What is faith ....

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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.

I do not expect logic to work, only observe that it does, which is evidence in itself. To expect anything of logic or any other method is a sign of faith. Instead of doing that for every single case, you can simply prove that this works for a general case--evidence that this works for every single case under the given conditions. This is not faith, but observing that logic actually works. Thus I do not have faith that this works, but an understanding of why it works, and accept it because it does work.



If you suggest that we need faith to see that logic works, then we cannot see the beauty of logic because that would be no different from saying that logic works without investigating how or why it works. That would simply be like saying the theory of evolution works because some scientists said so, without investigating for yourself what evolution really is, how it works, and what the scientists have found themselves.



Logic need not be proven through "finite evidences", much the same way science does not need to prove. You could easily suggest what logic is and isn't from what you can disprove. It is much simpler to disprove something than to prove something because you only need one contradiction to disprove it. In this case, we don't need an infinite amount of evidences, but that one case failing is good enough to disprove something. Or, as I have mentioned before, it works for the general cases, and we need not consider every single case; we need only have evidence for the general case. Again, we need not expect that this is always true; perhaps logic might not work (although this could be the case of applying poor logic that doesn't represent real logic in any way), but because I have not encountered such a case where logic does not work, the probability that it doesn't work has already been quite minimized.

I caught this interesting link the other day that is on an FMRI study of faith/belief and what areas of the brain are involved in it.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... ml?cnn=yes

The simple conclusion is that for a wide range of different areas (math, ethics, religion, etc.) while different areas of consideration may light up different portions of higher brain function, the final stamp of approval or belief for all areas seems to be the same place in the primative brain. I thought that this might support my initial premise and also bring a way to understand the diverse views that have been expressed in this thread.

Faith is the belief in things hoped for, that are not seen. Faith is not knowledge. The key elements to faith are hope and belief. At the point that something becomes known and proven then faith becomes redundant.

Knowledge is such a fluid concept. What was known 2000 years ago is laughed at today. The world is not flat - or so we believe; there are nine planets in our solar system - or are there?

It wasn't that long ago that surgeons were spreading disease because they didn't wash-up between patients, and yet I noticed that this past week a study of US health care identified that proper hygiene is way more effective at reducing infection than any available drug treatment. How is it then that the same study found that health care workers - including surgeons - needed to be reminded of basic hygiene and even have a checklist.

We show incredible arrogance when we assume we know things. We think we know but do we really?

Faith is believing something that you know isn't true.

The priest told a story at church of when he asked kids about what faith means and that's what one of them answered. I thought it was funny. I see how he could have thought that. I'd say faith is believing something that can't be proven.

Believing something that you know isn't true is delusional - doesn't make sense.

When we have faith we believe something that we don't know but hope to be true.