What is faith ....

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There is something curious about this translation, which I wonder, it seems a contradiction, the word 'evidence' with 'not seen', or it is not?

I think it's quite eloquent.

That is one definition, but not the most general.

Philosophy: The search for knowledge and truth, especially about the nature of man and his behaviour and beliefs

Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary. K Dictionaries Ltd. 28 Nov. 2007. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/philosophy>.

Also, I think there is more to reason than logical deduction.



Are people not more likely to believe something that gives them psychological benefit? This has no bearing on actual truth value, but it does have a bearing on how much I trust others’ beliefs to be truth. I am less likely to believe people who make claims based on wishful thinking. That’s all I’m saying.

Especially the "hoped for" part. In other words faith is wishful thinking.

So every time you hope for something, you're wrong?

Please read sentences more carefully.

Did I say that?

What didn't I read?

No, just as 'hoping' does not necessarily make things right either.



^ This sentence also has a meaning.

well, the 'wishful thinking' might have been interpreted like that. And well, Ragtime was defending his position.


well, in the end it doesn't make much sense to me, when you hear, reading the Bible properly or carefully, in context, etc. considering a good number of different interpretations existing. At least when it comes to that particular verse, I believe everyone agrees there.

Well if you base your belief on hope alone with nothing else backing it is usually wrong. I know Ragtime will say he does have backing, but of course I disagree.

Hence why it's "faith". And not all faith is blind. There's informed faith -- such as we all use every day. When we start a well-tuned car, we believe it will start. In fact, most of us are positive that it will, yet we have no proof or actual knowledge that it will, only that it probably will. And more than 99% of the time, we're right. That's informed faith. Knowledge gets us most of the way to the conclusion, and blind faith gets us the rest of the way. That combination makes informed faith, such as when many Bible prophecies have already come true -- that's hard knowledge which indicates God's existence and His truths.

So, informed faith is used when Christians decide: "God, it looks like you're real. I'm not totally sure, but I'm willing to leap in the direction that the knowledge is clearly pointing, and trust in you."
As I said, we all use informed faith on a daily basis. Anytime you turn a doorknob expecting the door to open, you're using faith. Faith based on past experience. It's no different for Christians. They've experienced God doing obvious miraculous things in their lives, and they remember those things as supporting evidence for God's existence and other truths.

Faith empowers, because a true skeptic or empiricist who values his life cannot drive a car or board an airplane that's about to take off, because his survival during those events has not been proven to him. So, a totally faithless person is infinitely weak -- impotent to make any decision whatsoever that he cares about at all. By contrast, the man of faith can accomplish even what he has not yet imagined he can, simply because he is willing to proceed down an uncharted path, by trusting his past knowledge to approximately indicate future results.

But true skeptics and empiricists are frozen in their tracks. They never really live. Their own philosophy paralizes them in the real world -- the world that requires firm decisions to be made from finite knowledge. Therefore, nothing can ever be accomplished and enjoyed without faith. It's impossible, as I've shown.

I agree that we all have had faith in something, ideology, belief and in someone, always, there are different types of faith and degrees of faith, I actually can't imagine a person without it.


well, I agree in the sense that your faith, it is an informed faith, as you have the knowledge from studies of the Bible, and from teachings from the church, which you have learned and you have faith in all of it based on that information.


I'm inclined to say that this may sound a little like (over)generalization, if someone can't drive a car or board a plane, then it would be for a lot of reasons, as would be characteristics of paranoia, anxiety attacks, etc. in some cases, but yes, in other cases, it might be because of not knowing the outcome and deciding not to take the risk, which it works as a defense mechanism.


if by empiricists you mean or include scientific method, then I would have to disagree here, as that either proves, disproves or discovers or expands new explanations about some things accepted as 'true' for a period of time.

But I agree here when it comes to strong skeptics or perhaps debunkers and philosophies such as nihilism, in which they would not have anything good to offer to society, if they are strongly attached to those things and if that influences their behaviour.

In order to do something productive for the good of society or humanity and stuff like that, you have to have some faith in a certain ideology you are following wether it is christian, other religion or secular. I really don't see accomplishing those positive aspects without it, if you just tend to reject any ideology for the sake of "skepticism".

Man I really apprecieate all the ideas that people have shared and that there has been a fair amount of respect accorded to those who are communicating different views.

As a physicist, I guess I am always tempted to try and unify things. So the intention of my post was to provide a unifying trait for individuals that allows everyone to understand others while being able to appreciate their differences.

I guess that I've too often seen people respond to others beliefs based on one of the following arguements (or similar ones)
- I've got God on my side, so you must accept what I say
- I've got science on my side, so you must accept what I say
- I've got logic and reason on my side, so you must accept what I say
- I've got a large number of people on my side (some of whom were very smart and spent long periods of time each day thinking through these very issues), so you must accept what I say.

As people have noted, any type of reasoning of this sort is prone to abuse.

As I try to figure out how to finish this post, I am challenged to make any absolute statements, because I think that there are probably 50 different concepts that have been touched upon in this thread. Probably discussion of each one would generate even more concepts for discussion.

So, at this point I'm going to see if I can conceive of problem with a simple ultimate solution (DRATS, I have revealed the scientific portion of my person in that I believe and long for the ultimate solution), but wait ...., I don't think such a simple solution exists (CRAP, I have revealed the more spiritual portion of my nature). I guess I have to accept the possibility that I'm somewhat schizophrenic.

AGAIN, THANKS EVERYONE FOR YOUR POSTS

I agree. It isn't human nature to act on things you don't believe in some way. We have to suspend our skepticism and take a stance in order to make real decisions. I guess this can be called faith. It seems all through life there is a mixture of faith and doubt. The Vulcan part of me tells me that people often have too much faith in a given ideology and that this leads unnecessary conflict which is a waste of human energy and can lead to horrendous violence. On the other hand, if everyone was completely logical and skeptical we wouldn't be very productive.

There is evidence that logic and reasoning work though. I only argue that I do not choose logic or reasoning because of faith, and if the evidence lead me to choosing logic or religion, then it could not have been faith.

The faith enters in when you expect logic to never let you down, despite not possessing true knowledge that it won't. As toward religion, evidence leads people toward logic, but only faith lets them trust in it for future results.

One does not stand outside of logic, observe it working a thousand times in a row, and still remain apathetic to that fact. We don't simply think, "Hmmm, so far, logic has always worked. Oh well..." No, we join up with it, we embrace it, or at the very least we're attracted to it, because it's working. But only faith can say that logic will continue to work. You can call it absolute knowledge if you wish, but that is a bluff. All you have is finite evidence that logic will continue to work -- else, your mind is not finite. (I trust we all agree that our minds are finite -- unless we have some gods here among us. )

The thing about logic is it has a pattern and consistency to it. I think that learning is all about recognizing consistent patterns. As life goes on we grow to expect consistency. When I go through my day I don’t expect random absurd things to happen. For instance, I don't fear to walk out my front door because a giant gorilla could be hiding above it waiting to pounce on me. The whole idea of science, logic, etc. is based on the concept of consistency. Science doesn't tell us what anything actually IS. That extra step takes a certain kind of faith.

To me it isn’t the same as religious faith though. I don’t really see religion as consistent. Compared to science, most religions seem overly complicated and arbitrary. A lot of religious claims don’t seem to have a rhyme or reason to them. A good example would be the Ten Commandments. Several of them could simply be combined into “the golden rule” as they follow logically from it. Yet the Bible would rather list a bunch of rules without explaining the underlying premise. This always bothered me and triggered doubt in me when I was Christian.