That would take years! I can't type it all. I can't even remember it all. My testimony is my life.
Is Faith Blind?
- Thread starter Hallam Willis
- Start date
That would take years! I can't type it all. I can't even remember it all. My testimony is my life.
I have faith in god because I know him. He is an entity just as a person that you might know and have faith in based upon that knowledge is an entity. How is that wrong?
I have met Gods too, but I would never believe they were anything more than my personal subjective experience.
Not mine
You're missing the point entirely.
"Faith" is non-evidenciary, it cannot be empirically based.
It's fine for you to say "I have faith in.. blah, blah..."
It is not fine for you to say "I have faith in blah, blah, because of..."
Faith is not based on anything.
I don't hate anyone.
I don't feel comfortable with anyone on 1st sight.
Hunches are sometimes good & sometimes bad. Use of intuition depends on interpretation. Might as well guess.
The subconscious does sometimes figure things out when the conscious doesn't yet 1 cannot know whether it is true without conscious critical reason.
How do you "know" a person is lying?
I've met people who went to other planets by "mind projection" of course they were high at the time but they seriously think they met with "other consciousnesses" and spoke with them. IMO their left brain was shocked that the right brain is another person altogether! I have also met people who speak to the dead - I notice they often had bad PMS and tend towards obesity. A sign perhaps of hormonal disregulation. As hormones are regulated by the brain, well, it sort of fit huh?
Everything is your personal subjective experience. (?) that doesn't mean nothing exists, it just means you can describe it but not define it.
Why don't you believe that these experiences are any more real than those you experience everyday? Because they are not your own?
Because I know quite a lot about the functioning of the CNS.
Also, I work in the medical field, I see and read a lot of case studied where people have problems with their CNS.
Here's an example: A man has a stroke. He then starts thinking his wife is a hat-rack. When he sees her he tries to put his hat on her head, because, he associates her now with being a hat-rack.
Or, a man wants to have his limb cut off. He just looks at his leg and sees a thing, not "him" not "self" but something not him. He just isn't happy until it is cut off. Using fMRI we can see that his parietal lobe doesn't registrar the leg as part of his body, which was a problem that happened during his development.
Or the man with no memories past 1945 who has damaged a particular gland at the base of his brain.
Or the person with a damaged cerebellum who can not walk.
Or the mild mannered good natured man who had a steel shaft blown through his skull and then lived and became a drinking, cheating arsehole. (destroyed his frontal lobe).
Or the ice addict who "knows there are ants under her skin and feels the need to scratch deep bloody lesions into her arms and face to get them out".
The OCD who can't help washing her hands over and over and over...
or etc... etc... etc....
It's no different than if you damaged your retina and now see something funny in your visual field. I don't think that the "something funny" is real. it's a symptom of your damaged retina. BUT this has become a part of this person precept of reality.
Anyway, like I said, everything is a precept. Your reality is an illusion in your brain ANYWAY. How far fetched is it to suppose that this illusion of reality doesn't really match up exactly WITH reality? Hell, I'm amazed we do such a decent job as is!
Jethro Tull
Registered Member
Well, what if you have faith in the truth and the life? Is that blind? Faith is but a bridge to knowing, in my opinion and experience.
That's a start at least.
Then it is not faith, but you have your work cut out for you.
There is no reason to believe Aquinas has anything more to offer about his gods than Homer has to offer about his gods.
I see no evidence of existence and no reason to accept your holy book as authoritative on anything. So far we are still on square one.
Not surprising since he is just rewriting Aristotle for xtian reading.
Not empirically factual means doesn't actually exist. This may be an issue trying to escape from blind faith. Also most people generally equate not factual with not true.
First establish that there are things "not a part of our universe" and how you have any actual knowledge about them.
Replace the bible with "Green eggs and ham" then ask yourself why anyone with half a brain cares what the bible states, particularly "revelations" which is obviously allegorical and not in the least to be taken literally. In fact you would have to be insane to consider revelations in any regard as being literal.
If your only support is empty belief, "truth" is not the word you are looking for.
Want to see how accurately I can predict the 1960 football season? I find them not the least credible or authoritative and obviously the Jews don't find them credible or authoritative.
Nothing you have offered so far is the least persuasive.
Then bring him by so we can interact. Otherwise it must be assumed you are deluded.
What experience and how can this be verified?
I do not see damnation anywhere. I see the mix of good and ill that has always been humanities want, though there have been some hopeful signs, like not having a nuclear war so far.
Verifiable and replicable experience. That is particularly needed when the experience is of extrordinary things no one else is finding.
And its great at reaching wrong conclusions which is why we want some explanations.
All you have to do is have god verify that and I'll be satisfied.
You mean Duff, the God of Beer??
As others have explained, colloquial "faith" has many versions - from having faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, to having faith that there is an afterlife etc. The only difference is the amount of evidence to support the faith.
But all faith has one thing in common - a bridging from evidence available (from zero to "scientific fact") to expectation of outcome.
The more evidence available, the less blind the "faith", the more rational the expectation can be (but is not guaranteed to be).
So whether one decides "faith is blind" or not is a matter of evidence.
If you admit to having no evidence, your faith is blind.
If you can freely demonstrate your evidence, then not so blind.
If your only evidence is subjective interpretation of experience(s) then while you may consider it evidence for your faith not to be blind, you should only do so once you have thought critically about your experience so that you are not irrationally attributing it to something that it isn't.
Otherwise you may not consider yourself blind, but you certainly have your eyes shut.
To paraphrase a maxim from David Hume:
We should only accept testimony / interpretation of an experience if it is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more amazing than that which it seeks to explain.
this is really funny..
but i'll sum it up in one question; what IS the differerrence between tho two faiths? other than your own opinion that the first is wrong?
yet it exists and is used in life. love isn't based on anything too, it's just two souls getting along together..try explaining that.
many people do..and they have no reason for it..does that mean the reason doesn't exist?
if the reason doesn't exist, does that mean their feelings don't exist because they're unexplained?
yes he can't "know" for sure (without conscious critical reason)..
but again, does that affect if the subconscious's conclusion is true or not?
you just feel it sometimes..instinct or experience or hidden body language signs or embedded fluctioations in voice frequencies.. i don't know, you just know it (although you might get it wrong sometimes)