What is the basis for faith?

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Why would a person have faith in a God? This is not meant to be an insulting question, I really want to understand.

Every belief I have is the result of observation and experimentation. For example, I "believe" the sun will come down at the end of the day because I have observed it come down at the end of the day my entire life. I "believe" the inside of a milk carton contains milk because that's what it has contained in the past. In this same way I do not "believe" in dragons because I have never seen evidence of a dragon, and I do not "believe" in God because I have found no evidence to suggest he exists..

Faith is essentially "belief without evidence" or "unjustified belief". This can be demonstrated by the fact that if God could be proven with evidence, you wouldn't need faith to believe in him, just as you don't need faith to believe in your parents. Some people try to claim there is evidence for God, but the arguments they use are filled with logical fallacies and "god of the gap" type claims. Below are a few examples:

THE UNIVERSE IS COMPLEX , SO IT MUST HAVE BEEN DESIGNED BY AN INTELLIGENT CREATOR
-This is a God of the Gap type argument, "since we don't know how things are complex, God is the
only possible answer" this completely disregards the possibility that there could be a valid,
scientific explanation for genetic/molecular complexity.

MORALS WOULDN'T EXIST WITHOUT GOD SO GOD HAS TO EXIST
-Another God of the Gap argument. "Since we don't fully understand where morals come from,
they must come from God" Even if the argument is true it does not prove God, because there is no
real evidence that morals exist in the first place. Even if they did, they could have developed without a
God through theories such as the "Social Contract"

MY GRANDPA'S CANCER DISAPPEARED AFTER WE PRAYED TO GOD
-Isn't this jumping the gun a little bit? Your grandpa had a certain probability of surviving the cancer
and he was lucky. Certainly not everything people pray for comes true, so why should we attribute
success to prayer but not failure?

So basically, you can't prove God with evidence. That's different from saying God can't exist, (Most atheists admit the possibility that God could exist.) When you don't have evidence, doesn't it make more sense to say "I don't know" rather than "I believe it anyway"? Agnostic atheism seems to be the only rational position.

http://garylewis.yolasite.com/resources ... sample.pdf

The rest is explained by indoctrination in early childhood, which even the best and brightest can have trouble overcoming.

That study had a lot of criticisms, and even if we were to go by those results, it allows for a significant number of intelligent people to develop faith. I really don't think intelligence is the primary indicator here, though it could correlalte with intelligence due to some underlying factor.

I really don't want this to get derailed into an anti-Religion thread. I'm hoping to hear from some actual theists to get an objective answer to this question. Do theists openly agree that faith cannot be logically justified, or do they have a different mindset when going into it?
-If theists believe faith is logical, can they show me logical premises with a conclusion to support it?
-If theists don't believe faith is logical, why would they even want faith in the first place?

What is the basis of faith? Wishful thinking.

ruveyn

Lewis et al reference six studies that came to the same result regarding religion and intelligence in general and fundamentalism and intelligence in particular. But yes, there is a small number of very intelligent people who haven't managed to deprogram themselves from some of their childhood beliefs. They no longer believe in Jack and the beanstalk, and probably also not in biblical stories like the creation account and Noah's Ark, but they seem unable to get rid of core beliefs such as heaven and hell. And therein -- hell, that is -- lies the explanation. Abrahamic religions are highly evolved memes that use threats of eternal punishment as a mental delete protection, so to speak.



Ok then. I was under the impression that you wanted to rationally discuss religion after reading your OP. If you'd rather debate the topic with theists, I'll stay out of this thread.

Fear of the unknown, need for security.

Recognizing that we are little.

The basis of faith is one of two things:

Not being able to accept reality (AKA "oh no when I die it's done and there is nothing else and I can't handle that")

Or having it drilled in to your head when you're too young to know any better

The base of faith is believeing with out seeing the base of no faith is believeing only what you can see or have proof of.

I have a powerful spiritual experience which works well for me. I cannot understand how an atheist can say I am deluded, since it is unlikely they will know what my experience is.

i do believe god isn't logical but so is the world things coaxing themselves into existence is not something logical but it happend

The whole business is subjective. There is no use even to bother about subjective things. Facts do not apply and logic has no place., Reason is useless in such matters. People believe what they will regardless of how wise or foolish it is to do so.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 03 May 2012, 10:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

It is much more than just believing in something. I am not sure how you define belief here, but to me it means so much more than giving mental assent. You will recall the veil in The Temple. We still use it as a figure to illustrate the veil between humanity and God. Who can go beyond that veil and how?

According to Hebrew Scripture, Moses and Yaweh used to talk face to face as one would talk to his neighbor. In a word, they schmoozed and maybe even shared a glass tea.

ruveyn

How true, and that was before there was a Tabernacle with veil. Then Moses was a different kind of guy. He was the brother of Aaron and his leading light. But remember I said we use it as a figure.

According to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell it's quite natural for people to have beliefs. The fact that Christian faith in particular is so widespread today (as well as Islam and Buddhism) is another matter, but long before those beliefs existed, people had beliefs.