dixonmassey
Valued Senior Member
Just a short question to believers.
If Jesus (God) is real why do you need faith?
- Thread starter dixonmassey
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You need faith because it's unbelievable, even to a theist. Somewhere in the deep recesses of their consciousness there's a little reality warning buzzer going off telling them to hold on a minute, let's step back and think about this. You can choose to shut it off and become a religious freak or you can bypass it using faith and become an average theist(sin all week and be forgiven on Sunday). If you choose faith then the reality buzzer doesn't shut off and you can actually deal with it when you feel it appropriate. It took Mother Teresa a lifetime to answer it. Some never respond.
I equate faith with trust. Like you may say you have faith in family and friends, but what you mean is that you trust them because you know them. That doesn't mean you have to be able to predict the future, but given whatever circumstance, you trust them to be who you know them to be.
Faith is only there for one reason...uncertainty
So you equate faith with a lie and I equate it with trust in the knowledge of. Hm. Those are very different persectives.
You mean like the inablity to predict the future and have absolute and complete knowledge?
What? I didn't say lie, I said unbelievable. Yes, the more you know someone's actions and how they respond the easier it is to have faith that they will do the right thing. However it is not guaranteed. Do you believe in 100% certainty with respect to the actions of others. To do so is unbelievable.
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I could predict the future but I have faith in my inability to do so with accuracy.
dixonmassey
Valued Senior Member
Since, verified by experience
, I always keep in the back of my mind that family and friends, how to put that lightly .... , could let you down in the major ways, at the worst time.... but I still trust people (meaning reasonable amount of trust), in other words I have faith&doubt at the same time. In other words Faith=Doubt?dixonmassey
Valued Senior Member
In other words, you are sure that God is out there but you have faith in your knowledge of him? Since you have NO knowledge of God, I would take liberty to substitute the word knowledge with the word "preconceptions". In other words, you believe (have faith) that your preconceptions about God are true. But, since God himself is a preconception you know nothing about, how can you be sure about him in the first place? Since there are zillions of preconceptions about God(s), chances you got it right are ... very slim.
I would agree that theism takes some working out, but it's not necessarily irrational or unbelievable. For some, logic does not matter as much as their own experience, or cultural tradition. For others, there may be alarm bells of inauthenticity (bad faith) ringing. For yet others, theism needs to be worked through until it is both rational and believable, but it still has to go beyond that. Atheism is easier to defend, because it can limit itself to being rational.
Theism is not just a worldview, but an ongoing relationship. With what? Who really knows? The 'Self', or 'Other', God, or some parental projection? There's always the risk it is a delusion, and will let you down.
I agree with Lori_7 that faith like trusting someone. Theism can go so far with rational argument, and should... but at some point, to have any relationship (which is what theism is), you have to have the faith to take a leap into the dark, and hope. It's the same with human relationships.
Hence there are other values in theism besides rationality - it feels a lot more risky if it's authentic, not because it's irrational, but because it involves relationship, and they always require faith.
dixonmassey
Valued Senior Member
There is no amount of drugs one could gulp to work through theism until it both rational and believable. Because it's neither. There are very few people who could claim that they embraced particular kind of theism after long deliberate studies of scriptures showing their rationality etc.. It's just the other way around - careful studies is the surest way to lose "faith". Either your are brainwashed as a child or not, either you are indoctrinated by environment at early age or not (or forced to conform). "Working through" is really, bad, bad, bad way to embrace theism. Christian apologetic, for example, doesn't hold water from standpoint of rationality and believability, there is nothing to it if one to remove abstract verbal diarrhea, however it's more than adequate for unquestioning, ready to believe in whatever minds. People believe in all kind of crazy things.
I beg to differ, theist uses mostly (quasi) rational arguments to defend irrational and absurd.
What do you have faith in? Where do you leap? Could you translate this excerpt in the less esoteric language.
Sagan said it the best, “You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe”
One could paraphrase this to say "One cannot become a believer if one doesn't have a deep seated need to believe (into something simple, black&white, showering all kinds of virtual bonanza on a believer as a reward here and "there")."
What could be more ridiculous than an idea of omnipowerful, omnipresent, omni everything entity seeking the company of the dead hairless monkeys to spend eternity with? Please tell me?
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Since, verified by experience
Not doubt, but trusting in what you do know, even given what you don't.
Most of my preconceptions have been blown away. I realized that religion doesn't really present god the way its meant to be appreciated. I'm glad about that. This should be personal.
God's done some strange and wonderful things in my life. And I look at the dynamic, and god's means, and the outcome, and I have no reason to expect that to change.
dixonmassey
Valued Senior Member
It's a custom to credit God(s) with wonderful things in your life even though those thing could have coincided with terrible things for the ones around you. I bet a few survivors of the recent Russian power station disaster credit God with their deliverance
I guess those who have perished around them were not worthy of a wonderful thing in their terminated lives. Seriously, you cannot use personal experiences and voices as a proof of God. This is not only kinda arrogant and selfish, this makes your God a whimsical puppet master. Remember, God is omni knowledgeable and omni powerful, two mutually exclusive things in a package. You cannot combine omni knowledgeable God and a personal deity doing wonderful things in your life at you need/request. Of course, it's comforting and it must be true since you believe it
, but I would not bet on it.Faith is about trust. It really comes after belief. Each person of who believes in God has a measure of trust in Him. Some very little some near aboslute, We strive to learn about Him more so we can grow in trust.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
Since, verified by experience
Then your faith is limited in people. Same with me it is wise not to have great faith in people but it is also unwise to have no faith in people. Best you can do is give as much faith to people as your can taking into a account the damage that you will suffer if that faith is abused.
So Faith = Trust - doubt.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
It's a custom to credit God(s) with wonderful things in your life even though those thing could have coincided with terrible things for the ones around you. I bet a few survivors of the recent Russian power station disaster credit God with their deliverance
No it is not arrogant or selfish at all. If one believes that God wants a personal relationship then if someone wants a personal relationship with God then you would expect that persons life to have real interactions with God and Gods personal intervention in their life’s events.
Oh and about the Russian power station example. You seem to think that God saving someone’s life would be a reward for that person. That being saved from death would be a reward for ones goodness. Personally i would think that you might find that some of the ones who died where blessed. They get a "get out of this shithouse world early ticket", while the survivors are left to deal with the harsh reality of disaster survival.
Of course you can. If God's will is to do wonderful things for you.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
It's a custom to credit God(s) with wonderful things in your life even though those thing could have coincided with terrible things for the ones around you. I bet a few survivors of the recent Russian power station disaster credit God with their deliverance
Remember, God is omni knowledgeable and omni powerful, two mutually exclusive things in a package. You cannot combine omni knowledgeable God and a personal deity doing wonderful things in your life at you need/request. Of course, it's comforting and it must be true since you believe it
i'm not betting on anything. what else would god use knowledge and power for if not for our best interest. those things are not mutually exclusive. as a matter of fact, knowledge IS power.
the things that god has done for me equate to development in a very positive direction. those around me benefit from that development as well. the fruit of the spirit is obvious. it doesn't take a preacher or a bible to point it out.
i have no idea why you feel that if god interacts with you, per your request especially, that equates to god being a puppetmaster. do you feel that way about everyone you interact with? so you isolate yourself to avoid being a puppet? strange concept.
and if you can't use experiencing god, interacting with god, and hearing god's voice as proof of god to yourself, then what would you use exactly? if you share experiences with a person, and interact with a person, and hear their voice, do you doubt that person's existence? well then...
In fact there are lots of examples of famous people who have come to religion through a process of reason:
Obama is one..., C.S. Lewis is another who describes his reasoning in "Suprised by Joy". Prof. Alistair McGrath (nemesis of Richard Dawkins) is yet another.
You seem to have swallowed uncritically the myth that only atheism is rational! To me, God is an almost self evident truth... that some atheists cannot or prefer not to see.
I have faith there is a guide built right into us... showing us the way home.
To leap is the willingness to suspend disbelief, and open communications.
(Some go further, and give away all their posessions etc., but I'm not that brave, though I admire them).
I think we all have needs, it's the "pricesticker for self-awareness". The question is whether faith can meet them better than drugs, money, power or whatever? I admire Carl Sagan, but I differ from him on that one!
Makes perfect sense if you originate (with other hairless monkeys) from this "omni-everything". It is not another entity, it's the greater part of yourself, the deepest part of your own being! It's where we come from, the most precious part of ourselves, the source of our existence. It's recognising ourselves in all beings and all beings in ourselves (to misquote the Hindu Upanishads). Seems quite rational!