Question about "faith"

[John 6IX Breezy]

Pretty sure you have that backwards.

1. "Moses answered, 'What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’? [...] Then the Lord said, 'If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second. But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.” (Exodus 3:1-8).

2. "By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned" (Hebrews 11:29)

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That's strange. I must of missed the part where I got that backwards lol. God gave evidence to Israel that he was real before they had to exercise faith in him at the Red Sea? That can't be right.

[Angrboda]

I think this whole debate gets resolved if someone can show me one legitimate Christian resource that says faith is an emotion or blind belief. Quote the Pope or something, no more anecdotes.

John 20:29 ESV
Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Now one could say that Jesus here meant, blessed are those who believed based upon prior witness rather than having seen me in the flesh, and it's possible he meant that. The difficulty is in determining whether or not a person has blind faith or has a faith based upon induction from his experiences. Typically, the complete reasons for a person's belief are not stated and it is hard to see what a person would have to say in order to be certain that their faith was blind. Perhaps if they said something to the effect that they believe based upon nothing at all in their prior experience, though such an expression would be rare. I suspect such expressions do exist, and given that they should be expected to be rare rather than nonexistent, it rather suggests that you are simply exploiting this fact to suggest something which may not be true. For example, if Jesus had meant that blind faith is good, how would you show that the other meaning was not meant, or falsify the hypothesis that he is suggesting something other than blind faith? If you have no way to know, then you're just playing on the ambiguity to make a bald assertion. As such, your assertion would hold no water. So, how would you falsify the faith as trust/confidence hypothesis?

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Christians often distinguish faith from presumption. Faith is virtuous, presumption is not.

Interesting. What distinction do Christians draw between these two?

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I would trust a surgeon with a surgery, a dentist with a cavity, and God about a supernatural flood.

I wouldnt trust a surgeon with my haircut, a dentist flying my plane, or my wife about a supernatural flood.

But if a surgeon showed me his cosmetology degree, a dentist showed me his pilot license, and my wife turned a rod into a serpent like Moses. I would be more inclined to trust them in those areas.

That is the nature of faith/trust. It is based on the merit of the proposer.

Who are the proposers in this case? What reason do we have to believe they have specific competence in the relevant area? Why do we trust or have faith in their competence?

[John 6IX Breezy]

For example, if Jesus had meant that blind faith is good, how would you show that the other meaning was not meant, or falsify the hypothesis that he is suggesting something other than blind faith?  If you have no way to know, then you're just playing on the ambiguity to make a bald assertion.  As such, your assertion would hold no water.  So, how would you falsify the faith as trust/confidence hypothesis?

Thank you for the thought-out response. Whenever there is ambiguity somewhere, rather than exploiting it, I personally look to other examples that are less ambiguous for clarity. I think those examples outweigh the ambiguous ones by number, but we can put those aside for now. It's also important not to mix our metaphors in this verse. When people say "blind" faith they mean something like "believing for the sake of believing." Yet, in this verse, sight refers to the very physical act of Thomas observing Jesus. As such, we should avoid metaphorizing sight in this verse--it means literal vision.

To answer your question (as I have understood it), I think the idea that Jesus meant "blind faith is good" is falsified by the events of the story. The immediate people referenced by the phrase "did not see but believed" are the rest of the apostles. These are individuals that not only saw miracles and had evidence that Jesus was the Son of God, but were told that he would resurrect. They are blessed, not for being blind, but for believing both the women that saw him, and the things Jesus told them, despite not having seen him resurrected as of yet. Its worth noting that by the end of the story, everybody did see him resurrected.

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Who are the proposers in this case?  What reason do we have to believe they have specific competence in the relevant area?  Why do we trust or have faith in their competence?

The proposers are the surgeon, the dentist, etc.; they are the ones proposing the aforementioned things (flying, cosmetology). In the analogy you have trust in their competence because they provided you with their qualifications. Degrees and licenses are symbols of sufficient competence in society. Whether or not they'll actually give you a good haircut, and won't run the plane into the ground in an act of suicide is completely unknown.

[downbeatplumb]

Pretty sure you have that backwards.

1. "Moses answered, 'What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’? [...] Then the Lord said, 'If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second. But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.” (Exodus 3:1-8).

2. "By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned" (Hebrews 11:29)

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That's strange. I must of missed the part where I got that backwards lol. God gave evidence to Israel that he was real before they had to exercise faith in him at the Red Sea? That can't be right.

And yet as soon as Moses was away up a mountain they started worshipping other gods (Golden calf anyone) making the "evidence" rather poor doesn't it. 
If they had had the proof as you say then there is no way they'd have acted the way they did. 
None of the story stands up to any scrutiny does it.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Read the story. They expressed abandonment at Moses' absence, not a sense of insufficient evidence. To the contrary, they built the calf to make sense of that evidence and thus referred to it as the god who took them out of Egypt lol:

"Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him [...] Then they said, 'these are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (Exodus 32:1).

[Gwaithmir]

Read the story. They expressed abandonment at Moses' absence, not a sense of insufficient evidence. To the contrary, they built the calf to make sense of that evidence and thus referred to it as the god who took them out of Egypt lol:

"Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him [...] Then they said, 'these are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (Exodus 32:1).

And how do you know that this story is anything other than a work of fiction?

[Angrboda]

Who are the proposers in this case?  What reason do we have to believe they have specific competence in the relevant area?  Why do we trust or have faith in their competence?

The proposers are the surgeon, the dentist, etc.; they are the ones proposing the aforementioned things (flying, cosmetology). In the analogy you have trust in their competence because they provided you with their qualifications. Degrees and licenses are symbols of sufficient competence in society. Whether or not they'll actually give you a good haircut, and won't run the plane into the ground in an act of suicide is completely unknown.

You misunderstand. I meant who are the proposers with respect to the existence of God, and what merits their faith/trust if it is based upon specific competence?

[John 6IX Breezy]

I see. I disagree with the premise of the question. Faith is not for believing in God's existence; faith is for trusting God after you believe he exists. That is how faith is used in Scripture. As far as the Christian is concerned, the proposer is God, his proposition is salvation, and his merits include the crucifixion. Faith, therefore, is trust in God with regards to forgiveness, deliverance from temptation, etc.

How you come to believe in God's existence is entirely dissociated from faith and dependent on you. I assume that for most people, personal experience, evidence, teachings, culture, or argumentation played a role in that belief. In the Bible stories at least, people come to believe after some miracle, sign, or divine appearance.

[Rahn127]

You can trust your dentist because your dentist is real.
You don't have any trust in the tooth fairy because the tooth fairy is a fictional character.

Your god is a fictional character.
The bible is a collection of stories written by human beings, edited and changed by human beings.

It's no different than Gilgamesh or a Superman comic book.

[John 6IX Breezy]

God could be the very definition of fiction, from which every other fiction is derived, and faith still means trust.