RE: Why is faith important?
March 5, 2013 at 3:55 am
(This post was last modified: March 5, 2013 at 3:57 am by EGross.)
I believe that we are having a different discussion here. One is trying to show how one must have faith to live life day to day. The other is that faith, based on a dogma or from a religious context is unnecessary.
One who has faith that Jesus loves him and that despite the fact that his child is dying in his arms, his faith in that gets him through the pain with the faith that everything will turn out alright in the end. It is a comfort and something he finds important. For the athiest in the same predicament, he has the same pain, but without the story that God wants this to happen but will make it all better in some fantasy world. I believe that was the core of the initial discussion.
As far as having faith in the unknown, I set my alarm clock for 6:30AM. I have a belief that I will still have a job in the morning, that I will wake up when I hear the noise, and that my alarm clock will actually work, and that everything I need to leave the house will be available. There have been times when one or more of these have disproven my faith in either the Alarm Clock Company, my hearing, and so forth. Sometimes these things fail to work as expected. So I make corrections (buy a new alarm clock, ask one of the kids to make sure I am up before they go to school, or something). I adjust my life based on the earlier failures.
The difference between dogma-based faith and life-based faith, is that for dogma, there can never be the admittance that God failed, while in life-based, I can admit and even replace my alarm clock for failing. Faith due to a religious belief must never be weakened in order for one's identity to that faith to survive. I can curse out the Acme Alarm Clock company and not recommend them to anyone, and still use their product, while having backups, just in case. In religious based faith, I would be put to death for that in some cases.
So I think that we can abandon this entire misdirection to life needing faith, since there is no real equivilant. To use the foreign language example, if I find that the teacher has provided wrong information so that when you strike up a conversation, a local of that language laughs at you, you can go find another teacher with different and better skills. In Islam, if you decide that their teachings are just flat out wrong, and you want to quit, you are liable to the death penalty.
Secular use of faith and religious use are two distincly different ways of being.
One who has faith that Jesus loves him and that despite the fact that his child is dying in his arms, his faith in that gets him through the pain with the faith that everything will turn out alright in the end. It is a comfort and something he finds important. For the athiest in the same predicament, he has the same pain, but without the story that God wants this to happen but will make it all better in some fantasy world. I believe that was the core of the initial discussion.
As far as having faith in the unknown, I set my alarm clock for 6:30AM. I have a belief that I will still have a job in the morning, that I will wake up when I hear the noise, and that my alarm clock will actually work, and that everything I need to leave the house will be available. There have been times when one or more of these have disproven my faith in either the Alarm Clock Company, my hearing, and so forth. Sometimes these things fail to work as expected. So I make corrections (buy a new alarm clock, ask one of the kids to make sure I am up before they go to school, or something). I adjust my life based on the earlier failures.
The difference between dogma-based faith and life-based faith, is that for dogma, there can never be the admittance that God failed, while in life-based, I can admit and even replace my alarm clock for failing. Faith due to a religious belief must never be weakened in order for one's identity to that faith to survive. I can curse out the Acme Alarm Clock company and not recommend them to anyone, and still use their product, while having backups, just in case. In religious based faith, I would be put to death for that in some cases.
So I think that we can abandon this entire misdirection to life needing faith, since there is no real equivilant. To use the foreign language example, if I find that the teacher has provided wrong information so that when you strike up a conversation, a local of that language laughs at you, you can go find another teacher with different and better skills. In Islam, if you decide that their teachings are just flat out wrong, and you want to quit, you are liable to the death penalty.
Secular use of faith and religious use are two distincly different ways of being.
“I've done everything the Bible says — even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff!"— Ned Flanders
