On faith

[Sarkus]

Somewhere above you have spoken about "faith supported by objective evidence"..what is that ? There is no such thing, that is not faith, that is truth.

What I mean can hopefully be clarified by the following example:
I have faith that my brother will lend me money if I ever run into financial difficulty. This is supported by objective evidence in that he has done so in the past. The future event is not guaranteed, but because of the objective evidence of past events I have faith that he will. People can view the evidence that supports his lending money to me, our bank statements etc, the transfers etc.
If I say that it is the truth that he will lend me money then I would be lying, as there is the possibility that he won't.
This is what I mean when I say that there is a faith that is supported by objective evidence. It is certainly not the truth. (Note: there is a difference between "supported by" and "proven by"... the former is a matter of weight of evidence in favour, the latter is a matter of absolute certainty).

Compare that to faith where there is no such objective evidence.

 

[spidergoat]

This is basically an equivocation fallacy. The word faith means different things in popular culture vs religious culture. Faith in popular culture is synonymous with trust. In religious language, faith means belief without evidence, and even in light of contrary evidence.

 

[Jan Ardena]

Translation: Don't fall for logic. It's a game theists can't play without undermining theism.

This isn't a philosophical debate, it based on psychology. You're sneaking in false ideas, which become established memes. Then you base your arguments on those.

For example you cannot give a reason why theism is belief in mere existence, rather than God. Yet you use it as though it is true. That is psychological conditioning.

Without evidence, how do you know something is true?

How do you know something is true with evidence? Truth is it's own category. Truth always was, is, and always will be. It can never change, this is more about God, and closer to theism than you seem to think.

Religious faith is exactly belief without evidence. Without any physical manifestation of a deity and it's actions, there can be no difference between it existing and not existing.

What is religious faith?

The statement "truth remains truth regardless of knowledge of it" is trivial and irrelevant.

How can anything associated with truth be trivial or irrelevant? Unless of course you wish to determine what truth by your own efforts. Then what does that say about you? Are you not already connected to truth, why you have to search externally?

Without knowledge of what is likely to be true, we can't trust any statement that might be true or might be false.

What does this mean?

Faith is the desire for something to be true. "Not falling for it" means not accepting the principle that we should believe things shown as likely to be true, which is the basis of empirical science, a branch of philosophy.

No that's not what faith is. You are talking about desire. A man sees a beautiful woman (man) and desires to have her. The thoughts in his mind feed the desire, and the desire feeds the thoughts.
The faith has to within himself to actually go and hopefully pursue , and make real his thoughts and desires.

The process of faith works the same way in all circumstances. It may be strong or weak faith, we don't know until it is tested.
Jan.

 

[kx000]

Faith creates life and the hope. It is the hedonistically certain radiant of reason to live.

 

[Yazata]

So the question is why I am a theist and why you are an atheist

I really don't know, I really don't know when and how I became theist, if at all there is any such step called becoming a theist. Its probably my upbringing, childhood exposure etc but one thing is sure I was never called upon to choose and neither did I make any thoughtful choice.

So why and how are you an atheist ? Any atheist can jut in.

I wasn't raised in a Christian home. While our home was certainly religious in a sense, it was never Christian. My parents were Americans living in Japan who met and got married there. My mother maintained a Butsudan but we also celebrated Christmas and Easter. Only later did I realize how Buddhist she was deep down, in how she reacted to things. Mom had been a comparative religion student at the U. of Chicago before becoming a civilian employee of the US military in military intelligence and her attitude was that the transcendent existed in some profound sense, and the various religions were striving towards it in their multitude of imperfect human ways. She taught me to be respectful of all traditions but we always kind of stood apart from them. My father was an aeronautical engineer, and extremely secular. I don't recall him ever picking up a Bible or a religious text. They did visit Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Japan and they collected Buddhist art. They tried to expose me to many different kinds of religiosity but never told me what I should believe.

As I was growing up in the States, I was periodically exposed to religion in various forms. My mother's friend was a Methodist Sunday school teacher, and I actually attended her Sunday school class for a while. When the class concluded, I was asked if I wanted to join the adult congregation and I said no. My first bit of rebellion and I expected the sky to fall in. But my parents accepted it with no objections, nobody criticized me and I think that dad was relieved that he wouldn't have to dress in a suit and go to church every week to accompany me. Later many of my little friends were Catholics who were attending catechism, so I became aware of Catholicism. There were Greek Orthodox around and I remember thinking that they were pretty exotic. One of my best friends was Jewish and I remember him trying to teach me Hebrew characters. I don't recall ever encountering Protestant fundamentalism.

My earliest reaction to the children's stories about sweet loving Jesus holding baby lambs was that they were just... irrelevant. If the stories had been about light bulbs, I could have gotten into it. (I take after my dad too.) So to me, all the stuff about 'God' and 'Christ' were just things said in church which seemingly had nothing to do with real life. I remember thinking that whatever is responsible for the existence of the entire universe being a big blustering Jewish guy on a mountaintop was just ridiculous. I still feel that way. So I slid into the combination of atheism (about the big Jewish guy on the mountaintop) and agnosticism (about transcendence in general).

In the early 1970's I was living near Big Sur and taking lots of LSD in hopes of researching the transcendent dimension of being for myself, but experienced no breakthroughs and stopped doing it. Then I followed in my mother's footsteps and studied philosophy of religion at a couple of universities (eventually getting an MA) but my views haven't really changed a whole lot since childhood. I'm still what one might call an 'atheist-agnostic'. (Always have been.)

 

[kx000]

Does faith make you stronger or weaker?

Example 1: A woman loses her house and her child in a devastating tornado. But she carries on because she believes in the will of God.

Example 2: A man refuses the advice of his doctors to put his terminally-ill wife into hospice because he believes in the miracle of prayer. He refuses to accept her impending death because he has faith in God.

What can you truly attribute to belief?

 

[kx000]

Pain is not sinful, but can not come into Heaven, so its an illusion.

 

[The God]

What I mean can hopefully be clarified by the following example:
I have faith that my brother will lend me money if I ever run into financial difficulty. This is supported by objective evidence in that he has done so in the past. The future event is not guaranteed, but because of the objective evidence of past events I have faith that he will. People can view the evidence that supports his lending money to me, our bank statements etc, the transfers etc.
If I say that it is the truth that he will lend me money then I would be lying, as there is the possibility that he won't.
This is what I mean when I say that there is a faith that is supported by objective evidence. It is certainly not the truth. (Note: there is a difference between "supported by" and "proven by"... the former is a matter of weight of evidence in favour, the latter is a matter of absolute certainty).

Compare that to faith where there is no such objective evidence.

First of all you must spend some more time researching about faith and God. Its interesting read, especially about various gods in various religion. I am not saying for conversion purpose but for the sake of knowing about the splendor and supremacy of God in the literature.

The example which you have given is not faith, its an assumption. You are assumimg that since your brother helped you in the past, he will do the same in the future too.

 

[The God]

I wasn't raised in a Christian home. While our home was certainly religious in a sense, it was never Christian. My parents were Americans living in Japan who met and got married there. My mother maintained a Butsudan but we also celebrated Christmas and Easter. Only later did I realize how Buddhist she was deep down, in how she reacted to things. Mom had been a comparative religion student at the U. of Chicago before becoming a civilian employee of the US military in military intelligence and her attitude was that the transcendent existed in some profound sense, and the various religions were striving towards it in their multitude of imperfect human ways. She taught me to be respectful of all traditions but we always kind of stood apart from them. My father was an aeronautical engineer, and extremely secular. I don't recall him ever picking up a Bible or a religious text. They did visit Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Japan and they collected Buddhist art. They tried to expose me to many different kinds of religiosity but never told me what I should believe.

As I was growing up in the States, I was periodically exposed to religion in various forms. My mother's friend was a Methodist Sunday school teacher, and I actually attended her Sunday school class for a while. When the class concluded, I was asked if I wanted to join the adult congregation and I said no. My first bit of rebellion and I expected the sky to fall in. But my parents accepted it with no objections, nobody criticized me and I think that dad was relieved that he wouldn't have to dress in a suit and go to church every week to accompany me. Later many of my little friends were Catholics who were attending catechism, so I became aware of Catholicism. There were Greek Orthodox around and I remember thinking that they were pretty exotic. One of my best friends was Jewish and I remember him trying to teach me Hebrew characters. I don't recall ever encountering Protestant fundamentalism.

My earliest reaction to the children's stories about sweet loving Jesus holding baby lambs was that they were just... irrelevant. If the stories had been about light bulbs, I could have gotten into it. (I take after my dad too.) So to me, all the stuff about 'God' and 'Christ' were just things said in church which seemingly had nothing to do with real life. I remember thinking that whatever is responsible for the existence of the entire universe being a big blustering Jewish guy on a mountaintop was just ridiculous. I still feel that way. So I slid into the combination of atheism (about the big Jewish guy on the mountaintop) and agnosticism (about transcendence in general).

In the early 1970's I was living near Big Sur and taking lots of LSD in hopes of researching the transcendent dimension of being for myself, but experienced no breakthroughs and stopped doing it. Then I followed in my mother's footsteps and studied philosophy of religion at a couple of universities (eventually getting an MA) but my views haven't really changed a whole lot since childhood. I'm still what one might call an 'atheist-agnostic'. (Always have been.)

Thats what I said, our upbringing, our childhood exposure etc. Theists (not converted after thoughtful consideration) in general do not consider the issue about this choice, all my theist friends cannot recall how and why and when they became theist. But atheists with your kind of background, those who are exposed to religion early on, are atheist by choice. Your Father's neutral approach may have influenced you to the extent of looking at the issue objectively. Thats it, objective analysis about the God may lead you to utter despair.

 

[Yazata]

Somewhere above you have spoken about "faith supported by objective evidence"..what is that ?

I would interpret 'faith' to mean trust, confidence or belief in something in the absence of deductive certainty.

Physics is a good example of "faith supported by objective evidence". Physics is based on a whole collection of what are supposed to be 'laws of nature'. These are supposed to be general and universal, applying to all situations of the appropriate kind. The question then is how we can justify our belief in the truth of these physical laws. The argument typically runs that they are 'verified' by many observations of the laws holding true. Unfortunately, basing our belief in the truth of a universal principle on a finite set of individual confirming instances is logically defective. That's the famous problem of induction. There's no guarantee that the next observation that we make won't contradict our law.

There is no such thing, that is not faith, that is truth.

I would define 'truth' as correspondence between a proposition and reality. The difficulty there is that in most cases there's no logical certainty that the proposition that we believe in is actually true. There's usually going to be some possibility that we are wrong. But we will usually ignore that possibility and plunge on anyway. That happens every time we take a step. (We assume that the law of gravity hasn't suddenly been repealed.)

 

[Sarkus]

First of all you must spend some more time researching about faith and God. Its interesting read, especially about various gods in various religion. I am not saying for conversion purpose but for the sake of knowing about the splendor and supremacy of God in the literature.

I am aware of what is claimed in much of the literature. I find Tolkein to be a far more interesting read, though. You should give it a try.

The example which you have given is not faith, its an assumption. You are assumimg that since your brother helped you in the past, he will do the same in the future too.

Ah, the no true Scotsman fallacy rears its head again.
I am indeed making an assumption. Faith requires the making of assumptions. It is part of what faith is. But please tell me what you think is missing for this assumption not to be a matter of faith in my brothers generosity and spirit, and I will happily tell you where you are wrong, okay? And perhaps you can tell me how faith in God differs in principle rather than merely scope?

 

[spidergoat]

For example you cannot give a reason why theism is belief in mere existence, rather than God. Yet you use it as though it is true. That is psychological conditioning.

Can you explain how belief in God isn't the same as belief that God exists? Belief "in" means acknowledging that that thing exists.

How do you know something is true with evidence?

Because evidence means a fact that supports a particular premise.

How can anything associated with truth be trivial or irrelevant? Unless of course you wish to determine what truth by your own efforts. Then what does that say about you? Are you not already connected to truth, why you have to search externally?

I can't be sure of anything with absolute certainty. We might be in a simulation, brains in jars. We can only be relatively confident, based on evidence. I want to believe as many true things as possible, and as few false things, but I think Truth in an absolute sense will always be elusive. It's not that I don't care about what is true, it's that your statement seems to say something deep, when it actually doesn't. It's a deepity. It gives us no clue about how to connect with that truth, it only suggests that truth is out there. It's like saying, "reality is real".

What does this mean?

There is no connection to truth without going through knowledge. Knowledge is always provisional. Knowledge has varying degrees of certainty depending on how it was gained, and can be updated as new information comes to light.

No that's not what faith is. You are talking about desire. A man sees a beautiful woman (man) and desires to have her. The thoughts in his mind feed the desire, and the desire feeds the thoughts.
The faith has to within himself to actually go and hopefully pursue , and make real his thoughts and desires.

Yeah, that's what you're doing. Only there is no way to make it real because the object of your desire doesn't exist. It's self deception, unless you can show otherwise.

 

[spidergoat]

Faith creates life and the hope. It is the hedonistically certain radiant of reason to live.

I have no reason to live, and that makes my life more profound than those that require one. I'm stepping into the unknown, with no expectations, you're following a path someone else invented so you're not scared of the wilderness.

 

[spidergoat]

Thats it, objective analysis about the God may lead you to utter despair.

What a revealing statement! Your God can't hold up to objective analysis, that's the important thing. I'd rather feel existential despair, which is by no means a logical outcome of atheism, than fooling myself into accepting a lie.

 

[The God]

What a revealing statement! Your God can't hold up to objective analysis, that's the important thing. I'd rather feel existential despair, which is by no means a logical outcome of atheism, than fooling myself into accepting a lie.

Its revealing to you, not to a conversant theist. The mistake which you are repeatedly making is attempting to objectify the God in casual manner. You will reach nowhere, not because there is no destination, but because of lack of ability of an ordinary mortal to pursue that.

 

[The God]

Physics is a good example of "faith supported by objective evidence". Physics is based on a whole collection of what are supposed to be 'laws of nature'. These are supposed to be general and universal, applying to all situations of the appropriate kind. The question then is how we can justify our belief in the truth of these physical laws. The argument typically runs that they are 'verified' by many observations of the laws holding true. Unfortunately, basing our belief in the truth of a universal principle on a finite set of individual confirming instances is logically defective. That's the famous problem of induction. There's no guarantee that the next observation that we make won't contradict our law.



I would define 'truth' as correspondence between a proposition and reality. The difficulty there is that in most cases there's no logical certainty that the proposition that we believe in is actually true. There's usually going to be some possibility that we are wrong. But we will usually ignore that possibility and plunge on anyway. That happens every time we take a step. (We assume that the law of gravity hasn't suddenly been repealed.)

No, physics is not a good example of faith supported by objective evidence. Physics or science has got nothing to do with faith. Faith as you have correctly written in first para is unevidenced belief, means it is not the right approach to put faith on the alter of objective assessment.

 

[Jan Ardena]

Can you explain how belief in God isn't the same as belief that God exists? Belief "in" means acknowledging that that thing exists.

One good indication is they are literally different, and mean different things.
It is a forgone conclusion that God exists. You are, without God. Atheos-Atheist.
A theist believes in God. That is the reality of our two positions.

Because evidence means a fact that supports a particular premise.

That may be so, but how do you know it's true?

I can't be sure of anything with absolute certainty.

I hope you don't make the mistake of tarring everyone with that same brush.

We might be in a simulation, brains in jars. We can only be relatively confident, based on evidence.

Relativiley confident?

I want to believe as many true things as possible, and as few false things, but I think Truth in an absolute sense will always be elusive.

How do you know what you want, when you don't even know whether or not you're a brain in a jar?
What is it that knows? And why can't that thing know other things?

What is your definition of truth?

Yeah, that's what you're doing. Only there is no way to make it real because the object of your desire doesn't exist. It's self deception, unless you can show otherwise.

You have no idea what the object of my desire is. Do you?
You are without God.

You see the difference once you start to use these terminologies as they were intended?
You have no knowledge of what it is you are without, and as such your analysis becomes an excercise of speculation.
At least with the notion of physical existence you can always jump back to this physical evidence thing, thereby instant, false, justification.

Yeah, that's what you're doing. Only there is no way to make it real because the object of your desire doesn't exist. It's self deception, unless you can show otherwise.

Who do I need to show anything to?
It is what it is. You are without God, and you always will be without God, until you accept God. Then there's a chance you can start to believe in God.

Theos = God
A-theos = without God.

jan.

 

[spidergoat]

One good indication is they are literally different, and mean different things.
It is a forgone conclusion that God exists. You are, without God. Atheos-Atheist.
A theist believes in God. That is the reality of our two positions.

You are assuming the thing you are trying to prove. A very basic logical fallacy.

That may be so, but how do you know it's true?

We never know for sure if something is true. We can only have degrees of confidence based on evidence.

I hope you don't make the mistake of tarring everyone with that same brush.

If you think you know something with certainty, I would ask how?

Relativiley confident?

Relatively. That is, as confident as the knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow, given that it has done so for at least 4 billion years. Which is to say, not absolutely certain.

How do you know what you want, when you don't even know whether or not you're a brain in a jar?
What is it that knows? And why can't that thing know other things?

I perceive that I want certain things, and that would be the case even if I were a brain in a jar. I think that the wanting entity is my physical body, but I could be wrong.

What is your definition of truth?

A correct model of existence, such that it is useful for making predictions.

You have no idea what the object of my desire is. Do you?

It seems obvious that you desire God to exist. If your definition of God is the universe itself, then, while even I believe the universe exists, you also desire to incorporate the ideology of various religions to the thing, making it something different entirely. And I would say it's confusing to call the universe a God, given all the religious baggage that goes along with that word. Science shows that the universe probably exists, and it doesn't require God as an explanation for anything, so it's superfluous.

You are without God.

According to you I am God.

You have no knowledge of what it is you are without, and as such your analysis becomes an excercise of speculation.

I claim you have no knowledge of the thing either.

At least with the notion of physical existence you can always jump back to this physical evidence thing, thereby instant, false, justification.

You deny empirical evidence for the thing you are trying to prove. At this point I could just dismiss your claim as without merit. What other evidence can there be? Being is physical. Nothing not physical exists.

Who do I need to show anything to?

You tell me, you choose to post here.

It is what it is. You are without God, and you always will be without God, until you accept God. Then there's a chance you can start to believe in God.

That's backwards. Give me a reason to think it's a real thing, not just a metaphor for the universe, and I will weigh the evidence.

 

[kx000]

I have no reason to live, and that makes my life more profound than those that require one. I'm stepping into the unknown, with no expectations, you're following a path someone else invented so you're not scared of the wilderness.

Everything has happened before so its always known while constantly being known. Faith is fore certainty. And how.

I do by logic and live by transcendence and faith to bring knowledge. Literally only whats known perfect and safe and into supreme reality, including fore mentions patience and belief. Logic is good. Who be the nature of wisdom, and who was considerate. Im not love he is, your not belief I am.

 

[spidergoat]

Everything has happened before so its always known while constantly being known. Faith is fore certainty. And how.

I do by logic and live by transcendence and faith to bring knowledge. Literally only whats known perfect and safe and into supreme reality, including fore mentions patience and belief. Logic is good. Who be the nature of wisdom, and who was considerate. Im not love he is, your not belief I am.

Was that supposed to be coherent?