Christian trigger words

[tackattack]

@LadyForCamus @unfogged

If knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association or  the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning (standard definitions from MW) then knowledge is pretty easy to obtain. You don't question whether the sky is blue, or a tree is firm enough to hold you, or that tomorrow is another day. Those things are grounded in the material and natural. They are easy to quantify and measure with other tools we have like materialism and science. Neither knowledge or faith require evidence in their definitions. People however, demand proofs and evidentiary standards to include a view into their own beliefs. That could be difficult to accept for those that  don't believe there is a spiritual world.

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As we are reasoning beings, Very little of what we actually chose to do is without reason. You may not like my reasons or have another standard, but I can have reason and faith. What I can't have is Faith and Evidence that is seen or complete understanding of, because, by that's how the Bible defines faith. I have evidence for lots of things in my life, I have reasons for almost everything, I have subjective observations and a partially complete understanding that rises above the level of plausible, indications for a God, IMO.

You should share them sometime....be a break from the usual drivel of "magic book said so!" and "because I don't know shit about xy and z!"

To simplify I'll just reword statements Having faith is an admission that the belief is not provable and Faith is a way of attaining knowledge when materialism alone can't get you there. This seems to be an atheist trigger word, so pardon if this is off topic.

Mostly down to how atrociously the faithful use the term..as you did, in point of fact, above.  As far as I can tell..it's been made to mean something like "the good" whereas materialism "the enemy" in believing circles.  So I read the statement..I understand where it comes from..but there's no coherent deconstrunction -of- it.  Faith never leads us to knowledge, it leads us to expectation.  Far too often, it leads us into conflating our expectations with knowledge.  I have faith that my wife will be with me forever..I have no such knowledge, and no amount of such a faith will lead to it,  materialism isn't even a factor.

Just a quick note, that you may enjoy......"jesus" body was gone.  He didn't lift up into the heavens on a ghost chariot leaving his husk...and the (super duper christy) christians still await the day that the dead literally and bodily rise from their graves (as they did in jerusalem that day, even though no one else noticed, lol).  The notion that materialism is some "other end" of a coin...and that you need faith to get you where materialism wont take you...well..that's not actually the thrust of magic book.  People believed because they saw it materially happen, so the story goes..and the story stands as a *testament to others that it's contents are materially true.

Paul even laments that if these things were not so..then the whole religion is folly.  He doesn't seem to have had much time for faith, as you've conceptualized it...when you really dig into it.  

The reason that they seem so now (faith/materialism) has more to do with the scholastics writing in some good pre-christian pagan philosophy through the medeival than how people envisioned their world at the big bc/ad changeover.  It';s helpful to point out that until very recently..nobody even thought of "souls" as being immaterial in the manner that we use the term.  Circles of salt (and a whole host of other fun things) interacted with ghosts..in their minds eye.  Yet another one of christianity's self inflicted wounds - losing the vitalism that a fully contextualized spirit brings into the world by positing a second and distinct spirit world..instead.  My father in law..to his immense credit, is trying to get himself back to that sort of turn of the clock footing.  I don't believe in his silly religion..but it's interesting to watch him make a conscious effort to deprogram and change the way he thinks..so that he can get back to something we might call a genuine faith.  It also helped alot with my marriage, specifically in that he raised his daughter in this way - which makes alot of the usual faith/non-faith stresses nonexistent for us.

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As we are reasoning beings, Very little of what we actually chose to do is without reason. You may not like my reasons or have another standard, but I can have reason and faith.

You can have reason and faith, but not on the same beliefs.

What I can't have is Faith and Evidence that is seen or complete understanding of, because, by that's how the Bible defines faith.

Evidence that is not seen is not evidence and I see no reason to think that faith is a good thing no matter where it is defined.

I have evidence for lots of things in my life, I have reasons for almost everything,  

It is odd how so many theists are able to use critical thinking and reason in almost every aspect of their lives and yet throw it out the window when it comes to the god question.  That is the one area where ignoring all the inconsistencies and contradictions and actual evidence is treated as valid.    

I have subjective observations and a partially complete understanding that rises above the level of plausible, indications for a God, IMO.

Every "plausible indication" I have ever been presented with boils down to an argument from either ignorance or personal incredulity.  Subjective observations and partial understandings are useful to identify possible areas of investigation but they are insufficient to come to a reasoned belief which is why faith has to be used to bridge the gap.  Yes, there is much that we do not fully understand and much more that we do not know.  That is not a basis for reaching a conclusion.

To simplify I'll just reword statements Having faith is an admission that the belief is not provable

It is more than that.  It is an admission that it is not rational to hold the belief.

and Faith is a way of attaining knowledge when materialism alone can't get you there.

No, faith can't get you to knowledge, only to unsupported, unreasoned beliefs.

This seems to be an atheist trigger word, so pardon if this is off topic.

Faith is a core problem; believers hold it up as a virtue when it is the antithesis of rational thought.

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I never said it was a virtue, it can very well be a hindrance and a crutch at times, I wouldn't claim it to be a problem though. It would be much easier if God just showed up and we had tea together and chatted about the current state of things. By definition it is not without reasoning. It may not be reasonable from your perspective, or provable to you, but that doesn't make it any less real to me or true objectively. Faith requires reasoning. The reasoning could be faulty, but doesn't have to be. Faith doesn't require evidence.

It's not that materialism and faith are opposites, it's that natural and supernatural are mutually exclusive.

As to your earlier point regarding what faith leads to, it does lead to expectation. Faith breeds hope. You and I both have Faith that there will be a tomorrow to wake up to our wives. Justified faith leads to reliance, and reliance to trust, trust to security in your knowledge that tomorrow is another day. That is reasoned knowledge from faith. We can discuss all day long how and why tomorrow will most likely happen in a materialistic evidentiary way. We can even apply neuroscience and sociology to whether it will include our wives. However, we nominally operate on this intuitively not scientifically, which is faith.