Logic and faith

[Archaeopteryx]

OK, but can it be defined by people who do have it or have experienced it?

Or can it be defined by how people actually exercise it?

 

[FullEnglishBrekkie]

right

Please go ahead and define it for us.

 

[Colter]

Please go ahead and define it for us.

Its like God, if you know God then others who know God have a sense of what you mean. Faith really can't be adiquatly defined to another person who does not have it.

 

[Colter]

Here I will use my trusty UB for some insight:




Faith and Belief

"Belief has attained the level of faith when it motivates life and shapes the mode of living. The acceptance of a teaching as true is not faith; that is mere belief. Neither is certainty nor conviction faith. A state of mind attains to faith levels only when it actually dominates the mode of living. Faith is a living attribute of genuine personal religious experience. One believes truth, admires beauty, and reverences goodness, but does not worship them; such an attitude of saving faith is centered on God alone, who is all of these personified and infinitely more.

Belief is always limiting and binding; faith is expanding and releasing. Belief fixates, faith liberates. But living religious faith is more than the association of noble beliefs; it is more than an exalted system of philosophy; it is a living experience concerned with spiritual meanings, divine ideals, and supreme values; it is God-knowing and man-serving. Beliefs may become group possessions, but faith must be personal. Theologic beliefs can be suggested to a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the individual religionist.

Faith has falsified its trust when it presumes to deny realities and to confer upon its devotees assumed knowledge. Faith is a traitor when it fosters betrayal of intellectual integrity and belittles loyalty to supreme values and divine ideals. Faith never shuns the problem-solving duty of mortal living. Living faith does not foster bigotry, persecution, or intolerance.

Faith does not shackle the creative imagination, neither does it maintain an unreasoning prejudice toward the discoveries of scientific investigation. Faith vitalizes religion and constrains the religionist heroically to live the golden rule. The zeal of faith is according to knowledge, and its strivings are the preludes to sublime peace." UB 1955​

 

[FullEnglishBrekkie]

Its like God, if you know God then others who know God have a sense of what you mean. Faith really can't be adiquatly defined to another person who does not have it.

Oh, go on Colter, please give it a go. When I asked whether it can be defined by people who do have it or have experienced it, you said "Right", suggesting that you could. Just assume that your audience is made up of people with faith, then go for it.....

 

[Colter]

Oh, go on Colter, please give it a go. When I asked whether it can be defined by people who do have it or have experienced it, you said "Right", suggesting that you could. Just assume that your audience is made up of people with faith, then go for it.....

That's not what "right" meant, right meant it cant be defined. I thought your question was a statement that faithers can't define it.

But for people who have faith just the word faith communicates well enough.

 

[FullEnglishBrekkie]

That's not what "right" meant, right meant it cant be defined. I thought your question was a statement that faithers can't define it.

But for people who have faith just the word faith communicates well enough.

OK, so each "faither", then, will understand what faith means even though it is undefinable by anyone. That leads, I should think, to many different personal definitions of faith, i.e. one faither's definition being different to another's.

In that sort of situation, language will break down and communication will fail. Thank goodness for the Oxford English Dictionary, eh? That does define the word faith in the ways in which it should properly be used.

And I have to say that people who do not have a religious faith can still understand what faith means. I have faith that my mother does not lie to me, that my wife does not cheat on me and that my children do not take drugs. I define faith in this context as knowing, without empirical evidence, that these things are true facts, and I define "knowing" as living my day to day life as though they are true facts and having no doubt of them.

 

[Colter]

OK, so each "faither", then, will understand what faith means even though it is undefinable by anyone. That leads, I should think, to many different personal definitions of faith, i.e. one faither's definition being different to another's.

In that sort of situation, language will break down and communication will fail. Thank goodness for the Oxford English Dictionary, eh? That does define the word faith in the ways in which it should properly be used.

And I have to say that people who do not have a religious faith can still understand what faith means. I have faith that my mother does not lie to me, that my wife does not cheat on me and that my children do not take drugs. I define faith in this context as knowing, without empirical evidence, that these things are true facts, and I define "knowing" as living my day to day life as though they are true facts and having no doubt of them.

What you are calling faith I call trust.

 

[FullEnglishBrekkie]

What you are calling faith I call trust.

OK, but at the risk of splitting that hair; without your definition of faith, what is the difference, for you, between trust and faith? In a Venn diagram of the definitions of faith and trust (if such a thing was possible) I would expect to see a significant overlap.

 

[Davian]

Its like God, if you know God then others who know God have a sense of what you mean.

How do you know that? How would you know if they were lying?

 

[Colter]

OK, but at the risk of splitting that hair; without your definition of faith, what is the difference, for you, between trust and faith? In a Venn diagram of the definitions of faith and trust (if such a thing was possible) I would expect to see a significant overlap.

I havnt ever considered the difference, but I would describe the faith component as an endowment of the spirit, trust is more emotional.

 

[FullEnglishBrekkie]

I havnt ever considered the difference, but I would describe the faith component as an endowment of the spirit, trust is more emotional.

How can you say to me "What you are calling faith I call trust" and follow that with "I havnt ever considered the difference"? You must be aware of a difference, even if only in your perception, in order to make that distinction.

 

[Colter]

How can you say to me "What you are calling faith I call trust" and follow that with "I havnt ever considered the difference"? You must be aware of a difference, even if only in your perception, in order to make that distinction.

Because you gave me examples of what you call "faith" such as the fidelity of a wife, honest mom, kids aren't getting high etc. I had never heard anyone use faith to describe what seems to me to be trust or confidence. Maybe it's a cultural difference?

I had belief about God as a child attending a moderate Methodist church before it became faith. At 22 years old I had spiritual conversion experience after which my belief became living faith. To me faith is a different word than trust while they may overlap conceptually. Jesus taught a kind of vital living truth that was apart form fasts and forms.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

OK, so each "faither", then, will understand what faith means even though it is undefinable by anyone. That leads, I should think, to many different personal definitions of faith, i.e. one faither's definition being different to another's.

In that sort of situation, language will break down and communication will fail. Thank goodness for the Oxford English Dictionary, eh? That does define the word faith in the ways in which it should properly be used.

And I have to say that people who do not have a religious faith can still understand what faith means. I have faith that my mother does not lie to me, that my wife does not cheat on me and that my children do not take drugs. I define faith in this context as knowing, without empirical evidence, that these things are true facts, and I define "knowing" as living my day to day life as though they are true facts and having no doubt of them.

I would hope that you don't accept those things on faith and that instead you have good reason to believe that each of those is true. Moreover, I would hope that you would be willing to change your mind about each of those if the evidence warranted it.

 

[FullEnglishBrekkie]

Because you gave me examples of what you call "faith" such as the fidelity of a wife, honest mom, kids aren't getting high etc. I had never heard anyone use faith to describe what seems to me to be trust or confidence. Maybe it's a cultural difference?

I had belief about God as a child attending a moderate Methodist church before it became faith. At 22 years old I had spiritual conversion experience after which my belief became living faith. To me faith is a different word than trust while they may overlap conceptually. Jesus taught a kind of vital living truth that was apart form fasts and forms.

OK, the Oxford English Dictionary defines "faith" in the context of religious teaching, as "Belief, trust, confidence.". And it is the ability, or lack thereof, of anyone to define the word that we are discussing.

I think that, between us, we are making progress in that endeavour.

 

[FullEnglishBrekkie]

I would hope that you don't accept those things on faith and that instead you have good reason to believe that each of those is true. Moreover, I would hope that you would be willing to change your mind about each of those if the evidence warranted it.

Hi Archaeopteryx.

The reason that I believe those things is that I know those people very well and those acts would be so far out of character and I have no evidence to suggest that I am wrong. In the event that evidence to the contrary surfaced, then of course I would have to change my mind, as shocking as that would be.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Hi Archaeopteryx.

The reason that I believe those things is that I know those people very well and those acts would be so far out of character and I have no evidence to suggest that I am wrong. In the event that evidence to the contrary surfaced, then of course I would have to change my mind, as shocking as that would be.

Then you are not taking it on faith. You trust these individuals because, based on your shared history, they have shown themselves to be trustworthy.

 

[FullEnglishBrekkie]

Then you are not taking it on faith. You trust these individuals because, based on your shared history, they have shown themselves to be trustworthy.

I don't want another discussion on semantics, more specifically the meaning of "faith"; I've already engaged in that with Colter!

Any way, as for my examples: I may be gullible, they may be accomplished at deception. The point I was making is that I am able to have a belief in something without having conclusive proof, just based on my personal judgment, however good or bad that may be.

 

[zippy2006]

Here's the first definition of proof i found online...

"1. The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true."

One of the definitions for "proof" is "evidence" and in this context, that's exactly the definition we're using.

So, to summarize, one of the common definitions for faith is "belief without evidence to support it." I'm not sure where you're living that you've never heard this...that's really the only meaning for faith that I've heard in real life. Regardless of whether or not you've heard it before this thread ...you've heard it now, and clearly we haven't made it up.

Do you know what "compels" means? You can't just fish around for certain words, you have to actually read things and try to understand what they are saying.

Unless "proof" is synonymous with "evidence" and provides a definition showing it to be so, your reading is a superficial word-search for "evidence" while ignoring the actual definition. Just because "evidence" appears in the definition of "proof" does not mean that it is itself the definition. Your claim that one of the definitions for "proof" is "evidence" is flatly false according to the definition you gave. Do you see why it is so tiresome to talk to aggressive atheists? They are not concerned with truth, they just want to bash Christianity and they pull fallacious arguments from the left and right to do so. Concern yourself with truth and leave your anti-Christian bias behind.

Since when does Christian tradition dictate our use of words?

It doesn't, but you were waving your Christian schtick again. If the terms employed in your anti-Christian arguments don't make sense according to dictionaries, they would hopefully make sense according to Christian tradition. In fact it's just the opposite.

Is William Lane Craig also a heretic? My goodness. Do you read before hitting 'Reply'?

Craig isn't a fideist. You're misreading him the way you do everything else.

 

[zippy2006]

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
Saint Augustine

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
Blaise Pascal

Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.
Thomas Aquinas

Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right.
John Donne

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
Voltaire

Just a smattering of opinions from a few heretics.

That's right, and none of those statements imply the ones you gave earlier:

Faith is, in fact, the opposite of reason. They are mutually exclusive concepts, with no common ground. According to Paul, faith is belief without, or in spite of, reason.

Try to justify any of these three sentences.

...just more non sequitur arguments from lumberjohn.