What is faith? Really?

[Mick]

I don't see it that way. It is analogous to the parent-child case, I think.

Through natural theology and bibical studies, people believe that God exists, that the Biblical documents are reliable and that Jesus resurrected from the dead. The faith part comes in when we are faced with revelation that is not demonstrable or probable in the light of evidence we have (which is not to say it is improbable). We accept its truth based upon that trust in God, as He is demonstrated to be goodness itself (a demonstration found in natural theology) and our trust in the documents.

[JimC]

I don't see it that way. It is analogous to the parent-child case, I think.

Through natural theology and bibical studies, people believe that God exists, that the Biblical documents are reliable and that Jesus resurrected from the dead. The faith part comes in when we are faced with revelation that is not demonstrable or probable in the light of evidence we have (which is not to say it is improbable). We accept its truth based upon that trust in God, as He is demonstrated to be goodness itself (a demonstration found in natural theology) and our trust in the documents.

You do realise, I hope, that there is nothing in your statement which provides for placing reliance on faith as a guide to the nature of the universe...

You have merely demonstrated that christians (and other religious people) have warm and fuzzy feelings about the existence of a god, feelings which they treasure. The statement "he is demonstrated to be goodness itself" is nothing more than theological circular reasoning at its finest.

I have a warm fondness for my cats, but this does not give me insight into the nature of reality, other than humans are capable of emotional attachment to pets.

Anyway, enjoy your faith feelings, just don't think they provide any evidence as to the existence of god (which one? yours, Odin, Allah?) or any insight into the way the universe operates.

[Hermit]

Through natural theology and bibical studies, people believe that God exists, that the Biblical documents are reliable and that Jesus resurrected from the dead.

Reading the bible and studying natural theology helped me come to the opposite conclusion. Regarding the first, it became inescapably obvious to me that the bible is chockablock full of contradictions - nothing more than an edited assemblage of writings by various men of rather primitive mind. I actually became a deist because I studied the bible. A couple of years later my studies of natural theology in conjunction with taking courses in epistemology took care of my deism.

The faith part comes in when we are faced with revelation that is not demonstrable or probable in the light of evidence we have (which is not to say it is improbable). We accept its truth based upon that trust in God, as He is demonstrated to be goodness itself (a demonstration found in natural theology) and our trust in the documents.

Circularity much?

[Seth]

That's what Atheism suffers from, poverty of imagination. Like the three blind men examining an elephant by touch, Atheists proceed from a faulty premise. Really several faulty premises.

Are you suggesting gods are imaginary?

I'm saying that no one on earth has sufficient knowledge to render any rational judgment about the existence of God or gods.

The first faulty premise is that in the absence of scientific validation, any claim to phenomena that occur outside the known physics of science must be classified as "supernatural." That premise is flawed because it assumes (again) perfect scientific knowledge, whereas the phenomena may in fact be perfectly natural and within the laws of physics but outside the understanding of the laws of physics that lie within the intellectual grasp of human beings today.

I don't know many people who would agree with the first part. There are phenomena which fall outside of known physics like "dark matter" which aren't classified as "supernatural". "Supernatural" is a term which is applied to phenomena which seem to violate the laws of physics.

"The laws of physics" as interpreted by hairless monkeys. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke

Also, history is full of phenomena once deemed supernatural which we now have known natural causes for (earthquakes, disease...). I'm not sure anyone here would argue against the proposition that there is stuff we can't yet explain through science.

Strange that literally everyone does exactly that when it comes to "religion."

The second faulty premise is that God(s) don't exist because there is no credible evidence that they do. This is of course merely a burden of proof fallacy. And yes, I'm aware of the typical Atheist prevarication of saying that Atheists don't believe gods don't exist, they are just withholding judgment until the evidence is all in. This of course is just a convenient rhetorical evasion.

It's not a rhetorical evasion.

Yes it is.

I've never seen, felt or conversed with a god or witnessed or experienced a miracle. Sue me.

Poor you. Have faith and pray hard and perhaps God will enlighten you.

Religious people, on the other hand, claim they have.

And you, and science, have exactly zero evidence that they have not.

The characters in the Bible have wrestled with God. Spoken with God through a burning bush. One was even the son of God. They witnessed great miracles like canes being turned into snakes. The Red Sea being parted. People being raised from the dead.

Yup. Now where's your evidence that these things did not happen?

This is the exact same standard of evidence I expect for myself and no less. I'm not going to believe something just on someone's say so.

Nobody's asking you to believe anything.

And speaking of the burden of proof - There are countless gods out there. There are gods extinct, extant and yet to be invented.

And you know this how, exactly? Do you work at the celestial God factory that manufactures these gods, or are you simply making a statement of truth tha has no foundation in truth?

There may be many, many more out there in the universe. By shifting the burden of proof on the atheist you are expecting them to disprove each and every single one of them in an effort to justify not believing in any.

I'm not expecting them to do anything except STFU and mind their own business and not be so obsessed about how and what other people worship or do not worship. Atheists are arrogant pricks who think they are superior to everyone of faith and they put themselves up on a pedestal of virtue and knowledge that they don't deserve because they are actually ignorant poseurs.

This is an incredibly enormous burden enough to crush anyone.

Sucks to be an Atheist I guess. So don't be one. Come be a Tolerist™ with me.

No. That won't do. Let the believers show their evidence and it's up to people (not just atheists, but people from other religions) to decide whether they accept it. Whether they want to buy into it. Or whether they want to look elsewhere. Ideas are a market place.

I think the way it goes is that if you don't seek it, God's not going to give it to you. This explains perfectly why Atheists never experience miracles.

Atheists insist that science is the metric, while the faithful do not try to hold God to the rules of knownphysics in examining God's interactions with the universe.

Atheism and scienceism are not synonymous, though people who buy into scienceism are usually atheists. You can be a non-believer and still believe stuff like homeopathy, angels, chi, telepathy, bi-location and other stuff outside the metric of science.
I've just described a friend of mine.
As for examining any gods' interaction with the universe, I'm not even sure how I would go about doing that. I'd have to pick a god first out of the many I suppose, and then, I dunno, look for signs or something

I believe Christians have a set of instructions for finding God.

And the other faulty premise is the "I ain't seen no evidence" Atheist claim.

Three things are possible with respect to this premise: First, there may be no evidence; second, there may be evidence that the Atheist is unaware of; and third there may be evidence that the Atheist is aware of but that the Atheist dismisses because it does not meet the Atheist's standards of review.

It's not a faulty premise to say "I ain't seen no evidence". It's not even a premise. It's a statement of a person's personal experience. I'm 35 and I have yet to see any evidence. Not for want of trying. I wasn't always an atheist.

Sorry, I was inexact. Change that to "I ain't seen no evidence so it don't exist."

I don't know anyone who would disagree that there could be evidence they haven't seen yet. And if there is evidence I have seen it would probably be more the case I didn't even recognise it than I dismissed it.

Or it could even be the case that the evidence is right before your eyes but you are unable to properly interpret what you see because your skepticism and atheism interfere with the necessary conditions for a relationship with God.

God, if God exists as is claimed by the faithful, being omnipotent and omniscient, would certainly be capable of denying evidence that might compel an Atheist to believe if that is God's desire, even while simultaneously showing compelling evidence that the faithful believe to them. Evidence of this sort of behavior is seen frequently in Catholic records, where visions and miracles are granted only to some people and not to everyone.

Why God might choose to act in this way is unknown, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility.

Apparently God hardened the Pharaoh's heart so he wouldn't believe.
It's also possible that Satan is tricking everyone into believing in the wrong god, or believing in god incorrectly, or that there even is a god. I don't think it's really helpful to talk about what is 'possible'. It's a bit of a red-herring.

If it's possible, then it's not impossible. If it's not impossible, then one cannot say it's impossible.

That's the thing about God(s), they don't have to play by your rules. God can dangle all sorts of evidence before your eyes but condition your comprehension of that evidence upon your willingness to seek it out with an open heart and mind rather than one closed like a bank vault to anything outside "scientific" knowledge.

I believe that's what Christians call a "leap of faith."

And being God, God is perfectly entitled to restrict knowledge of him to those who make that leap of faith. It helps keep out the riff-raff.

[Seth]

I don't see it that way. It is analogous to the parent-child case, I think.

Through natural theology and bibical studies, people believe that God exists, that the Biblical documents are reliable and that Jesus resurrected from the dead. The faith part comes in when we are faced with revelation that is not demonstrable or probable in the light of evidence we have (which is not to say it is improbable). We accept its truth based upon that trust in God, as He is demonstrated to be goodness itself (a demonstration found in natural theology) and our trust in the documents.

You do realise, I hope, that there is nothing in your statement which provides for placing reliance on faith as a guide to the nature of the universe...

You have merely demonstrated that christians (and other religious people) have warm and fuzzy feelings about the existence of a god, feelings which they treasure. The statement "he is demonstrated to be goodness itself" is nothing more than theological circular reasoning at its finest.

I have a warm fondness for my cats, but this does not give me insight into the nature of reality, other than humans are capable of emotional attachment to pets.

And why is an "insight into the nature of reality" any sort of metric by which God can or should be measured? And your cats, despite their status as genetically-superior creatures capable of manipulating hairless monkeys into catering to their every whim and caprice, are not God...I think.

Anyway, enjoy your faith feelings, just don't think they provide any evidence as to the existence of god (which one? yours, Odin, Allah?) or any insight into the way the universe operates.

Why is this insight pertinent?

[LucidFlight]

Apparently God hardened the Pharaoh's heart so he wouldn't believe.
It's also possible that Satan is tricking everyone into believing in the wrong god, or believing in god incorrectly, or that there even is a god. I don't think it's really helpful to talk about what is 'possible'. It's a bit of a red-herring.

If it's possible, then it's not impossible. If it's not impossible, then one cannot say it's impossible.

That's very true. Thus, if it's possible, no one can say it's impossible, because it's possible. However, one could still say it's impossible, but that would not in itself make it impossible, because that which is possible is - by its very nature - possible, no matter what people say about its being possible or impossible. It's quite possible that people would say it's impossible, but they haven't really thought through the possibility of what they think is impossible.

[mistermack]

Faith is a form of trust. The basis for this trust is rational in light of posterior evidence. For example, a child trusts his mother about this or that unobserved thing or event, since he has seen that she is good, reliable and trustworthy. This trust would be a form of faith.

You're right. Faith is child-like. When you are very small, it's a good and necessary type of bond. But you don't need to get very old, before you realise that you need to use your own judgement too.
My elder brother told me that there was no Santa Clause, that our parents lied to us, that THEY bought the presents. I wouldn't believe him, so he showed me where they were hidden, under the stairs.

It was him who said that there was no god. And as soon as the words left his lips, I could see how people could believe in something that didn't exist. I didn't ever believe after that moment.
I could see that I only believed because I had been told it, and my parents only believed because THEY had been told it, by their parents. And so on, back through time. I worked that out within minutes of my brother saying that there might not be a god. At the age of about eight.

So yes, faith is rational, up to the age of five or six. You don't have the knowledge or powers of reasoning for anything else, till then.

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

And why is an "insight into the nature of reality" any sort of metric by which God can or should be measured?

As usual, you miss the point by a mile. Believers insist that their faith is enough to tell them their particular deity exists (often while vehemently denying that someone else's faith allows them the same right, of course...)

Having established the equation "I have faith, therefore god", all the other corollaries that flow from this (god created the universe, miracles happen, etc.) are allowed to follow automatically, thus establishing a theocratic view of how the universe works.

Which is, of course, utter and complete bullshit.

[rainbow]

I believe that's what Christians call a "leap of faith."

You "believe"?
You don't know, you have no evidence to support this, you just believe?

...so it's an Act of Faith on your part?

[Mick]

Through natural theology and bibical studies, people believe that God exists, that the Biblical documents are reliable and that Jesus resurrected from the dead.

Reading the bible and studying natural theology helped me come to the opposite conclusion. Regarding the first, it became inescapably obvious to me that the bible is chockablock full of contradictions - nothing more than an edited assemblage of writings by various men of rather primitive mind. I actually became a deist because I studied the bible. A couple of years later my studies of natural theology in conjunction with taking courses in epistemology took care of my deism.

The faith part comes in when we are faced with revelation that is not demonstrable or probable in the light of evidence we have (which is not to say it is improbable). We accept its truth based upon that trust in God, as He is demonstrated to be goodness itself (a demonstration found in natural theology) and our trust in the documents.

Circularity much?

Where's the circularity?

[Mick]

Faith is a form of trust. The basis for this trust is rational in light of posterior evidence. For example, a child trusts his mother about this or that unobserved thing or event, since he has seen that she is good, reliable and trustworthy. This trust would be a form of faith.

You're right. Faith is child-like. When you are very small, it's a good and necessary type of bond. But you don't need to get very old, before you realise that you need to use your own judgement too.
My elder brother told me that there was no Santa Clause, that our parents lied to us, that THEY bought the presents. I wouldn't believe him, so he showed me where they were hidden, under the stairs.

It was him who said that there was no god. And as soon as the words left his lips, I could see how people could believe in something that didn't exist. I didn't ever believe after that moment.
I could see that I only believed because I had been told it, and my parents only believed because THEY had been told it, by their parents. And so on, back through time. I worked that out within minutes of my brother saying that there might not be a god. At the age of about eight.

So yes, faith is rational, up to the age of five or six. You don't have the knowledge or powers of reasoning for anything else, till then.

Oh, stop. I didn't say faith is child-like.

[Hermit]

Where's the circularity?

We accept its truth based upon that trust in God, as He is demonstrated to be goodness itself (a demonstration found in natural theology) and our trust in the documents.

As for "a demonstration found in natural theology", perleeeeeease. I look at nature, and I reason. Oh, look, a beautiful butterfly. Therefore God. That's not even aspiring to circularity. It's short-circuiting all thought processes.

[Svartalf]

What's natural theology?

and as for the goodness of the deity, thousands upon thousands of tales of woe happening to the innocent show what drivel the concept of a good god is.

[Mick]

Where's the circularity?

We accept its truth based upon that trust in God, as He is demonstrated to be goodness itself (a demonstration found in natural theology) and our trust in the documents.

As for "a demonstration found in natural theology", perleeeeeease. I look at nature, and I reason. Oh, look, a beautiful butterfly. Therefore God. That's not even aspiring to circularity. It's short-circuiting all thought processes.

No one reasons like that at all. :/

[Mick]

What's natural theology?

and as for the goodness of the deity, thousands upon thousands of tales of woe happening to the innocent show what drivel the concept of a good god is.

Why?