Why bother with faith?

[Prosper]

Some think they need faith. How do they know they need faith? Stop being so certain. Do you know you need faith because you feel you need it? How does one feel they need faith? Clearly its you deciding you need it over feelings felt. Why would you want to keep those feelings? Can't they be the opposite and you still not want them? You say you don't want faith but it is a necessity. So it's somehow not your fault you feel the way you do and yet you think faith will change things? Shouldn't you believe that change coming from within is apart from change from outside? Or do you believe in belief affecting both out and in. Why don't you let your belief affect you then? Can it not be advantageous to feel as you do and act as you want without assuming you're right to act? If you have to assume you're right, then no amount of reasoning would of mattered anyway. Why take things on faith? Why!

Edited November 3, 2012 by Prosper

[Hurlshort]

Some think they need love. How do they know they need love? Stop being so certain. Do you know you need love because you feel you need it? How does one feel they need love? Clearly its you deciding you need it over feelings felt. Why would you want to keep those feelings? Can't they be the opposite and you still not want them? You say you don't want love but it is a necessity. So it's somehow not your fault you feel the way you do and yet you think love will change things? Shouldn't you believe that change coming from within is apart from change from outside? Or do you believe in love affecting both out and in. Why don't you let your love affect you then? Can it not be advantageous to feel as you do and act as you want without assuming you're right to act? If you have to assume you're right, then no amount of reasoning would of mattered anyway. Why take things on love? Why!

[Prosper]

Some think they need love. How do they know they need love? Stop being so certain. Do you know you need love because you feel you need it? How does one feel they need love? Clearly its you deciding you need it over feelings felt. Why would you want to keep those feelings? Can't they be the opposite and you still not want them? You say you don't want love but it is a necessity. So it's somehow not your fault you feel the way you do and yet you think love will change things? Shouldn't you believe that change coming from within is apart from change from outside? Or do you believe in love affecting both out and in. Why don't you let your love affect you then? Can it not be advantageous to feel as you do and act as you want without assuming you're right to act? If you have to assume you're right, then no amount of reasoning would of mattered anyway. Why take things on love? Why!

 

I have seen this type of reply put to me in the past. Your tactic is simple. You borrow my argument's form and replace my words with your own. In turn the content presented as such will supposedly serve to convince others of something I did not intend them to be convinced of. However your attempt to show my points as invalid was achieved by breaking specified subject. Thus you have only served to demonstrate a failure on your end to understand the nature of logic. Logic does not prove logic nor is it a thing with capacity to spawn evidence on its own. You have introduced no facts or relevant evidentary claims. I take your foolishness as a compliment stating I have an impeccable view on faith.

[AGX-17]

Some think they need faith. How do they know they need faith? Stop being so certain. Do you know you need faith because you feel you need it? How does one feel they need faith? Clearly its you deciding you need it over feelings felt. Why would you want to keep those feelings? Can't they be the opposite and you still not want them? You say you don't want faith but it is a necessity. So it's somehow not your fault you feel the way you do and yet you think faith will change things? Shouldn't you believe that change coming from within is apart from change from outside? Or do you believe in belief affecting both out and in. Why don't you let your belief affect you then? Can it not be advantageous to feel as you do and act as you want without assuming you're right to act? If you have to assume you're right, then no amount of reasoning would of mattered anyway. Why take things on faith? Why!

 

 

An incredibly vague post which seems to be addressing specifically the actions or ideas of an unspecified individual. A response to something which has not been said.

 

You're responding to nothing. You're acting with the faith that that something will appear before you in response.

Edited November 3, 2012 by AGX-17

[mr.Ermac]

Posting in a prosper thread.

 

Prosper, you raise lots of questions, yet you give no answers. Do you yourself have doubts about faith, or are you looking for a discussion on the questions you have raised?

 

Sentient beings always have faith in something, that applies to even having faith that you don't need faith. Its just a function of the conscience. They might not know they need faith, but faith comes naturally to conscious beings (I might as well add here beings who also posses self-awareness).

 

At any rate, faith can grossly affect your will. Let me give you an example, Viktor Frankl, founder of logotherapy - which aims to restoring the faith in life in people - claims that human beings cannot live without seeing a purpose or a logos. He himself is a holocaust survivor and tells this real life story (I am paraphrasing from memory):

 

A prisoner he lived with at a camp, had the utmost faith that on a certain date, the army would come and liberate them from the camp. That faith kept him going until that date. When the date came and went and he saw that no one had come, his faith crumbled and on the next day he died, on account of losing his will to live.

 

So here we can apply your question "Why take things on faith?". It is very simple, faith gives you purpose, and without purpose, you cannot exist.

Edited November 3, 2012 by mr.Ermac

[Hurlshort]

I have faith in Prosper!

[Orogun01]

If I drew like Prosper I probably wouldn't have any faith either.

[Prosper]

"An incredibly vague post which seems to be addressing specifically the actions or ideas of an unspecified individual. A response to something which has not been said.

 

You're responding to nothing. You're acting with the faith that that something will appear before you in response."

 

It is called a hypothetical and yes I still believe there is enough specificity in my OP for an ethical person to say something more intelligent than what you just did.

 

"But seriously, sentient beings always have faith in something, that applies to even having faith that you don't need faith. Its just a function of the conscience."

Do you mean consciousness? Every decision you can make and ever will make is limited by regions of your brain where consciousness is not in control of. You are at the mercy of things outside of your body as well as inside. You are not in a position to make a judgement about what must be believed unless your preference is to live comfortably in ignorance.

Edited November 3, 2012 by Prosper

[Prosper]

Posting in a prosper thread.

 

Prosper, you raise lots of questions, yet you give no answers. Do you yourself have doubts about faith, or are you looking for a discussion on the questions you have raised?

 

Sentient beings always have faith in something, that applies to even having faith that you don't need faith. Its just a function of the conscience. They might not know they need faith, but faith comes naturally to conscious beings (I might as well add here beings who also posses self-awareness).

 

At any rate, faith can grossly affect your will. Let me give you an example, Viktor Frankl, founder of logotherapy - which aims to restoring the faith in life in people - claims that human beings cannot live without seeing a purpose or a logos. He himself is a holocaust survivor and tells this real life story (I am paraphrasing from memory):

 

A prisoner he lived with at a camp, had the utmost faith that on a certain date, the army would come and liberate them from the camp. That faith kept him going until that date. When the date came and went and he saw that no one had come, his faith crumbled and on the next day he died, on account of losing his will to live.

 

So here we can apply your question "Why take things on faith?". It is very simple, faith gives you purpose, and without purpose, you cannot exist.

 

The problem with stories like yours is it relies on the man being certain to begin with. My answer should of been obvious in my OP. Don't worry.

[mr.Ermac]

No prosper, I have given you the answer to your questions. It is not the answer that is in your head, that you believe to be true, it is the actual answer as to why we need faith, and how faith comes to man. Faith is a function of the consciousness, or more like I said a function of the self-awareness. That is exactly the reason why an animal cannot have faith.

[Prosper]

No prosper, I have given you the answer to your questions. It is not the answer that is in your head, that you believe to be true, it is the actual answer as to why we need faith, and how faith comes to man. Faith is a function of the consciousness, or more like I said a function of the self-awareness. That is exactly the reason why an animal cannot have faith.

 

Your answers to my questions are based on faith.

Edited November 4, 2012 by Prosper

[Gorth]

Maybe the need for 'faith' grew as human intelligence involved? As we started to become more aware of the world around it and started asking questions beyond 'where food?', 'find fire' and 'mate with me?', we started worrying because we didn't know the answers. Most intelligent beings don't like uncertainty, so we needed to fill in the gaps. We started 'believing' in things in order to explain the gaps we couldn't fill in with observable, reproducible facts. As knowledge of facts expands, the room for faith diminishes. Some appreciate the change, some don't. Watch this space if some discovery some day turns out to put everything we thought we knew on its head.

[mr.Ermac]

Your answers to my questions are based on faith.

No, my answers are based on philosophically explaining to you what faith is, you can take it or leave it.

[mr.Ermac]

Your answers to my questions are based on faith.

No, my answers are based on philosophically explaining to you what faith is, you can take it or leave it.

For some reason I can't edit my post, but anyway, here's some things for you prosper.

 

Everything you do is based on your faith in something. You go to bed with the belief that you will wake up in the morning. You need faith in order to have purpose. Once again, I repeat faith is a product of the self-awareness. It is how humans function. It is part of existence, so the answer to your question "Why bother with faith" is because you cannot exist normally without it. It is lesson we can take from Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum". He was looking for proof that there's anything real, that something exists. He came to the realization, that he can doubt everything, even faith, even his own existence, even the fact that he is sitting in front of his fireplace. The one undoubtable thing is that you cannot doubt doubt itself, thus leading to the conclusion that there is something real. His doubt nearly drove him to madness, because he had lost faith that he exists, or that anything is real.

 

Understand that faith is a function of the self-aware consciousness, you cannot function without it.

 

Some people think they need faith, because they lack the will to do something, and having said faith gives them a certain motivation. Faith gives you the power to be able to overcome something, whatever it may be. In all actuality the only faith you need is faith in yourself, but that cannot happen, without you first understanding what and who you are.

Edited November 4, 2012 by mr.Ermac

[BruceVC]

Your answers to my questions are based on faith.

No, my answers are based on philosophically explaining to you what faith is, you can take it or leave it.

For some reason I can't edit my post, but anyway, here's some things for you prosper.

 

Everything you do is based on your faith in something. You go to bed with the belief that you will wake up in the morning. You need faith in order to have purpose. Once again, I repeat faith is a product of the self-awareness. It is how humans function. It is part of existence, so the answer to your question "Why bother with faith" is because you cannot exist normally without it. It is lesson we can take from Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum". He was looking for proof that there's anything real, that something exists. He came to the realization, that he can doubt everything, even faith, even his own existence, even the fact that he is sitting in front of his fireplace. The one undoubtable thing is that you cannot doubt doubt itself, thus leading to the conclusion that there is something real. His doubt nearly drove him to madness, because he had lost faith that he exists, or that anything is real.

 

Understand that faith is a function of the self-aware consciousness, you cannot function without it.

 

Some people think they need faith, because they lack the will to do something, and having said faith gives them a certain motivation. Faith gives you the power to be able to overcome something, whatever it may be. In all actuality the only faith you need is faith in yourself, but that cannot happen, without you first understanding what and who you are.

 

The description of the word faith has different meanings depending on the context. I thought this post was going to be more about religion and the fact that all religions require faith but there is no proof. This is one of the reasons I am not religious but more spiritual . People say " you must have faith to be religious" but from an analytical perspective this means there is no way to quantify any religion, you believe because you want to and you get told a certain message. This is something we can discuss as there would be many interesting opinions

 

But if you want us to discuss faith around things like I assume my TV will turn on today that would be silly, pointless and waste of peoples time.

Edited November 5, 2012 by BruceVC

[Gorth]

But if you want us to discuss faith around things like I assume my TV will turn today that would be silly, pointless and waste of peoples time.

I first read that as the TV turning on would be "silly, pointless and waste of peoples time". Rereading it, I suppose discussing whether it would always turn on was the exercise in futility

 

Sometimes we need to take things at face value and believe we are right in order to progress. It may later turn out we were wrong, but we need some kind of starting point. I wonder if Newton would have foreseen the LHC when he got struck by that apple?

[Blank]

"Roughly speaking, the word faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply belief--accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people--at least it used to puzzle me--is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on Earth it can be a virtue--what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence, that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.

 

Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then--and a good many people do not see still--was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith; on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other...

 

Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in. But supposing a man's reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair; some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments where a mere mood rises up against it.

 

Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why faith is such a necessary virtue; unless you teach your moods "where they get off" you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of faith."

 

--C.S. Lewis

[Cantousent]

CS Lewis is one of my favorite Christian writers. I'll admit that I only read this thread because ol' Blankie posted in it, so I don't know the ins and outs, but I'll voice my affirmation of Lewis any time.

[Blank]

Never could resist "religion" threads. Apparently that hasn't changed. Now back to chemistry homework.

[BruceVC]

But if you want us to discuss faith around things like I assume my TV will turn today that would be silly, pointless and waste of peoples time.

I first read that as the TV turning on would be "silly, pointless and waste of peoples time". Rereading it, I suppose discussing whether it would always turn on was the exercise in futility

 

Sometimes we need to take things at face value and believe we are right in order to progress. It may later turn out we were wrong, but we need some kind of starting point. I wonder if Newton would have foreseen the LHC when he got struck by that apple?

 

You are right, I left out an important word that made the sentence make sense

[BruceVC]

Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it.

Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.

--C.S. Lewis

 

Thanks for the detailed response, I am not trying to attack any religion but I want to ask you some questions around the highlighted parts of your post.

You mention that accepting Christianity can be partly about the weight of evidence But my question is a simple one, can you provide any evidence at all. Anything irrefutable that there is god. I haven't seen or known about anything that suggests there is a higher power, like lights in the sky or some kind of manifestation of an entity. When people ask for this the normal response is "you need to have faith to believe" so we go around in circles.

 

And then if faith is holding onto things that your reason has accepted how can your reason accept something if there is no proof. I know you have pointed out that your reason can be irrational, like your anesthetic story, but that doesn't change the fact your reason is wrong. Aren't you then saying that faith based on reason can be inherently flawed? So for me that makes no sense for a person to be religious as once again it go's back to the point that there is no real proof.

Edited November 5, 2012 by BruceVC

[Blank]

I find it hard to answer your question unless you further explain to me what you refer to when you say "real proof." What does "real proof" mean to you?

 

For example, perhaps after reading this, suppose you did experience "lights in the sky or some kind of manifestation of an entity." Would that change your question at all?

 

And maybe what I am saying is that there is importance in the turn of phrase, "weight of evidence." You may have many factors that you consider when you decide something is "real," and when you believe something is real, it is because you have taken into account at all those factors, and have concluded, based on them, that something is real. What factors do you consider when you are taking into account the evidence about whether something is "real" or not?

Edited November 5, 2012 by Blank

[Blank]

------Excerpt from Lilith, by George MacDonald------

 

"How DID I get here?" I said--apparently aloud, for the question was

immediately answered.

 

"You came through the door," replied an odd, rather harsh voice.

 

...

 

"I did not come through any door," I rejoined.

 

"I saw you come through it!--saw you with my own ancient eyes!" asserted

the raven, positively but not disrespectfully.

 

 

"I never saw any door!" I persisted.

 

"Of course not!" he returned; "all the doors you had yet seen--and you

haven't seen many--were doors in; here you came upon a door out! The

strange thing to you," he went on thoughtfully, "will be, that the more

doors you go out of, the farther you get in!"

 

"Oblige me by telling me where I am."

 

"That is impossible. You know nothing about whereness. The only way to

come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home."

 

"How am I to begin that where everything is so strange?"

 

"By doing something."

 

"What?"

 

"Anything; and the sooner you begin the better! for until you are at

home, you will find it as difficult to get out as it is to get in."

 

"I have, unfortunately, found it too easy to get in; once out I shall

not try again!"

 

"You have stumbled in, and may, possibly, stumble out again. Whether you

have got in UNFORTUNATELY remains to be seen."

 

"Do you never go out, sir?"

 

"When I please I do, but not often, or for long. Your world is such

a half-baked sort of place, it is at once so childish and so

self-satisfied--in fact, it is not sufficiently developed for an old

raven--at your service!"

 

"Am I wrong, then, in presuming that a man is superior to a bird?"

 

"That is as it may be. We do not waste our intellects in generalising,

but take man or bird as we find him.--I think it is now my turn to ask

you a question!"

 

"You have the best of rights," I replied, "in the fact that you CAN do

so!"

 

"Well answered!" he rejoined. "Tell me, then, who you are--if you happen

to know."

 

"How should I help knowing? I am myself, and must know!"

 

"If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else;

but do you know that you are yourself? Are you sure you are not your own

father?--or, excuse me, your own fool?--Who are you, pray?"

 

I became at once aware that I could give him no notion of who I was.

Indeed, who was I? It would be no answer to say I was who! Then I

understood that I did not know myself, did not know what I was, had no

grounds on which to determine that I was one and not another. As for the

name I went by in my own world, I had forgotten it, and did not care to

recall it, for it meant nothing, and what it might be was plainly of

no consequence here. I had indeed almost forgotten that there it was a

custom for everybody to have a name! So I held my peace, and it was my

wisdom; for what should I say to a creature such as this raven, who saw

through accident into entity?

[Orogun01]

Thanks for the detailed response, I am not trying to attack any religion but I want to ask you some questions around the highlighted parts of your post.

You mention that accepting Christianity can be partly about the weight of evidence But my question is a simple one, can you provide any evidence at all. Anything irrefutable that there is god. I haven't seen or known about anything that suggests there is a higher power, like lights in the sky or some kind of manifestation of an entity. When people ask for this the normal response is "you need to have faith to believe" so we go around in circles.

 

And then if faith is holding onto things that your reason has accepted how can your reason accept something if there is no proof. I know you have pointed out that your reason can be irrational, like your anesthetic story, but that doesn't change the fact your reason is wrong. Aren't you then saying that faith based on reason can be inherently flawed? So for me that makes no sense for a person to be religious as once again it go's back to the point that there is no real proof.

Up until this year nobody had seen anything that would prove the Higgs Boson, that didn't stop researchers from having faith in their theory. Wasn't faith for them staying the course of their theory?

There is no evidence to prove or disprove God, why "rational" people seem biased towards those who who profess belief is beyond me.

[Gfted1]

Up until this year nobody had seen anything that would prove the Higgs Boson, that didn't stop researchers from having faith in their theory. Wasn't faith for them staying the course of their theory?

 

No, because previous tests had eluded to the fact that it should exist. Big difference between blind faith and reasoned faith.

 

IMO, faith is something we created because we cant accept that when we die its over. We feel were so special that it cant possibly just "be over" when our physical lives end, that our souls must live for eternity. That were such special lifeforms that we MUST transcend this mortal coil and become eternal beings. Because were so special.