Faith

tat tvam asi · Sun Mar 14, 2010 4:50 pm

I find myself having a lot of faith in life - in survival. Times are tough but I have an unwavering faith that the money I need to survive will be there as I need it. And so far it always is, even when I honestly have no idea where it will be coming from. I'll literally be down to the wire when everything suddenly lines up often times when I'm at the very brink of disaster. I attribute this to the unrealized natural powers of the human mind on the unfolding of events rather than mysterious external forces coming to the rescue from afar. When people pray, believe, and have strong faith, their minds are hard at work through all of this...

It could well be a natural built in survival mechanism which we're only just beginning to understand.

Interbane · Sun Mar 14, 2010 6:11 pm


	Quote: Again, there may very well be evidence that supports as well as refutes the truth of the thing believed in.

If you believe in something for which there is evidence that refutes it, that is willful ignorance. You are ignoring the evidence that refutes your belief, and willfully believing in it nonetheless. That is faith. If there is evidence that refutes something you believe to be true, you need to question your motives for believing it. This applies when there is evidence in favor of the belief as well. You could have a thousand hypotheses all of which have evidence supporting them. If they seek to explain the same phenomena, I'm sure you'll find that 99% of them also have evidence against them. It is not the positive evidence that narrows down which of your beliefs are true, but the negative evidence, by weeding out the false ideas.

There was a quote I read somewhere that applies here. I forget who said it, or the exact words. It was something like "The most creative people on Earth don't simply have the best ideas. They have the most ideas, with some method of narrowing down those ideas until they are left with the best ones." Evidence that refutes a belief is of utmost importance. It's the only way to weed out the false beliefs.

If you're referring to a more loaded definition of the word faith, the concepts need to be disambiguated before you start mentioning 'evidence'.

johnson1010 · Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:58 pm


	Quote: I was confusing faith and confidence in my squirrel story, but never intentionally. I, among others, of course, have misused the word "faith" for many different things, because what I think of as the things that I personally have "faith" in is not the blind, willful ignorance you have described and that religion requires. It is simply a matter of using the wrong word.

That is probably the case with many people. They are using the word faith where it does not necessarily apply, but in the process lending credibility to faith. This pushes the misconception that faith is required for things which absolutely do not require faith, such as evolution.

DWill · Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:50 pm

The Inuit people are said to have something like 15 words for snow (actually, I read recently that that is a myth, but it's inconvenient for my point if true, so I'll ignore it). I wonder why it is that we don't have more specific words for mental aspects, such as 'faith.' We certainly seem to use it in many contexts and to each mean something different by it, so that to a certain extent disagreement about what it is reflects the protean nature of this one word, as if it, too, should really be 15 different words. For the technical and material, we're much better at labeling separately when we recognize a difference, but we're more willing to let one word serve when it's our mental aparatus we're talking about.

This is unrelated to the previous, but it seems we employ 'faith' perhaps most appropriately when we need to assess a complexity that can't be reduced to propositions, so can't be tested by rules of evidence, or can't be entirely tested in that way. We have a sense of things, perhaps it's an intuition about things, a sense of rightness about the way things appear to us. This I believe is still rational thinking, but it's different from the more narrowly rational thinking we might use to say that creationism is an irrational belief. I think it is irrational, truly, in the way it denies what have become very commmon truths about life, but it's a belief that is compartmentalized, so that the person holding it doesn't become, in a psychiatric sense, irrational. Intelligent design, though often a stand-in for creationism, is slightly different. Here faith in the sense I'm suggesting might legitimately enter in, in the form of a feeling or conviction that there is purpose and direction to biologic processes. It doesn't appear, through scientific analysis, that this feeling is "true," but it also isn't possible to prove that definitively.

There are shades of Robert Burton in the above, whose book "On Being Certain" Interbane cited earlier.

johnson1010 · Tue Mar 16, 2010 2:41 pm

Well, we do have multiple words to describe shades of intention.

Faith and confidence being such words.

Anger and annoyance, joy and contentment, etc.

It's usually not a bid deal, but in the case of broad application of the word faith, especially in the context of the kind of debates we get up to here on booktalk, there are important distinctions to make between faith and confidence.

johnson1010 · Thu Apr 29, 2010 2:37 pm

I was thinking about faith today.

Is faith a virtue?

A religious person likely would call faith a virtue, if asked. But do they really think that it is?

Should i have faith in all things?

Would i be right to accept extraordinary claims seen on television for various products, and to buy them without evidence of their usefulness? Is that wise? If a large creepy man asked to take my child for a walk behind a dumpster for thirty minutes or so, should i have faith that everything is going to be fine, or should i use reason and evidence to ensure that everything will be fine?

Seems to me that a person behaving that way would be widely ridiculed as a fool.

So maybe faith is not applicable for most situations. we should leave it to the supernatural. Faith in gods for instance.

Can i have faith in Odin? No, not with that "thou shalt have no god before me" business. Other gods are no good. We shouldn't have faith in them. It seems that what we should have faith in is the Christian God.

But why? It seems that faith has proven un-trustworthy, and not to be used in everyday situations. And not to be used on other supernatural phenomena, like Odin. Even though Odin's claim to godliness is no less than YHWH's. So, the religious person wants you to have faith in their god.

Though i am pretty sure they would say faith is no good in buying cars, or trusting other gods, somehow the christian god gets an exemption from the "faith is useless" rule.

And what is faith? Belief in a thing when there is no evidence in support, when the evidence is slim, or when evidence is against it. So, when a person says, "Just have faith" they are saying "Just believe it anyway."

This reeks of an agenda.

"I know that there are mountains of evidence against this claim. I know that there are logical inconsistancies within the claim. I know that the claim runs counter to readily observable empiracal findings, and the record of history. Just believe it anyway."

Does anyone insist you should believe the car salesman, when he says the car is worth your money, but evidence is abundant that it is not? No. That kind of faith is reserved for their God.

If it makes sense for me to rely on my rationality, my skepticism, and my pursuit of evidence to make decisions from what kind of car i should buy, down to what kind of clothes to wear in the morning, i think it makes sense to use those tools to shape my world-view. Why abandon them when they have worked so realiably in every other aspect of our lives?

Faith is rejecting the evidence to accept the insistance.

Just take a look at the YEC thread. Evidence vs insistance.

I will choose evidence every time.

stahrwe · Thu Apr 29, 2010 2:47 pm


	johnson1010 wrote: I was thinking about faith today. Is faith a virtue? A religious person likely would call faith a virtue, if asked. But do they really think that it is? Should i have faith in all things? Would i be right to accept extraordinary claims seen on television for various products, and to buy them without evidence of their usefulness? Is that wise? If a large creepy man asked to take my child for a walk behind a dumpster for thirty minutes or so, should i have faith that everything is going to be fine, or should i use reason and evidence to ensure that everything will be fine? Seems to me that a person behaving that way would be widely ridiculed as a fool. So maybe faith is not applicable for most situations. we should leave it to the supernatural. Faith in gods for instance. Can i have faith in Odin? No, not with that "thou shalt have no god before me" business. Other gods are no good. We shouldn't have faith in them. It seems that what we should have faith in is the Christian God. But why? It seems that faith has proven un-trustworthy, and not to be used in everyday situations. And not to be used on other supernatural phenomena, like Odin. Even though Odin's claim to godliness is no less than YHWH's. So, the religious person wants you to have faith in their god. Though i am pretty sure they would say faith is no good in buying cars, or trusting other gods, somehow the christian god gets an exemption from the "faith is useless" rule. And what is faith? Belief in a thing when there is no evidence in support, when the evidence is slim, or when evidence is against it. So, when a person says, "Just have faith" they are saying "Just believe it anyway." This reeks of an agenda. "I know that there are mountains of evidence against this claim. I know that there are logical inconsistancies within the claim. I know that the claim runs counter to readily observable empiracal findings, and the record of history. Just believe it anyway." Does anyone insist you should believe the car salesman, when he says the car is worth your money, but evidence is abundant that it is not? No. That kind of faith is reserved for their God. If it makes sense for me to rely on my rationality, my skepticism, and my pursuit of evidence to make decisions from what kind of car i should buy, down to what kind of clothes to wear in the morning, i think it makes sense to use those tools to shape my world-view. Why abandon them when they have worked so realiably in every other aspect of our lives? Faith is rejecting the evidence to accept the insistance. Just take a look at the YEC thread. Evidence vs insistance. I will choose evidence every time.

Is this peanut butter?

Interbane · Thu Apr 29, 2010 3:57 pm

Well said Johnson, my thoughts precisely. As a point of emphasis, I'd say the tendency to use reasoning and appeal to evidence is called skepticism. So, in a way, skepticism is the categorical opposite of faith. Skepticism is a virtue, but faith is not. To Starhwe; the same is true no matter what your definition of faith is, or what term you apply to the concept of belief without evidence or reasoning.

johnson1010 · Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:37 pm

I think you were talking about peanut butter with someone else, Star. I am not familiar with the reference.

Robert Tulip · Fri Apr 30, 2010 6:48 am


	johnson1010 wrote: I think you were talking about peanut butter with someone else, Star. I am not familiar with the reference.

Some people's brains turn to mush when they are asked to understand the meanings of different words. My impression is that your comments were not peanut butter, in that they did not contain an undifferentiated mass of either smooth or crunchy consistency, but rather explained the illogic of popular faith. For some people, funnily enough, such an explanation becomes indistinguishable from peanut butter as soon as you twitch their infallible heresy detector!

Faith is a virtue when it calls people to make a sacrifice for a higher ethical ideal, such as soldiers who die in a just war, or a parent who dies to save their child. A soldier cannot have sufficient evidence to make decisions based on personal observation, but must obey orders, with faith that the orders are properly given. The similar circumstance of faith as a virtue exists wherever a decision of duty must be made with limited information.

johnson1010 · Fri Apr 30, 2010 8:32 am

That had me laughing, RT.

DWill · Fri Apr 30, 2010 9:32 am

Just to raise a point in the interest of completeness or perhaps fairness. This discussion on faith tends to be one in which the word 'blind' can be understood to precede 'faith.' In other words, it critiques faith at the extreme. I was reading a book called "Genesis: A Living Conversation," in which about 25 men and women talk about that one book of the Bible. Most of them would call themselves people of faith, but none would endorse the kind of belief-against-the-evidence that has been used here to define faith. You can tell by what they say that they are far from literalists. What is faith exactly for these people? I'm not sure I know, because the book doesn't intend to answer that question. But I know people do talk about a general sense of faith they have. What they mean must have something to do with God existing, somehow existing, and perhaps also with the idea that all the things about life we can't reconcile from our limited perspective are reconciled in or by God.

This group is much larger than we sometimes suppose. The extreme view tends to consume all the attention. And I think that this belief involves a sense of the whole that people may have, an intuition if you like, that cannot be held as against reason.

johnson1010 · Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:36 pm

In my last post about faith, it is people like the ones you are talking about that i address, Dwill.

Those are the people who would say it isnt appropriate to have faith in everything. For those people, just like us athiests, they want proof of what people say to them.

"Electric company says i owe this much money. Show me a break down of the charges. Show me the meter."

"This car doesnt look like it is worth what you say it is. i will check it out myself before i buy it."

"My daughter is pregnant, but says she is a virgin. I think that is a lie."

These are level headed people for whom faith is not nearly enough to convince them in their daily lives. They want to have proof that the claims they hear have merit before they will accept them. Exactly how it should be. The exception is about their God. No matter how strident their search for the best price on a new washing machine, or which team is going to go home with the championship, they give up the persuit of evidence when it comes to God and accept faith as a reasonable alternative when they would not in mundane every day circumstances.

Just as the next lady you see freaking out at the cashier because she has been shorted a quarter and a dime on a sale. That lady needs proof that her money is right over $0.35, but will accept that Mary was a virgin who gave birth to a God.

DWill · Fri Apr 30, 2010 9:01 pm


	johnson1010 wrote: These are level headed people for whom faith is not nearly enough to convince them in their daily lives. They want to have proof that the claims they hear have merit before they will accept them. Exactly how it should be. The exception is about their God. No matter how strident their search for the best price on a new washing machine, or which team is going to go home with the championship, they give up the persuit of evidence when it comes to God and accept faith as a reasonable alternative when they would not in mundane every day circumstances. Just as the next lady you see freaking out at the cashier because she has been shorted a quarter and a dime on a sale. That lady needs proof that her money is right over $0.35, but will accept that Mary was a virgin who gave birth to a God.

Some do create a special category of belief when there's nothing really to lose by it and their backs aren't up against the wall. But most people still, no matter how often they say that God will take care of them and their loved ones, rush to the hospital when they have chest pain. Then they use their common sense to do what's best for themselves. But at other times, there's no price to pay for the kind of belief you cite; but there is, apparently, considerable psychological benefit. It's kind of win-win for them.

The people I was talking about I suppose could be considered the very liberal believers, who don't place stress on any of the doctrine but still want to be in the tradition. And to just believe in the God part of it, and maybe the Jesus part minus the miraculous, doesn't violate reason that I can see. These still consider themselves people of faith, but they've made something largely metaphorical of the religion. That seems to work for them.

johnson1010 · Wed May 19, 2010 3:18 pm


	Quote: Nancy Marks, a psychic from Lafayette, Colorado, was arrested for fraud after telling clients their "money [was] evil" and that she'd take their cursed cash so "the money would suffer" instead. Marks made at least $290,000 using this scam. Marks - who runs a psychic reading business creatively named Psychic Readings - warned victims that malicious spirits were haunting their bank accounts and that she would take the evil assets off their hands. Her scam would've continued had a whistleblower named Linda not contacted police. According to Linda, For each evil spirit that was supposedly around me, she told me a certain number of thousand of dollars that I needed to bring to her [...] She told me if I didn't give her more and more money, that something terrible would befall my mother.

Faith makes fools of us.

Forum rules

Faith Tweet This Topic

Who is online

Chat Room Always Open!