We all have faith!

M

mountainhare

Banned
Banned
Let's face it, all you atheists, you all have faith in almost everything.

For example: You have FAITH that a chair is built correctly. It may look perfectly fine, but once you sit in that chair, you might discover the hard way that it was built wrong.
You had only faith that it would support you!

Or look at a computer. Before you turn it on, it may look fine. But when you try to turn it on, you'll discover that it has a virus and is all screwed up. From the outside, it looked like any working computer. And you had faith that when you turned it on, it would work like a working computer. But you did not KNOW if it would work. The only way to KNOW if it would work, is to turn it on.

So, if you have faith in everyday things like this, why do you find it so hard to have faith in the Bible, and God?
 
Originally posted by mountainhare
Let's face it, all you atheists, you all have faith in almost everything.

For example: You have FAITH that a chair is built correctly. It may look perfectly fine, but once you sit in that chair, you might discover the hard way that it was built wrong.
You had only faith that it would support you!

Or look at a computer. Before you turn it on, it may look fine. But when you try to turn it on, you'll discover that it has a virus and is all screwed up. From the outside, it looked like any working computer. And you had faith that when you turned it on, it would work like a working computer. But you did not KNOW if it would work. The only way to KNOW if it would work, is to turn it on.

So, if you have faith in everyday things like this, why do you find it so hard to have faith in the Bible, and God?
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M*W: I think you may be confusing "faith" with logic and reason. Let's explore your chair analogy. Having a desire to sit in that chair would mean that you can visualize the chair, examine the chair, consider if it is safe to sit in, maybe even check it for its sturdiness, and then sit down. That's using logic and reason. "Faith" OTOH, would be believing with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, that there is actually a chair for you to sit on even when you can't see it. You may even visualize a chair. You may meditate about your desire to sit on that chair. You know there has to be a chair there for you to sit on, because all your friends believe the chair is there. They may believe they've actually seen the chair. At least they've all heard about the chair and how comfortable it is to sit in it. They may talk about the chair a lot, and they may all congregate at furniture stores to worship the chair they believe to be the only true chair. You and your friends may even pray to this chair and believe this chair will give you the everlasting privilege of eternal seating. This chair you have faith in may have additional features that make it the best chair around. In fact, you believe this chair that you cannot see is the only chair around. It may have a built-in headrest, a matching ottoman, and the promise of ecstatic relief supporting your body at the end of a long, hard day. Some people spend their entire lives trying to find this chair.Some people may believe it's ridiculous to worship this chair. Others may believe this chair doesn't even exist. People who believe in this chair, even though they've never seen it, or have never known anyone to have ever seen it, may still believe this chair is there for them for all eternity. All the furniture stores promise this one chair for all, but this chair is never delivered because it's always on back-order. This is faith.
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mountainhare

I think 'faith' is being confused for 'expectations' here. I have an
expectation that the chair I will sit in is not going to fall
apart. I have an expectation that the computer I am going
to use is going to work.

Anyhow, I have no expectations that fairy tales exist (i.e. 'God'
is a fig newton of man's imaginarium).
 
Excellent!
Thank you all very much!

I did not think of that argument I posted. It was hurled with me when I was debating theists about same sex marriage.

I used it here to see what your responses were, because I was confuzzled by that argument.
I notice that you usually get very good responses when you challenge the audience. I will certainly use some of your ideas!

The argument was concocted by Sleuth_Girl4Christ at http://www.thesevenproject.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=8459&boardid=19&text_only=&page=19
 
I have faith in myself.
And even that has it's limits.

I think the point is whether you have faith based on verifyable evidence, past experience, reasonable determination etc or simply blind faith.
 
No, it is not faith we use for most things we do, it is simply gambling. There is little to nothing in life that is certain but most things occur with a certain degree of probability. When we risk an action because there is a high probability that we will not come to harm then that is a simple gamble.

When we cross a busy road we know we have done it many times and not come to any harm, we intuitively feel that it can be done and the probability is high that we can do it again.

When we sit on a chair we do not usually check it carefully since most chairs do not collapse, e.g. the probability is high that any chair chosen at random will be safe.

Put a 6 shot revolver to your head with 3 chambers full and pull the trigger. Do you still have faith that you will live? Your gamble here has only a 50% chance of survival.

If you really had faith that you would not come to any harm when crossing a busy road then you would simply do it and not look. But we don’t do that, we usually take precautions because we know there is a finite probability that we could come to harm.

We know all these things based on the experience and knowledge that all these things we do can and do cause harm to others. This is the power of human reasoning.

Religious faith is quite different since it rests entirely on no direct experience or known probabilities. It is the action of throwing away caution. It is an act outside and beyond reason. It is pollution of the gene pool.
 
Actually . . . .

Actually, isn't this about the point in the faith discussion where an atheist can rightly pull back to the applicability of faith?

Certes, there is no objective center to human logic and reason in the Universe, but just as a syllogism need not be true in order to be proper, a logical process need not lead to logical action; the illogic is in the beholder.

I have faith the sun will rise tomorrow. What? I can easily gamble against the extinguishing of the sun next Friday, but there's always the outside chance that God will arrive, complete with a sense of humor.

Ray Bradbury comes to mind, a story from The Illustrated Man that I believe is called, "The Last Night of the World." Those familiar with the story can draw what connections they might from it, those who are not need not worry about it, although I recommend the book anyway.

I have faith in people. Sometimes that faith blinds me to reality, but so far I think I'm the only one I've hurt like that, so .... And, on the other hand, those who are familiar with my lamentations of a bitter relationship with my partner might see that faith even more apparently; she challenges my faith in people, on every level--we're a unique pair, it seems, in that we haven't killed each other yet or simply gone our separate ways at least. But aside from that, faith in people has proven useful. And part of that faith in people includes mistaken perceptions and presumptions, but it's a hopeful--if reactionary--faith, so hopefully it can learn from those mistakes.

I have faith in my belief that peace and social harmony are advantageous to the human species. This belief is one of the most fundamental I hold. And certainly I can point to the fact that humans come together in society at all to support that belief, but it's not, in the end, a concrete point. It presumes cooperative society; perhaps competitive society is what humanity needs, to farm out the gene pool and optimize the Darwinian potential. And here we come again to what has become my classic inquiry: Why is murder wrong?

If we assume the role of Huxley's "Martian eye," and watch humanity as a species, it may eventually come about that murder and war serve to human advantage similarly as plague; the strong survive, the species advances.

So I can't say that peace and social harmony are definitively and objectively advantageous to the human species, no matter how clearly I see it some days. It's still faith.

In November, 2004, millions of Americans will cast ballots from a perspective of faith.

While "ants" seems an extreme rhetorical proposition, an utter and complete lack of faith in humanity could very easily result in a society devoid of emotion and passion. Emotions are illogical. Passion is acute faith.

At some point we have to acknowledge faith.

But I would expect the godless to properly pull back to a simple assertion. Wesmorris nailed it pretty squarely with the idea of faith in reason. We might ask, "How far does that faith extend? How deeply does it run?" But the conditions whereby Wes' faith in reason becomes a detriment to himself and others is much farther out along the voyage than faith in God tends to be.

A side note is that an aspect of that very idea is, well, not quite under scrutiny, but is intended to be. I have an unfortunately fizzling topic that's running out of room to go anywhere but in circles going on elsewhere in the Religion forum. But seriously--contradicting medical standards for faith when advising people on health issues that can prove mortal? Faith in reason doesn't hit such problems until something else goes haywire in the system.

In that dimension, take religious faith. Certain strains of Catholic logic are rather tight, except for the presuppositions, which tend to send the "reason" askew. But religious faith is merely faith in reason in which something has gone haywire and seriously limited the range of natural possibility.

I am an American. This only means anything if we accept the widely-accepted notion of nations. I am a post-postmodern Sisyphan Camusite theist. This only means anything if we accept that such declarations matter at all about anything. Within their confines, they're perfectly reasonable and seemingly-objective ideas. But when we get right down to it, neither one means anything outside their confines.

At any rate, two cents won't buy me wishes. :cool:
 
Actually we all live by faith.
Think about this - because we are alive today gives us a reason to believe we will be alive tomorrow, a faith we will be alive in the future. Because we have traveled from our residences without incident gives us a reason to believe we can travel later today without a major catastrophic event occurring, a faith in going outside without harm. And because we ate the food set before us gave us reasons to believe that whomever prepared the food did it properly, a faith in the person who cooked it.
Faith allows us to go forward with our lives, and, if we think about it, we have placed our trust in many strangers for our daily existence without questioning their intentions. Some people may think intelligence has to take a backseat while faith takes over in the driver’s seat. My point is faith has always been in the driver’s seat, but some people just don’t want to see it. The choices we have made in our lives, from the persons we married, the jobs we selected, the places we live, the food we ate, are from reasons we believed that those decisions will be beneficial to us, a faith for a pleasant future from decisions made in the past. Faith is not a mystery because we use it every day. We have placed our trust in many people and things from cooks, drivers, pilots, teachers, politicians, authors, and neighbors, to governments, businesses, man-made structures, transportation, and the latest inventions. We may not be conscious of our faith because it has become second nature.
Think about this- you may already have planned to be somewhere or meet someone in the not-too-distant future. Where is the absolute guarantee you will live that long? You have made future arrangements or meetings based on faith. Therefore you are already exercising faith in your daily living. You have extended trust to whomever or whatever in order for your day to progress, otherwise you would be curled up in bed waiting for guarantees that the next meal you eat won’t be poisoned, the next person you meet has a good credit rating and not a criminal record, and the vehicle you travel in does not have a manufacturer’s recall, or the resume of the driver (or pilot) of that vehicle shows he/she is competent and not inebriated. It is this faith that you are already using in your daily lives that is second nature to you.
You already have it, you just haven't realized it.
 
And yet our faith in no way reflects the real world in any specific situation. Why then is faith supposed to be our proof of the existence of God?
 
Originally posted by one_raven
I have faith in myself.
And even that has it's limits.

I think the point is whether you have faith based on verifyable evidence, past experience, reasonable determination etc or simply blind faith.
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M*W: ...and you are on the right path when you have faith in yourself. As you continue to have faith in yourself, you will see the limitations disappear!

We are the "verifiable evidence." Those who fail to see themselves and the human race as a godly creation, with all the potentialities toward an advanced evolution, will not gain the experience and determination needed to ensure their evolution into Homo spiritus. Believing in God does not require blind faith. To believe in "God" one only needs to believe in oneself, the inner source which manifests the One Spirit of God.
 
BigBlueHead wrote
And yet our faith in no way reflects the real world in any specific situation. Why then is faith supposed to be our proof of the existence of God?
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CrunchyCat wrote
I disagree. I would argue that we live by expectation.
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Thank you for your replies, but let me try to clarify my point. Most of the debates on this forum are on the OBJECTS of our faith, whether that OBJECT is God, money, science, an individual, or an idea. My point is that faith is part of man’s nature, it is something we all have and use.
We all have faith IN something (you may call it expectations, reasons to believe, trust on, etc., but that is an argument on semantics and not the subject of my point), and we all extend our trust on them regardless of what they are. In essence, we exercise some degree of faith (trust, belief, expectations, etc.) in order for our lives to continue forward. Unfortunately when the word ‘faith’ is used in this particular forum it contains a “religious” connotation. Again, that is not the subject of my point. It is the OBJECT of our faith that generates the debates on this forum, not faith itself.
 
The difference between faith and expectation is not semantics; expectation is a conclusion of inductive logic, that because we observe that something has happened before, we believe that it will happen again. In the context of religion, faith is often a belief that something will happen or is happening, with no evidence to support that belief.
 
Originally posted by BigBlueHead
The difference between faith and expectation is not semantics; expectation is a conclusion of inductive logic, that because we observe that something has happened before, we believe that it will happen again.
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Which is IMO if you break it down, exactly the leap of faith of minimal distance. Faith in reason is faith in perception is faith in self is a variant on your words: "i have percieved this X and by the power of reason and my perception, i expect X to happen again". What else do you have to go by since as far as you know, your input and your mind is you? As such I think it is quite reasonable to have faith that your input and your mind can lead you to reasonable expectations about the future.
 
I would go so far to say that 'faith' (as a religious concept) is
an unconditional trust that does not rest on logical proof,
material evidence, or past history. This is not an expectation
(although it could lead to an expectation).

For example. I expect to not be able to walk across the water
of my swimming pool. This is because my expereiences and
comprehension of my environement have proven that I will
find myself swimming at first step.

Someone whom applies faith can have an unconditional trust
that 'God' will facilitate their walking across the water of my swimming pool. This trust turns into an expectation that they
will be able to walk across the water despite the glaring
contradiction of physics.
 
/I would go so far to say that 'faith' (as a religious concept) is
an unconditional trust that does not rest on logical proof,
material evidence, or past history. This is not an expectation
(although it could lead to an expectation).

But to the faithful, there is logical evidence, material evidence and past history (however unbased and skewed).

The more important point is however: What is the proof of logic? How do you prove a logical proof? It being self-contained, you are buying the premise regardless of how incredibly obvious it is. I mean, 1+1 only = 2 if you buy the premise 1=1. Depending on your perspective and application, that's a pretty big assumption.

/For example. I expect to not be able to walk across the water
of my swimming pool. This is because my expereiences and
comprehension of my environement have proven that I will
find myself swimming at first step.

This really IMO breaks down to assumptions. You could not reach you conclusion if you don't assume that your memory is functional, etc. IMO, your faith is in reason as well, you merely have a semantical problem with that. I don't blame you, but I still think that under unrelenting scrutiny, even logic/expectation/reason break down to a core set of definitions and assumptions. You are implicitely faithful to your assumptions.

/Someone whom applies faith can have an unconditional trust
that 'God' will facilitate their walking across the water of my swimming pool. This trust turns into an expectation that they
will be able to walk across the water despite the glaring
contradiction of physics.

Indeed and in that case.. argh. That's hard to explain.

While we can say with great confidence from our experience that the dude is an idiot for trying to walk on water and should fully expect him to fall into the water, as this is perfectly reasonable given our experience.

It is important however to recognize, that our expectation does not make it impossible, merely extremely unlikely. Know what I mean or should I go on?
 
But to the faithful, there is logical evidence, material evidence and past history (however unbased and skewed).
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hmmm... I see that as being religious 'belief' rather than faith.

The more important point is however: What is the proof of logic? How do you prove a logical proof? It being self-contained, you are buying the premise regardless of how incredibly obvious it is. I mean, 1+1 only = 2 if you buy the premise 1=1. Depending on your perspective and application, that's a pretty big assumption.
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Perhaps the tangible, predicted, and expected results of applied
logic are the proof of logic?


Indeed and in that case.. argh. That's hard to explain.
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:)
 
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