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What is faith?


DrmDoc

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7 hours ago, Eric H said:

I have seen many God coincidences happen through prayer and trust in God.

I don't understand why you wrote this. It seems to say, "Lots of things just happen naturally but I think it's because of faith in God". Are you describing any situation where people seem to have their prayers answered as a "God coincidence"? It just seems more like something I, as a Humanist, would say. "If you prayed for this outcome, it's just a coincidence that it turned out this way." This is a setup for confirmation bias, imo, because you ignore all the times your prayers go unanswered, and only count when your prayers seem to come true. 

I also make a distinction between trust and faith, like the dictionary does. Faith has none of the criteria for belief that I require in order to trust an explanation. Faith is, by definition, not a reasonable form of belief. It eschews reason and purposely tries to draw strength from the fact that there's no objective evidence to support it. By equating faith and trust, it seems even more clear that you "trust" your god to keep you safe in situations where there is danger, that it's protecting you from harm because of your faith in it.

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On ‎5‎/‎1‎/‎2019 at 3:01 PM, Intrigued said:

I can generate this "profound sense of peace" with three double Drambuie on ice. Does that mean I should worship whiskey distillers and hope to go to the Isle of Skye when I die?

Booze can cloud the mind and you can escape reality for a while, but the problems of life that we hide from; will still be there in the morning. The profound sense of peace that comes from God is without the use of stimulants. It comes in times when I should be feeling fear, worry and anxiety.

On ‎5‎/‎1‎/‎2019 at 3:15 PM, Phi for All said:

Faith is, by definition, not a reasonable form of belief. It eschews reason and purposely tries to draw strength from the fact that there's no objective evidence to support it

Thousand of people have died over the last couple of centuries pioneering aviation. They had little objective evidence to suggest their ideas would work, but they had to put their trust in new ideas that sometimes led to their deaths.  Thanks to these pioneers in aviation and all their failures; we now have more objective evidence to understand how flight works; and it is now much safer for all of us.

Mankind would probably still be living in the stone age if we waited for clear objective evidence to move forwards. 

Edited by Eric H
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7 hours ago, Eric H said:

Thousand of people have died over the last couple of centuries pioneering aviation. They had little objective evidence to suggest their ideas would work, but they had to put their trust in new ideas that sometimes led to their deaths.

They had tons of objective evidence. Read up on the Wright Brothers. They tested their designs gliding before they put engines in for powered flight. Faith had little to do with aviation pioneering. It doesn't require faith when you can model physical behaviors. The key word is trust, not faith.

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18 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

They had tons of objective evidence. Read up on the Wright Brothers. They tested their designs gliding before they put engines in for powered flight. Faith had little to do with aviation pioneering. It doesn't require faith when you can model physical behaviors. The key word is trust, not faith.

I've noticed a lot of magical thinking people have a difficult time figuring out the difference between trust and faith. Trust requires evidence faith requires... wishful thinking.

If you were on an airplane and going to jump out would you want to pack your own chute or rely someone you didn't even know if he existed? 

7 hours ago, Eric H said:

Booze can cloud the mind and you can escape reality for a while, but the problems of life that we hide from; will still be there in the morning. The profound sense of peace that comes from God is without the use of stimulants. It comes in times when I should be feeling fear, worry and anxiety.

Thousand of people have died over the last couple of centuries pioneering aviation. They had little objective evidence to suggest their ideas would work, but they had to put their trust in new ideas that sometimes led to their deaths.  Thanks to these pioneers in aviation and all their failures; we now have more objective evidence to understand how flight works; and it is now much safer for all of us.

Mankind would probably still be living in the stone age if we waited for clear objective evidence to move forwards. 

I've noticed a lot of magical thinking people have a difficult time figuring out the difference between trust and faith. Trust requires evidence faith requires... wishful thinking.

If you were on an airplane and going to jump out would you want to pack your own chute or rely someone you didn't even know if he existed? 

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5 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

I've noticed a lot of magical thinking people have a difficult time figuring out the difference between trust and faith. Trust requires evidence faith requires... wishful thinking.

I think there is a further distinction there. Wishful thinking, imo, rarely requires any kind of sacrifice. I can hope that my consciousness lives on somewhere after my body dies, and I don't need to change my life to maintain that wishful thought. Faith, OTOH, requires one to believe strongly for no reason, and often people are required to make big changes to accommodate their faith, like tithing and attending rituals and pledging oneself and worshiping and avoiding people outside the faith and midnight interventions and indoctrinating others and behavioral adjustments and prayer and avoiding certain foods.

Trust allows you to make changes based on reason and rationality. 

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28 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I think there is a further distinction there. Wishful thinking, imo, rarely requires any kind of sacrifice. I can hope that my consciousness lives on somewhere after my body dies, and I don't need to change my life to maintain that wishful thought. Faith, OTOH, requires one to believe strongly for no reason, and often people are required to make big changes to accommodate their faith, like tithing and attending rituals and pledging oneself and worshiping and avoiding people outside the faith and midnight interventions and indoctrinating others and behavioral adjustments and prayer and avoiding certain foods.

Trust allows you to make changes based on reason and rationality. 

You seem to be talking about religious faith. people can have faith in lots of things. Like UFOs, or spiritual powers. OBTW Some government files have been released with some kissass UFO pics...  

 

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Edited by Moontanman
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30 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Trust requires evidence faith requires... wishful thinking

It would be more correct to say that trust requires evidence and faith requires....evidence and wishful thinking (logic based deduction in better cases).

Note the difference between faith and religion.

Faith does not need a religion, but religions require faith. 

 

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7 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

You seem to be talking about religious faith. people can have faith in lots of things. Like UFOs, or spiritual powers. OBTW Some government files have been released with some kissass UFO pics...  

I would argue that belief in UFOs is based at least partially on visual evidence (even if the photos are always grainy and blurry). You rarely hear folks talking about UFOs without some kind of visual support, or physical manifestation (crop circles, scorched landing sites). UFOlogists almost always trust in their evidence.

OTOH, religions often talk about faith as a strong "sense" of rightness, you "just know" your worship isn't misplaced, and your faith doesn't require anything real to back it up. It just abides.

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7 hours ago, Eric H said:

Booze can cloud the mind and you can escape reality for a while, but the problems of life that we hide from; will still be there in the morning. The profound sense of peace that comes from God is without the use of stimulants. It comes in times when I should be feeling fear, worry and anxiety.

The ability to experience fear, worry and anxiety is a vital survival trait. Worry alerts us to potential problems; anxiety is a message from our subconscious that the problem is almost certainly real; fear is confirmation and the preparation of the body to deal with the problem, by fight or flight.

Alcohol allows a temporary change of perspective on reality, in the same way a ten mile run, a walk through the Louvre, or the contemplation of mitochondrial biochemistry does. Temproary changes of perspective enhance, rather than cloud reality.

Faith, in contrast, is the ultimate means of hiding from reality. Faith is the most effective way of rejecting evidence. Faith allows one, like Carrol's queen, to " believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast" yet to do so without his charm.

Faith allows one walk off a cliff, confident one will be unharmed. Faith allows one to immolate oneself and forty innocent fellow humans, confident one will awake in Paradise with a harem of virgins.

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17 hours ago, Phi for All said:

They had tons of objective evidence. Read up on the Wright Brothers. They tested their designs gliding before they put engines in for powered flight.

They thought they had tons of objective evidence, but the evidence they lacked was, how long will a plane last before it breaks down. Orville Wright was responsible for the first death of a passenger in a plane crash. I believe that our aviation pioneers needed a mixture of hope, trust and faith in forces they did not fully understand. We have them to thank for our plane safety today.

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7 hours ago, Eric H said:

They thought they had tons of objective evidence, but the evidence they lacked was, how long will a plane last before it breaks down.

Thank you, hindsight. This is known as "acting on best available evidence". They had tons of reputable, testable, repeatable evidence that was state of the art at the time.

The point is, they didn't need faith when the math, the models, and the experience gave them a trusted, rational basis for their belief in manned flight. I don't think your example of the Wright Brothers supports your arguments about faith. Just sayin'.

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23 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Thank you, hindsight. This is known as "acting on best available evidence". They had tons of reputable, testable, repeatable evidence that was state of the art at the time.

The point is, they didn't need faith when the math, the models, and the experience gave them a trusted, rational basis for their belief in manned flight. I don't think your example of the Wright Brothers supports your arguments about faith. Just sayin'.

Captain hindsight is always right, faith is weird like that...

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6 hours ago, Eric H said:

They thought they had tons of objective evidence, but the evidence they lacked was, how long will a plane last before it breaks down. Orville Wright was responsible for the first death of a passenger in a plane crash. I believe that our aviation pioneers needed a mixture of hope, trust and faith in forces they did not fully understand. We have them to thank for our plane safety today.

Perhaps, but all they required was trust in their years of investigation and hard work. Trust that their material investigations, evidence, and reproducible experiments would produce results consistent with their prior experiments, contemporaneous objectives, and future aerial expectations.  By definition, faith isn't founded in what science consider materially tangible or reproducible.  Faith is having belief or trust without any basis in investigative, tangible, or reproducible evidence or fact--if faith was otherwise, it would be science.

I began this discussion as a way to explore what drives people of faith to science discussion sites where they would likely find and confront views and opinions overwhelmingly opposite and, often, hostile to their own.  Increasingly, I'm of the opinion that it maybe a type of "Daniel in the Lion's Den" complex; wherein, the faithful confront overwhelming odds to fortify their spiritual ideas. If true, their pursuits in this way suggests an effort to abate some measure of personal fear and insecurity they may hold about their beliefs.  Here, I believe, is where some of the faithful may come to prove their piety to themselves.

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7 minutes ago, DrmDoc said:

I began this discussion as a way to explore what drives people of faith to science discussion sites where they would likely find and confront views and opinions overwhelmingly opposite and, often, hostile to their own.  Increasingly, I'm of the opinion that it maybe a type of "Daniel in the Lion's Den" complex; wherein, the faithful confront overwhelming odds to fortify their spiritual ideas. If true, their pursuits in this way suggests an effort to abate some measure of personal fear and insecurity they may hold about their beliefs.  Here, I believe, is where some of the faithful may come to prove their piety to themselves.

I have no problems with people testing things, even their faith. We should be as certain about our belief systems as we can be.

I think what happens far more often is people of faith arguing to equate faith with trust. Some don't seem comfortable with faith having no reasoned basis, so they make one up in defiance of the standard definitions. I can sympathize, it would be hard to come to a science discussion site and claim, "I simply believe with all my heart. I don't need a reason. I'm convinced of the truth of my faith."

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4 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I have no problems with people testing things, even their faith. We should be as certain about our belief systems as we can be.

I think what happens far more often is people of faith arguing to equate faith with trust. Some don't seem comfortable with faith having no reasoned basis, so they make one up in defiance of the standard definitions. I can sympathize, it would be hard to come to a science discussion site and claim, "I simply believe with all my heart. I don't need a reason. I'm convinced of the truth of my faith."

I agree; but why, in many cases, declare one's belief needlessly in a hostile environment? In other words, why test your faith if you're convinced of its validity?  My perception is that testing suggests some seed of non-belief exist within believers that isn't satiated by their faith.  If the faithful is truly confident in their faith, why expose your faith to challenge if not to prove something to yourself that shouldn't require proof?

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Going around breaking up fights will eventually get you hurt if not killed. The sad thing is most people do not want to fight, breaking up a fight can be quite easy, deceptively easy, until you run it that one or two people who really don't care and have a weapon. Once weapons are drawn thinks become quite compressed times slows down and people bleed... 

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On ‎5‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 7:55 PM, Moontanman said:

Going around breaking up fights will eventually get you hurt if not killed.

We have come across fights when the police have been called, and they don't turn up; they just don't have the resources. We have the choice to walk away; or we can try and do something. We genuinely do not like to see people get hurt; we want to see our town become a kinder and more caring place to live in, so we have the need to try and do something.

One of our pubs has started to use a metal detector, and they have confiscated five knives recently. This is a worrying trend, but faith in God helps us to keep going. I sincerely believe that faith can be used to try and bring about some good.

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On ‎5‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 4:23 PM, DrmDoc said:

By definition, faith isn't founded in what science consider materially tangible or reproducible. 

Science logic and reason will conclude that it is far safer for pensioners to stay at home and watch tv. But faith in God has helped me confront the anti social drunken behaviour of the late night economy. Faith can be beneficial and used to try and bring about some good.


 

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faith can lead to an obsession which in turn can prevent you from looking at any drawn conclusion with a rational eye. It is like if you had faith that your conclusion about science is correct then no amount of argumentation can remove that conclusion from your brain. It is stuck there and no matter how much it has been disproven it will always be there, waiting to strike. It creates a merger between reality and imagination where imagination takes the lead.

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5 hours ago, Eric H said:

Science logic and reason will conclude that it is far safer for pensioners to stay at home and watch tv. But faith in God has helped me confront the anti social drunken behaviour of the late night economy. Faith can be beneficial and used to try and bring about some good.


 

Do you do this in the same places, more or less, if so you might be creating a problem that doesn't really exist... Possibly these people are so used to your behavior they take advantage of it to put on a drunken show they know you will break up... I had two buddies when I was young that threatened to fight each other everytime we got together to drink. Some one in the group would always have to get between them. One night I simply wasn't in the mood and I told to go to it and stepped back. They didn't fight, all they did was posture... 

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10 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Do you do this in the same places, more or less, if so you might be creating a problem that doesn't really exist... Possibly these people are so used to your behavior they take advantage of it to put on a drunken show they know you will break up... I had two buddies when I was young that threatened to fight each other everytime we got together to drink. Some one in the group would always have to get between them. One night I simply wasn't in the mood and I told to go to it and stepped back. They didn't fight, all they did was posture... 

Would you have faith in that?

Can we at least agree that faith can sometimes benefit and sometimes not?

So there's no reason to dismiss it out of hand because it doesn't benefit you.  

6 hours ago, Eric H said:

But faith in God has helped me confront the anti social drunken behaviour of the late night economy. Faith can be beneficial and used to try and bring about some good.

But one day it won't, don't condemn the faithless to your fate because you got lucky.

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5 hours ago, Eric H said:

Science logic and reason will conclude that it is far safer for pensioners to stay at home and watch tv. But faith in God has helped me confront the anti social drunken behaviour of the late night economy. Faith can be beneficial and used to try and bring about some good.
 

Remarkably specious and certainly without basis in science and study of the aging.  Quite the contrary, one may find several studies and articles, some scholarly, on how routines that show "pensioners" (i.e., aging) who engage social and physical activities away from home are actually more healthy, have a better quality of life and, thereby, are much safer than those who stay home.  Faith, as I've found, services the insecure who seem without courage to face the unknown and unfathomable without a virtual parent holding their tiny hands throughout their adult life.  Life is inevitable and one should be willing and able to confront its uncertainties resolutely without the veil of some immaterial force that offers no real protection beyond one's own imagination--IMO. 

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4 minutes ago, DrmDoc said:

Remarkably specious and certainly without basis in science and study of the aging.  Quite the contrary, one may find several studies and articles, some scholarly, on how routines that show "pensioners" (i.e., aging) who engage social and physical activities away from home are actually more healthy, have a better quality of life and, thereby, are much safer than those who stay home.  Faith, as I've found, services the insecure who seem without courage to face the unknown and unfathomable without a virtual parent holding their tiny hands throughout their adult life.  Life is inevitable and one should be willing and able to confront its uncertainties resolutely without the veil of some immaterial force that offers no real protection beyond one's own imagination--IMO. 

Were you never a baby?

We can't all grow out of it...

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