Christian "faith" vs. plain "faith"

[Tonus]

Is blind faith actually possible? IMO, Christians have faith for bad reasons, but they do not have blind faith. Nobody can simply choose to have blind faith as many Christians claim.

Faith for "bad reasons" can be blind faith. Why did I believe in god for so many years? Because I'd been told god existed, by people being completely earnest. And I grew up in an environment where belief in god was common and normal, even among those who did not live their lives in conformity with religious morals. Thus, believing that god exists becomes perfectly natural. And if you begin to doubt, you risk being ostracized by your peers and your family and possibly your community and society. Due to how our minds work, it's quite easy to believe something that isn't true.

Thus, the faith in god that guides the life of such a person is a blind faith. You are placing faith in something that has not and cannot be verified. And you are only ever taking anyone else's word for it.

[watchamadoodle]

The first problem is professed beliefs versus actual beliefs.

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I don't buy for a second that all christians actually believe everything they say they believe. I think a lot of the time they are saying what they would like to believe. The fact that their actions betray these beliefs almost constantly is my evidence.

But if we assume someone has a religious belief that they really, truly believe. They can't give a rational reason (without embarressing themselves to anyone familiar with logical fallacies) so they say it's faith. Belief is a state of mind, so as has been said, they do have a reason. They may not even know what the reason is themself. But in my opinion "faith" is going to be made up mostly of emotional reasons such as fear, hope, security, sensations that have become associated with ritual, and so on. In other words they are reasons, but not good ones for establishing truth.

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That is another point, I don't feel that every christian really cares about what is true, but rather what is comfortable.

Thanks, that is another important difference between Christian "faith" and plain "faith" - especially for Protestants who follow Luther's "sola fide" teachings:

The doctrine of sola fide or "by faith alone" asserts God's pardon for guilty sinners is granted to and received through faith, conceived as excluding all "works," alone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide

A Christian is inclined to:
- profess almost 100% faith in denial of his/her doubts
- stubbornly refuse to acknowledge contrary evidence and reasoning
- be mortally afraid of losing faith and going to hell

So there are some very important differences.

[robvalue]

Yes, that's a good point. "Faith" tends to allow no room for doubt, it's absolute certainty. Or at least professed certainty. We know how strong dissidence can be. A rational person having confidence in something would freely admit it is a probability judgement. That makes it more dangerous, a closed mind doesn't learn or improve.

If I remember right, parts of the bible do say about faith being not based on evidence, but just believing anyway. I'm sure it's contradicted elsewhere like everything else.

[watchamadoodle]

Thus, the faith in god that guides the life of such a person is a blind faith. You are placing faith in something that has not and cannot be verified. And you are only ever taking anyone else's word for it.

O.k. if that is the definition of blind faith, then I agree. The difficulty falsifying Christian claims makes any faith in Christianity blind faith by that definition. Even if I saw Moses split the Red Sea, it would be blind faith due to the nature of Christian claims. (Of course my faith in the miraculous event would not be blind faith, because that could theoretically be falsified. On the other hand, having faith that "God answers prayers sometimes if He feels like it" is blind faith.)

[robvalue]

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

John 20:29

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

http://counterapologist.blogspot.co.uk/2...dence.html

[watchamadoodle]

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

That reminds me of valuing shares in a corporation. The value is based on future dividends, etc. that are "hoped" for but not certain. Of course, much of the future returns for Christians come after death, so a Christian doesn't learn if his/her hopes were justified until after death.

John 20:29
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

That is like trusting hearsay. When I read a newspaper or a history book, I trust hearsay. Of course the claims in newspapers and history books are sometimes corrected in response to criticism or new information. The hearsay evidence of Jesus is much harder to verify.

[robvalue]

Sure, but usually we can at least verify with other sources or be told how they got their information. Believing shit about the bible is pure speculation except where other sources may line up with it.

And if the newspaper started talking about angels, it's time to find a new newspaper. At best the bible is recording the observers' arguments from ignorance about supernatural causation.

[KevinM1]

Sometimes people willfully utilize the ambiguity of the term "faith," jumping back and forth between definitions,... "Trust" and "belief without evidence" are not at all the same thing, and it is unfortunate that the same word can mean either.

I agree that much 'church-speak' does cause a great deal of confusion. But I also agree with Hugs because Christian faith is not about a philosophical/scientific inquiry; but rather a personal relationship.

It's not difficult to have a personal relationship with one's self....

[Huggy Bear]

So you wouldn't just take the random man off the street at his word? Even if he seems appropriately gentlemanly? Then why on earth are you castigating science for doing the same?

Not that I believe for a second that it's possible to please you, on this subject; if science really did start taking people randomly at their word and not testing things, I have no doubt you'd turn that into an "aha!" moment too and accuse the scientific community of just making things up based on the last thing they were told. Let's not pretend that this is some consistent position you've taken up.

What's particularly infuriating is that evolution deniers like you are the ones most likely to leap on all the supposed evolution "frauds" whenever you need to, yet you'll take the rigorous testing needed to root out any such frauds and turn that into a weakness too. But if the scientific tests started yielding positive evidence for your god, I bet you'd be trumpeting the repeatability and consistency of those results from the rooftops.

There you go with the misrepresentations for the third time, But I'M the dishonest one...right?
First I'm Justifying rape, next I'm claiming gold has inherent value, now I'm denying evolution. Before I respond, to you, I want you to show where I've denied evolution.

Didn't you just get through saying that needing evidence for a thing bespeaks a lack of confidence?

No, I said "Having to repeatedly preform tests actually shows lack of confidence".

Let me break it down for you since, you apparently can't understand that concept.
Say I have a ladder, if i give the rungs a test before I climb up on it, obviously I'm not confident in it.

Just because I've seen evidence doesn't mean I require it. when Jesus walked up to the disciples and said "come follow me" they dropped what they were doing and followed him having no idea who he was... that's faith. Having spent enough time with him, they seen the evidence of who he was, now it's no longer faith. Get it?

[Esquilax]

There you go with the misrepresentations for the third time, But I'M the dishonest one...right?

Yes, you are, and I'll happily go into why.

First I'm Justifying rape,

We can start here, because the actual point I was making during that conversation was that your position was that no rape had occurred. Given this, how on earth could you accuse me of saying your position was a justification of rape? Wouldn't you have to believe rape had actually happened, to even be in the business of justifying it?

I told you this the last time you made this point, and yet your argument hasn't changed. When you say something that you know is false, that's dishonesty.

next I'm claiming gold has inherent value,

And as I said there, when you make two claims, the first being that fiat money has as much value as monopoly money, and the other being that gold has been valuable for thousands of years, the intersection of those two claims is that gold has some value over and above fiat currency. I pointed this out, and as far as I know you didn't respond. It's not my fault that the things you say have logical consequences that you evidently never think through.

now I'm denying evolution. Before I respond, to you, I want you to show where I've denied evolution.

I'm not going to play games with you, Huggy. There's a ninety page thread of you braying "show me a cat giving birth to a dog! We've never seen a change between kinds!" When you spend so much time arguing against something and strawmanning it, you can't then pretend later that you don't deny the actual, scientific definition of it.

Mind you, all of this is a deflection from the actual point I was making: mind answering that?

No, I said "Having to repeatedly preform tests actually shows lack of confidence".

Let me break it down for you since, you apparently can't understand that concept.
Say I have a ladder, if i give the rungs a test before I climb up on it, obviously I'm not confident in it.

It's not that I can't understand the concept, it's that the concept itself belies such a complete misunderstanding of science and why it does what it does. You repeat a test, when doing science, because you want to know why you got the result you did; it's about gaining additional information, not lacking confidence in the initial result. You run the test again because you want to see if the results are replicable, because if they aren't then obviously the dependent variable had nothing to do with the result the first time. You run the test again to see how much the results vary, or to see if there are other effects you may have missed, or additional variables not accounted for. You run the test again to learn more, not because you suspect the results might be wrong.

Well, when I say "you," obviously I don't mean you. You wouldn't repeat a test, because apparently you wouldn't test at all. You'd just take it on faith, assuming the guy telling you is well dressed enough.

Just because I've seen evidence doesn't mean I require it. when Jesus walked up to the disciples and said "come follow me" they dropped what they were doing and followed him having no idea who he was... that's faith. Having spent enough time with him, they seen the evidence of who he was, now it's no longer faith. Get it?

Yeah, I get it, but that doesn't make it any less idiotic a thing to do. Mostly because your paragraph could also have ended "they dropped what they were doing and followed him, and then were later found dead, having been lured into a solitary area and murdered," and both stories would have exactly the same level of justification. Faith is not a pathway to truth.