Faith? What do you mean by faith?

[Sam91]

Quoted the wrong person, sorry.

Personally, I feel as though my faith probably is the size of a mustard seed. There are a lot of coincidences with the idea of there being a God that I can't dismiss completely out of hand. But as much as I ask, that mountain simply won't jump into the sea.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Close, but not necessarily. The key words here are "confidence" and "assurance". Ask yourself, what brings you confidence and assurance in something or someone?

Verifiable evidence. A verifiable track record that justifies such trust.

 

[DogmaHunter]

So, why do reasons and evidence give you confidence and assurance?

For the same reasons that I have confidence that putting my hand in the fire, will hurt.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Of course you don't. You don't care much for anyone who exalts the sovereignty of God over His creation.

For you and every other atheist, this is ultimately the issue and it slips out every now and then when you're not careful in what you say.

The notion that there is a God to whom we are accountable and who is sovereign over us is an affront to your pride.

Right, right....
Yep, the "real reason" why we aren't theists is not because we see no justifiable reasons to believe theistic claims.... NOPE. It's because we "know" that god actually exists, but we "just want to keep sinning".


/facepalm.

I have to question the intellectual honesty of people who say such things, while being intelligent enough to turn on their pc and post on forums.

Seriously, it is the most juvenile "explanation" I have ever encountered for why atheists are atheists, in the opinion of a theist.

It's absolutely assanine. It's like saying that one doesn't believe in Santa, because one wishes to be a naughty boy...

Come on now... be serious...

Consider me telling you that you are not a muslim, ONLY because you don't feel like giving up eating pork. You would laugh at such a notion, and rightfully so, for the exact same reason.

You don't like the notion and the intellectual "difficulties" you and others claim to be preventing you from being Christians are just smoke screens.

No. Just....no.

It's not that you can't believe, it's that you don't want to believe.

No. It's that I don't see any justifiable reason to believe. Just like you see no justifiable reason to believe in any other religion that isn't the one you have to buy into.

Or are you not a worshipper of Thor, because you simply don't wish to die on a battle field?

Christianity is too hard for you.

Nope. Christianity is not believable to me.
Just like Hinduism is not believable to you.

You have not tried it and found it wanting.

I wasn't indoctrinated into any religion as a child.

You have found it too hard and left it untried.

No. I just find it nonsensical.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I always believed as a child, which turned into faith strong enough to ask Jesus in and give my life over to Him as a teen. I would say it was the same as the first example in the OP of the thread.

It then turned into undeniable personal proof as God answered my prayers and performed little miracles in my life.

I fell away but always wanted back. My faith was there but my understanding put stumbling blocks in my way. The Lord healed me one day when I was testifying how he would heal me if it was in His will and I prayed with 100 percent faith. As soon as I stated that to my husband I was healed. I still couldn't feel forgiven to come home though.

Then about 6 weeks ago I came home and His Spirit has spoken to me through the bible. So many mathematical impossible coincidences have happened since. So I could not be able to deny His existance ever. I am so grateful for this.

For every one of such anecdotes, there are thousands more about people who prayed for a healing, with just as much faith as you and perhaps even more, where no healing took place and only suffering and death was the result.

 

[DogmaHunter]

If you asked Jesus into your life and your heart was sincere you would see the truth as the Holy Spirit would come upon you. It really is that simple.

So, how can we differentiate that from self-deception / self-brainwashing?

And how do you marry such concepts to the very real reality of followers of mutually exclusive religions, claiming similar experiences?

If you are asking 'are you real?' that might not happen as you are testing God.

I am instinctively skeptical about any and all claims / concepts that explicitly forbid testing.

You just take that jump of faith while believing

I am physically unable to truelly believe something without justifiable reasons.

I am physically unable to sincerely "start believing in god" in exactly the same way as I am unable to start believing in santa clause or undetectable pixies.

I can only accept as likely correct those things that I find convincing. And what I find convincing is a combination of trust, evidence, verifiability and reasonable argumentation. None of which I have ever been presented with by any theists following any religion.

I'm certainly open to any and all possibilities and will follow reason and evidence wherever it leads to. However, after millenia of religious claims without such reasonable evidence, I'm not expecting it to turn up any time soon...

and then over the coming days while not doubting your decision you get confirmations of it through miraculous small wonders.

Also refered to as the placebo effect...

Its not deluding yourself because they are mathematically impossible

Practically everything that happens is "mathematically unlikely".
Things that mathematically impossible never happen. You are welcome to give a single example of such a thing happening anyway, though.

You just need to have strong fairh but even a small amount of strong faith and all the doors are opened unto you.

Sorry, no can do.

 

[zippy2006]

"I have faith in God" seems to always be able to be translated in two ways:

1) "I have trust in God because evidence suggests he is trustworthy"
2) "I have evidence which I find compelling for God's existence"

This is a good distinction and the primary sense of faith is 1. Even more than that, faith is generally understood as believing some proposition because a legitimate authority testified to it. In the case of God, who is Truth itself and can never lie, his testimony is always true and always worthy of faith.

Faith and evidence are closely linked

.

In the first case, faith is akin to trust in God's abilities. This is wholly separate than faith that God exists. Consider the analogy that I have faith that my wife will come home on time versus the faith that I have that my wife exists.

The reason I have faith that my wife will come home on time is because I have personal evidence from the last 20 times that she has come home on time. However, if the next 10 times, she comes home late, then my faith will be eroded.

The reason I have faith that my wife exists is because I have compelling evidence for her existence such as photographs, face-to-face meetings, marriage certificate, etc. If anyone were to doubt her existence, I could readily arrange any of these pieces of evidence and the case would likely be settled that she unambiguously exists. However, if some lines of evidence were shown to be invalid, false or questionable (e.g. no one else could see her except me), then my faith would be eroded.

So, my faith in my wife (both in her actions and her existence) depends on evidence.

Evidential reasoning is always part of the process by which one comes to faith, but the act of faith is always a leap of trust and God himself is said to oversee such a leap, to help us make it and to persevere in it.

If my wife came home late every single night for the last 10 years and I still adamantly state that she will be home on time tonight, do I have faith or am I delusional and out-of-touch? Is such faith virtuous?

Faith is not just probable reasoning. You can only have faith if someone tells you that she will be home and you take their word for it. So if your wife told you, for the 10th year, that she would be home on time, it would be unreasonable to place your faith in her word. This is because your wife is both able (and apparently prone) to err, she is capable of lying, and she is not omnipotent.

How many times must God fail before your faith in God's abilities gets eroded?
How many people that don't see the same god as you (or any god at all) are needed before you faith in God's existence is eroded?
How much evidence is required to erode your faith in God?

God doesn't fail, but he sometimes does things differently than you would prefer.

 

[anonymous person]

So, how can we differentiate that from self-deception / self-brainwashing?

And how do you marry such concepts to the very real reality of followers of mutually exclusive religions, claiming similar experiences?



I am instinctively skeptical about any and all claims / concepts that explicitly forbid testing.



I am physically unable to truelly believe something without justifiable reasons.

I am physically unable to sincerely "start believing in god" in exactly the same way as I am unable to start believing in santa clause or undetectable pixies.

I can only accept as likely correct those things that I find convincing. And what I find convincing is a combination of trust, evidence, verifiability and reasonable argumentation. None of which I have ever been presented with by any theists following any religion.

I'm certainly open to any and all possibilities and will follow reason and evidence wherever it leads to. However, after millenia of religious claims without such reasonable evidence, I'm not expecting it to turn up any time soon...



Also refered to as the placebo effect...



Practically everything that happens is "mathematically unlikely".
Things that mathematically impossible never happen. You are welcome to give a single example of such a thing happening anyway, though.




Sorry, no can do.

You are dogmatic in your hunt for dogma but this charge will only appear to you as an accusation from a conspirator. If you were ever to let yourself out of the prison of your own mind, you would immediately be able to look back on how small and closed your mind really was. Only then would you be rightly called a "free thinker".

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You are dogmatic in your hunt for dogma but this charge will only appear to you as an accusation from a conspirator.

I'ld say that that "charge" simply makes no sense.

If you were ever to let yourself out of the prison of your own mind

Huh?

, you would immediately be able to look back on how small and closed your mind really was. Only then would you be rightly called a "free thinker".

This exposes a common mistake made by theists.

To be "closed minded" or "open minded" has very little, if anything, to do with what you actually believe/accepty as correct or likely, or not.

Rather, it has to do with how open or closed you are to evaluating evidence or arguments that is offered in support of a view that you do not hold. How open or closed you are to entertaining alternative views and the arguments for it.

A closed minded person, when confronted with arguments/evidence of an alternative viewpoint, stuffs his ears and screams "lalala - can't hear you". A bit like what YEC's do when confronted with all the independent and verifiable facts of the real world that demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that life evolved and the flood never happened.

A closed minded person is not someone who simply doesn't believe a given claim.

 

[Hawkins]

"I have faith in God" seems to always be able to be translated in two ways:

1) "I have trust in God because evidence suggests he is trustworthy"
2) "I have evidence which I find compelling for God's existence"

Faith and evidence are closely linked.


How many times must God fail before your faith in God's abilities gets eroded?
How many people that don't see the same god as you (or any god at all) are needed before you faith in God's existence is eroded?
How much evidence is required to erode your faith in God?

That notion is almost completely wrong.

Evidence has no bearing to what truth is, it's simply an over stated term.

Try to get a history book about a figure existed 2000 years ago then ask yourself what evidence do you have for you to believe he ever existed? If you try to look for evidence, most historical figures (the farther away history is the more it is so) don't exist.

So the question is rather, if such a figure mentioned in a book truly exist how can you reach such a truth. The only way you can reach such a truth is by reading what was written and put your faith in believing either he existed or he's not! There's no other way around under most circumstances.

To put it another way, the only media for today's humans to reach such a truth is by putting faith in what was witnessed by the direct witnesses back then (sometimes you have to believe indirect witness without much choice).

Believing in God is about something similar but not exactly though. First, witnessing is the only way to reach this truth, unless God chooses to show up directly. Second, it's different from history in that history doesn't concern our lives but God does. Third, it's more different from history that we have the Holy Spirit with us for us to perceive His existence to a certain extent. It's also faith based though not necessarily be evidence based.

To put it another way, we have a case here claimed to be concerning our death or alive (that would happen after our physical death). In the case it's true, the only way for all humans alike to reach such a truth is by trusting the witnesses back then (i.e., 2000 years ago those witnesses of Jesus).

Other question left are;

Does God has a good reason to hide behind?
If God concerns about humans why doesn't He just show up in front of us to guide us instead of hiding behind to invite our faith instead? I myself failed to see other gods can provide a good answer to this question, except for Christianity.

The analogy is more like a claim that "there's a terrorist bomb" in a public area. The thought to be direct witnesses chose to die in order to bring this message out. In the case that the bomb is true, the only way you can reach this truth is by trusting the witnesses before it's set to blast.

The whole setup is about that faith is the only way to reach truth, and faith (of humans) is the factor to be evaluated (by God). It makes sense. It's a truly fair and accurate evaluation as no one human will fake it. If you have no faith, you won't fake yourself to say that you believe Jesus, disregarding whether you are a clever or a dumb or a tricky person.

 

[bling]

That notion is almost completely wrong.

Evidence has no bearing to what truth is, it's simply an over stated term.

Try to get a history book about a figure existed 2000 years ago then ask yourself what evidence do you have for you to believe he ever existed? If you try to look for evidence, most historical figures (the farther away history is the more it is so) don't exist.

So the question is rather, if such a figure mentioned in a book truly exist how can you reach such a truth. The only way you can reach such a truth is by reading what was written and put your faith in believing either he existed or he's not! There's no other way around under most circumstances.

To put it another way, the only media for today's humans to reach such a truth is by putting faith in what was witnessed by the direct witnesses back then (sometimes you have to believe indirect witness without much choice).

Believing in God is about something similar but not exactly though. First, witnessing is the only way to reach this truth, unless God chooses to show up directly. Second, it's different from history in that history doesn't concern our lives but God does. Third, it's more different from history that we have the Holy Spirit with us for us to perceive His existence to a certain extent. It's also faith based though not necessarily be evidence based.

To put it another way, we have a case here claimed to be concerning our death or alive (that would happen after our physical death). In the case it's true, the only way for all humans alike to reach such a truth is by trusting the witnesses back then (i.e., 2000 years ago those witnesses of Jesus).

Other question left are;

Does God has a good reason to hide behind?
If God concerns about humans why doesn't He just show up in front of us to guide us instead of hiding behind to invite our faith instead? I myself failed to see other gods can provide a good answer to this question, except for Christianity.

The analogy is more like a claim that "there's a terrorist bomb" in a public area. The thought to be direct witnesses chose to die in order to bring this message out. In the case that the bomb is true, the only way you can reach this truth is by trusting the witnesses before it's set to blast.

The whole setup is about that faith is the only way to reach truth, and faith (of humans) is the factor to be evaluated (by God). It makes sense. It's a truly fair and accurate evaluation as no one human will fake it. If you have no faith, you won't fake yourself to say that you believe Jesus, disregarding whether you are a clever or a dumb or a tricky person.

You say: “today's humans to reach such a truth is by putting faith in what was witnessed by the direct witnesses back then” and “witnessing is the only way to reach this truth, unless God chooses to show up directly.”

You can “witness” today the huge unbelievable changes God has made in people’s lives today by having Christ live in and through them. Getting to ‘know” such people you witness an unbelievable “Love” (Godly type Love” and Christ Himself) for God is this Love.

People should come to God/Christ out of a desire for such unconditional unselfish Love. Wanting that Love is wanting God to exist in them.

Remember: God is doing all He can to help you to accept His charity, but giving you “knowledge” of His existence will not make you humble to the point of accepting pure charity.

There is a huge problem with “knowledge” since it tends to “puff up” those that have it. Also “knowledge” is something the individual can obtain and thus become more self-reliant, when the need of the individual is to be humble and accepting of God’s help (charity).

Some people in the OT had direct “knowledge” of God’s existence (like those that walked through the Red Sea), but that did not help them to be humble.

God has given all mature adults the ability to express faith in somethings or some people.

If salvation was dependent on some other factor than “faith” such as knowledge, ancestry, physical strength, good looks, courage, or some kind of achievement, God would not be fair/just.

Directing the little faith (we all have) toward a benevolent Creator is something the lowliest mature adult on earth can do, so extending faith toward God existence is a humbling experience (and very easy to do). That little humility is all you need to be willing to humbly accept pure charity (something man find hard to do).

God is doing all He can to help you to accept His pure charity as charity (these gifts of charity are unbelievably huge). Since, Faith in God helps us in our acceptance of charity, God allows us to extend faith toward Him, but having faith in the existence of a benevolent Creator is made as easy as possible yet it is still not knowledge.

If you do not “need” to believe (trust) in a benevolent Creator than you can avoid putting your faith in a benevolent Creator. You can believe (trust) that the universe and life was a random result, since it would make no difference unless you had a real “need” to believe in a benevolent God.

Atheist may say “I do not believe anything”, but practically they act like; they “believe” the Christian God does not exist and for most of my discussions with them, do not want or like the Christian God, so they have reason not to believe.

You will find you are on a “need to know bases” and if it would “upset” you to know, so God will not upset you, since all He wants to do is help you.

 

[JackRT]

In order to understand these things, I have to be born-again. In order to be born-again I have to believe. In order to believe I need to understand these things.

If you have proof then faith is unnecessary. If you have faith then proof is unnecessary. I think that perhaps it is wrong to regard faith as a set of propositional statements that must be believed in order to be saved. I regard faith as an implicit trust that no matter what happens God is always with us. With that understanding the faith/proof conundrum goes away. I hesitate to add that at this point in my faith journey I regard creeds and dogmas and doctrines to actually be a hindrance to
my faith. Throughout Christian history they have been used far more to exclude and condemn than to accept and welcome.

 

[Moral Orel]

If you have proof then faith is unnecessary. If you have faith then proof is unnecessary. I think that perhaps it is wrong to regard faith as a set of propositional statements that must be believed in order to be saved. I regard faith as an implicit trust that no matter what happens God is always with us. With that understanding the faith/proof conundrum goes away. I hesitate to add that at this point in my faith journey I regard creeds and dogmas and doctrines to actually be a hindrance to
my faith. Throughout Christian history they have been used far more to exclude and condemn than to accept and welcome.

I get that, and I hear that a lot. That faith isn't faith in His existence, but faith that he'll keep his promises. But first you have to believe He exists before you can believe He'll do what He says He'll do.

Imagine jumping from an airplane. I can trust that my parachute will open properly because I understand how they work and how reliable they are. But what if I don't know whether there's a parachute there at all?

And therein lies the problem of discussing "faith" between atheists and most Christians. Most of the time the Christian skips over the believing in His existence part, and goes right into the trusting part. But atheists are still back at the starting line wondering about the existence part. It's understandable, though, since the Bible puts it right out there that everyone knows He exists, so there's no good reason for a Christian to believe an atheist doesn't know anything of the sort.

 

[zippy2006]

I get that, and I hear that a lot. That faith isn't faith in His existence, but faith that he'll keep his promises. But first you have to believe He exists before you can believe He'll do what He says He'll do.

Imagine jumping from an airplane. I can trust that my parachute will open properly because I understand how they work and how reliable they are. But what if I don't know whether there's a parachute there at all?

And therein lies the problem of discussing "faith" between atheists and most Christians. Most of the time the Christian skips over the believing in His existence part, and goes right into the trusting part. But atheists are still back at the starting line wondering about the existence part. It's understandable, though, since the Bible puts it right out there that everyone knows He exists, so there's no good reason for a Christian to believe an atheist doesn't know anything of the sort.

And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)