The idea that we define something is a common misconception. We define the meaning of the words we use.Just because whomever you have spoken to in the past was not able to define God to your satisfaction is not the same as saying that God is undefinable.
Since "defining" is defined as a means to make human language usable and verbal communication possible, I actually don´t see any alternative to human definition.Please note that I did not say human definition. I said definable.
I fail to see how either of this follows. Could you elaborate?Honestly, fatalism is a comforting thought in a way. It eliviates one from the necessity of taking personal responsibility, or for that matter doing anything at all.
Ok, I think I understand better now what you are looking for.
I´m not entirely sure that the following is strictly on topic, but I´m sure you can handle it anyway.
Faith/confidence/optimism/fatalism for me personally is referring to my ability to at some point in time (retrospectively, and with additional experiences) framing my experiences in a positively meaningful way - even though I might currently not yet be able to.
Whether this ("my ability to...") is a properly defined object to my faith is debatable. I don´t think so, but for me it´s sufficient. When it comes push to shove, I guess I would have to admit that "faith" in this definition is self-referential. I have faith in my faith, confidence in my confidence etc., which is - at least in terms of proper definitions - a highly questionable statement.
In any case, all this doesn´t point anywhere outside myself.
Now, "faith" in the theistic sense is directed towards an allegedly existing object outside onself. Personally, I am inclined to think that the desire to imagine our inner processes and states as being distinct, separate entities outside ourselves is strange, naive, and at the same time unparsimonous and unnecessarily complicated. However, I suspect that for some people it is helpful.
There must be a reason why this is a common technique in literature, dramas, metaphores, fables, poetry - and even in our dreams. If I read the bible as making use of this technique (with god, satan, angels, heaven, hell etc. being our inner states and processes explained as external entities), it certainly and immediately starts making a lot of sense.
If, as I tend to think, the function of "god" is being the spaceholder for their hopes, faith, confidence, then keeping it undefined or merely defined ex negativo is very useful. God is a. outside (myself), and b. beyond (beyond time, space, knowledge, comprehension, logic, younameit). This, of course, does not a proper definition make, but it serves its purpose perfectly: even in cases where I can´t - not even in retrospect and in the light of further experience - attach positive meaning to an experience there is still the faith that there is a beyond-meaning (and, being ascribed to a "higher" entity, even a greater, better, "objective" meaning) that will be intelligible to me once I will have entered this beyond-realm.
Of the two versions "faith in my faith" and "faith in god" (both of which do not operate with proper definitions) I think the latter is more powerful, in that it offers additional options.
Does it work for me? No.
I fail to see how either of this follows. Could you elaborate?
And how - to a conscious being that is downright unable to not do anything at all, but, au contraire, has to act permanently - is the removal of the necessity to do anything at all comforting?
Originally Posted by brinny
It's as if a murkiness, a curtain has been lifted and one gains more clarity to see "spiritually". For as you must have heard by now, God is Spirit. We are but clay and return to the dust from whence we came. He gifts us, His children, with faith and our spiritual eyes are opened. The faith He imparts on us, enables us to be introduced to Him, God Almighty, our Father, our Abba.
The emptiness His pre-introduced child experienced, is replaced with a filling of His Holy Spirit, as we are transformed, and we delight in Him, and He in us, as He rejoices over us with singing.
Faith is imparted to a child of the Most High God, by Him.
LOL it was a bit of a maze, following your questions. Nevertheless, perhaps some of what i wrote in response will be understood.
I hope you don't mind me returning to your reply.
I've often heard it said that we who are atheists have no room for criticizing those who have expressed faith in God, as we ourselves have faith in science or logic or whatever. May I conclude, from what you've said above, that you would not compare the two? I don't think, from what you've describe here, that I would consider the two as equivalent in that the state you are describing seems to have broken into your awareness in a spontaneously transformative fashion. Perhaps great scientific discoveries have that quality to them, but my run-of-the-mill respect for and reliance upon science and logic certainly do not.
I am saying, as you put it, transforming faith, comes from something other than ourselves (at least from my own experience as a child of God). It is a gift, yes, in that we are given something it was not possible for us to possess in our "natural" state. It makes possible, a belief in a God that appears invisible at the moment.
You appear insightful. I'm wondering then, is your reliance on science of the limited kind?
I'm not familiar with the old "Can there be consciousness without an object?" question. Please explain.
Seems we are thinking and conceptualizing along similar lines here.I work in a clinic that serves a small town that recently lost a fine young man to a freak accident. I've encountered several tearful patients who have asked me for prayers and have gone on to speculate as to what reasons God might have for allowing such a thing. For the most part I've simply made sympathetic replies that have hidden my thoughts on the matter, but one co-worker who knows that I'm an atheist specifically asked my opinion as to why it happened. I replied to her that gravity goes about its business without regard to the weight of the consequences but that we in the community, being conscious, are able to lend meaning to this otherwise tragic event. We're human beings. It's what we do.
I understand the young man's mother has decided to herself that the Great Tribulation is immanent and that God has taken him now in order to both spare him the coming trials and provide an opportunity for others to examine their lives and be saved. I've been told that this realization has comforted her.
I simply cannot decide this sort of thing to myself. I cannot imagine that the meaning is the cause for the tragedy rather than the other way around. That is what theism seems to demand.
What I can do is project an imagined future me, look back from this perspective (as it were) and endue this tragedy with meaning based upon actions I and others choose to taken in response to the event. For instance, if I and several members of the community were to stir ourselves to take up a charitable cause that interested him, thus multiplying the effects he would have had on his own, that would create meaning. I can have faith in faith, as you have suggested, surmising that from a sufficiently inclusive perspective all such tragedies might be redeemable in such a fashion so that nothing of value is ever truly lost. My surmising it does not make it so, and I do not anticipate ever obtaining such a view, but it seems to me that living one's life as if it were so would be advantageous.
That does not seem to make me a theist, nor does it constitute the sort of experience brinny has described.
Leaving aside that in the absence of a proper definition of theos/God labeling oneself "atheist" is highly problematic (I don´t even know what I am supposed to not believe in) - how can there be a defining characteristic for the lack of a belief?I would acknowledge that it is faith. It isn't, however, a defining characteristic of my atheism.
Sorry for being late, I had said;
There will always be faith. It will always exist. Even though we reject it. That is why it doesn't require an object. We channel it. I and others attach it to a certain definition, due to reasons known to ourselves again, certain experiences, etc. But it is certainly possible to float it out there too.
...to the OP in the other thread...
Leaving aside that in the absence of a proper definition of theos/God labeling oneself "atheist" is highly problematic (I don´t even know what I am supposed to not believe in) - how can there be a defining characteristic for the lack of a belief?
Right now I have been thinking about the following problem of the theistic belief in finding the god-given meaning (as opposed to actively lending meaning).
The whole thing seems to work from the premise that there´s
1. the human meaning (if something means something to me or someone else)
2. the external beyond-meaning that god sees in things, and which is completely independent and possibly even contrary to and or irreconcilable with the human meaning ("god´s mysterious ways, beyond human comprehension, bigger picture, who are we to question....?" - we all know the countless phrases pointing towards this assumption).
Yet, theists often and naturally assume that once an occurance (that previously didn´t have intelligible meaning to them) starts becoming positively meaningful this meaning therefore must be meaning(2) - the divine beyond-meaning. An assumption for which there is actually no basis, since the premise is that meaning(2) and meaning(1) are independent and possibly contrary/irreconcilable.
Thus, my actual question seems to be: How do I determine that if something is meaningful(1) to me I have finally found meaning(2)?
Well, being the pragmatist that I am I can honestly and without any sarcasm or condescendence say "Whatever works for her is fine with me."Good question. Interestingly, it wasn't that the mother who lost her son needed to know God's actual meaning, which would be theologically impossible, but that she needed to come up with something that could...I don't know...convincingly stand in for his meaning. She managed something both transcendent (it has to do with the Great Tribulation--a doctrine that emphasizes the sovereignty of God to do as God pleases with mankind) and has a comforting human-centered element (her son will be spared suffering and others will examine their own lives). IOW, what she came up with would do for now.
Now that I look at your comment again, it seems that you are seeing faith as something that we can manipulate and make use of (channel) rather than something that emerges out of an encounter with an object. What does faith that has no object look like (so to speak)? What are its defining properties? From what does it arise (or is it simply existent in its own right)?
Well, clearly faith is the product of hope. We have hope towards many different things and as a result we make use of that faith. I do not know, my faith doesn't come from an encounter but I do believe those who encountered this "object" in my religious view. You could consider "hope" an object. I can't think of faith without hope, or an object in particular.
That's just childish.
I point out the obvious and you respond with more childishness.
Religious belief is wish-thinking based on egotism.
...The last type of faith I can think of is blind faith. This is faith that exists in spite of reason. One could have unwavering faith in their nation or their religion or their political party without ever questioning it. One could look at all of the things that point to their viewpoint being wrong as tests, as traps, and so just avoid them. This type of faith seems to usually not be helpful for growth.
-Lyn
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