by the multilingual that you eventually abandon strict definitions and look more into the nature of the word.... the phenomenon itself. I'm not multilingual... but I'm getting there. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Without faith you can't believe. I find it repulsive to my core to even try to imagine the idea that I think that's a complete load of crap - sorry. Now that would be an example of a non sequitur. Maybe a better hypotheitical situation could've been given to bring across the thought... or the author (Cris) misunderstood the original statement? Anyway, how to convince them? I'm still working on it.
Sorry to butt in Water... The question is what makes you accept the evidence as evidence? This may be true in some cases but not all. Inductive reasoning, as far as my knowledge goes, is active. Faith, on the other hand, may be more passive (works in the background). But as Water indicated... synonyms do exist... you don't like one word... use the other. Objectivity, I have learnt after studying meanings from several dictionaries, can be a good thing. It seems Webster's is the "debator's canon"... or "atheist debator's canon" Such faith in the definitions. Here's a more comprehensive look at the idea of faith. Faith, it seems, does not imply certitude in all cases. One often tends to "fall behind" after adhering to one view of things for too long. Thank God for Water. Interesting switch after quoting the canonical definition from Webster's. It may be wise for one to go and review these various meanings and maybe re-evaluate the statement regarding faith and certitude. I fail to see any evidence of this in Water's posts. Faithful statement.
No, not all, I don't wish to "throw that out"! I just think that you have made an experience "where the "faith" part of my belief system was planted" that not everybody has made. And I think you were lucky to have it happened this way for you. It seems to me that some people who haven't experienced much love as children find it harder to build their faith. When you learned to trust yourself. This is once more an experience that not everybody has. I think that it is impossible to build one's faith unless one learns to trust oneself first. But how does one do that, how does one learn to trust oneself? The way I see it, faith is a composite phenomenon that may be analytically describable, yet it functions as a whole, and we do not have conscious insight into it when we act on it. This is why it is so hard to understand it, so hard to explain how faith comes to be. Exactly. It is hard to tell these things apart. This is why I posted that "instruction" in the opening post. What is said there are things that allow one's faith to live, but they are not the faith itself, neither do they show how faith came to be. Such things make some of those who think they lack faith to feel like little worthless midgets. "You have to be called." And if you aren't called, then what? Then you are not worthy of being called? It is definitely irrational to set out for things one cannot be sure of. Be it in science or religion. There is a practical consideration when it comes to "know". We don't "know" or "understand" the world and ourselves in the strict sense of "to know", "to understand". But we are acquainted with the world and ourselves, and we are able to live with them. And this "being acquainted with" and "being able to live with" are the room in which we make all our strategies and theories. * * * But what do you accept as evidence? What criteria must something fulfill in order to be considered evidence? Religious faith can also be inductive. If you use that sort of argument, then I could also counter you that if "we consider the millions" who believe in God, then it must be true. What you have there is still an argumentum ad populum, and by this token, inductive reasoning is to be discarded. Or? Do you understand two-way inductive reasoning? If anything, experiencing emotions, holding values and have preferences interferes with using logic. And primarily, humans function by following their values and preferences, not by following logic. Logic is worthless and aimless unless it has some premises that come from values and preferences to work with. Values and preferences are not a matter of fact, neither could they be considered logical. If I wish to finish college, I firmly have to believe I can do it. There is no proof whether I will do it or not, only time will tell. But unless I act as if it were possible, I will not finish it. Indeed, it is irrational to start something for which there is no proof whether it will can work out or not. Also, you do realize that the Webster dictionary was written by people? That it is, in fact, yet another theory? The definitions in dictionaries are not a given; they are a more or less scientific abstraction. What makes you think that when I use the term "faith", that I thereby sometimes mean 'blind religious faith' and sometimes 'confidence or inductive reasoning'?! You are reading things into my texts that I have not said. I have said earlier in this thread to LIGHTBEING: "If, to you, religious faith, is about fundamentalism, then I have nothing to say to you in this thread." When I say "faith", I do not mean 'religious faith in specific', or 'blind faith', or 'confidence or inductive reasoning'. I am working towards a prototypical understanding of the concept "faith", and for this, I cannot simply settle for what this or that dictionary or extremistic view says. * * * In that case, when "religious faith" is automatically termed "blind faith", this is then a strawman meant to discredit any religious faith. Then this opens another topic: Maybe those who feel they don't have faith actually have a "faith in waiting", a "potential faith", a faith without direction or aim or object. So it is not so much about not having faith -- but about not having something to have faith *in*. And if one doesn't know what to have faith in, then it certainly feels like one doesn't have faith at all. Yes, exactly. Limiting faith to be something exclusively related to religion makes the issue of faith moot. This topic would actually be more fitting for the section Human science or General philosophy. Yes, this is a practical way to see it. As a multilingual, I can say one develops a non-atomistic understanding of a word/concept; a prototype that is then flexible, yet somehow firm. I suppose what one has to be convinced of is the object, direction, aim of one's faith. This is where it gets problematic! I could have faith in my abilities -- but if I get hit by a car and end up paralyzed, I will also have a belief crisis, as after that paralysis the object of my faith would be severely damaged or even destroyed. I could have faith in money -- but if I get robbed, can't find work, what happens to me then, if all I had faith in was money? No problem, I am glad you are here! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! EXACTLY. It seems to me that we call "evidence" or "fact" what needs the least explicit faith to accept it. We could say that faith is about a certain way we approach things, and in specific those we do not have full knowledge of. A certain holistic composite of humility, attention, works, creativity, good will (and probably something else). So what gives faith this air of certitude is the outlook of good will. Or we'd all be very thirsty! Thanks. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
