I'm not a Christian, so I'm not convinced by some of the things you said, but nevertheless, it's a good post.
There is so much wrong here and I barely know where to start cleaning it all up.
1. Faith
You have said a lot against God and "faith"... Didn't you say that you have never "cashed a check on faith" alone?
I find this statement somewhat unlikely as I am sure you have entered into agreements with no guarantee of profit. But I digress.
All people act out of faith. It does not matter if their faith is true or not, it makes them act.
No farmer would throw his precious food grains on the ground if he did not have faith in the law of the harvest, and hoped for a harvest later.
Faith is a driving motivator, and no person can live without faith. People who lose all faith stop getting up in the mornings and eventually die. You go to work having faith in salaries or profits. You cook food having faith that you can eat it later. Faith is as simple as that. What you do not have faith in, is God.
Yes, I agree very strongly with that. I guess that I might define 'faith' as commitment in the face of incomplete or unreliable justification. And it's simply the human condition that none of our beliefs (not even those beliefs that receive the honorific 'scientific knowledge') are absolutely certain or immune from being wrong. But it's also the human condition that we have to commit ourselves to action in life, even if we can't be 100% certain that our choice of action is correct. We couldn't live our lives if we refused to act on faith.
2. Evidence
People have a tendency to disregard evidence they do not agree with.
Yes, we all bring our preexisting beliefs (faith commitments) to our evaluation of evidence. I tend to give items of evidence plausibility weights, based on what I already believe (admittedly imperfect) about reality and how it works. I tend, generally speaking, to give the pronouncements of natural science about physical reality higher weights than evidence that seems to contradict the pronouncements of science. (In other words I have
faith that scientific pronouncements are on average well-justified.)
There have been found many strange "Out of Place Artifacts" around the world. Things we cannot explain. And yet they are either explained away or disregarded. For example: People may or may not listen to somebody who says they have seen an angel or a UFO. But still we find records of visions and experiences that we cannot explain.
Yes. I take the "pessimistic induction" seriously. This is the observation that most of what scientists in past centuries said about reality is now considered false by contemporary science. So what justifies our assurance that today's scientific beliefs might prove to be just as mistaken from the point of view of some hypothetical future science?
So, if even our seemingly best justified beliefs about reality are just imperfect works-in-progress and might be seriously wrong, what justifies our belief that
anomalies can't occur? Events that violate our best expectations? While I tend to assign them lower plausibility weights than what I expect to happen, it's never going to be zero. I'm very much a Fortean in that regard.
What did Moses see, when he explained about the burning bush that was not consumed by fire? Was it electric lighting? Was it magic? He experienced something, I am sure of it, since I have sufficient faith to believe his account of that experience. So why do we not believe him? Why do we not believe people when they come back from a Near Death Experience and tell us that there is a life beyond this life?
I posit that there is not exactly a lack of evidence. There is merely a lack of faith.
Like I said, I'm not a Christian, Jew or Muslim, so I'm inclined to give the Moses story a very low plausibility weight. I'm probably most inclined to doubt that Moses was an actual historical person, as opposed to a mythical hero-figure of some sort. Assuming he is historical, I have no way of knowing what he might have experienced, or what its religious significance might have been. All I have is what centuries of subsequent tradition say about all that.
I wouldn't call my situation "lack of faith". I am displaying my positive faith commitment that my own life path needn't concern itself with what I take to be Hebrew myth.
3. Do an experiment to find the truth
Jesus Christ claimed to be the Son of God. He claimed that his words and commandments would bring salvation. But he never asked for "blind" faith. To those who doubted that Jesus' teachings come from God: (John 7:16-17) "Jesus answered them, and said, My
doctrine is not mine, but his that
sent me. If any man will
do his
will, he shall
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."
In other words. Try it out. See if living the teachings of Jesus Christ will not make you a happier person. See if faith in Him will not enrichen your life, grant you more happiness, love and faith. Give you peace of mind and ultimately grant you a majestic resurrection.
Yes. The Buddha said similar things. He didn't teach a metaphysics so much as he taught a
practice. He said don't trust traditions, religious teachers or scriptures to give you the answer.
You have to experience it for yourself. The way to reach that point in his particular system is to perform the ethical/meditative practices that he laid out.
I've always liked how that's a sort of
religious empiricism, except that 'experience' has been broadened out from sensory experience to psychological experience more generally.
