Why is faith important?

[jstrodel]

No, because you can't understand what is in those journals. You have to trust that someone else has had the experiences. The verification is only possible if you are a scientist. It is no different from following a religion

I feel like I need to point this out: speak for yourself. All you can honestly say is that you cannot understand what is in those journals; depending on the field, I can understand it just fine.

But there's something more: if I wanted to, I could go out into the real world and replicate any experiments discussed in a journal piece, and get the same results. In fact, it's a safe bet that the professional scientists are doing exactly that, as part of the peer review process. If I wanted to study it, I could, and in doing so find that it is accurate.

This, of course, is a marked distinction from religion, which operates only within personal experiences that are completely unverifiable and impossible to replicate. What you're talking about isn't faith; it's trust. I have a reasonable level of trust in the publication and the scientists involved in the experiments, but I'm also honest enough to recognize when that trust is misplaced and an error has occurred, and when that happens I no longer count the results of that experiment as factual.

By contrast, religion has an attitude wherein it and its god are always right, all the time, with no possibility of correction or redaction. One learns and changes with the facts, the other demands that the facts change to suit its purposes. That's the difference.

No, it is the same. I can verify religious experience, but you cannot. You are just speaking for yourself. But instead of feeling as if you are my spiritual inferior, you claim to know more than I do. Whatever. I realize that some people can verify some of the things that they read in scientific journals. My point was to say that this takes years and years of dilligent study and hard work, much more work than saying "God if you are here, I demand you show yourself in the next 10 seconds, and if you don't, I know you aren't here"

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You have no excuse in this day and age. If you seek knowledge in a particular area of science, then jump on the web and enlighten yourself. The difference here between science and religion is that with science you will find the solid justifications for things whereas with religion we get stuck at "just have faith" every time we ask to confirm something.

That is not true. I am not "just stuck at faith" in my religious belief. I have seen many of the things that I have believed, and I know many people that have a life in the spirit that are the same. Your value system says "you have no excuse" but in practice, there is no one on earth who does not rely on trusting different intellectual authorities. There is no one on earth that can read and verify every scientific journal.

I would say that "you have no excuse" to learn how to be a good person.

What do you mean by "good & bad" here? Are we talking morally, or true/false?

Morality.

My year 12 calculus & geometry exam was about 30% pure mathematical proofs. I'm now studying engineering and I can't help but literally chuckle at this. Mathematics isn't something you recite in a ritual circle twice a day. It's something derived from pure reasoning that logically builds from foundational maxims. Proofs are the backbone of maths.

You said "my year 12 calculus and geometry exam". I said that in my original post. At a certain point, you can verify and understand the reasons why certain things are and are not. This is the same with religion. You can understand God and God's nature. But it takes a great deal of time and energy to do, similar to the time it takes to understand mathematics. No one starts studying math and the first thing that they learn to do is to build huge mathematical systems. They learn through recitation. You proved my point for me.

Wrong. The evidence/proofs are out there. If you wish to enlighten yourself, then do so. We live in an age where information isn't bounded, it's everywhere and anywhere you look. Go find it yourself.

So too is the evidence for Christianity out there. But it is not visible to the spiritually immature. It takes skill and discipline and virtue to understand God similar to how it takes skill and discipline and virtue to understand anything else. There is plenty of information about theology and God, but to understand it you must be spiritual. This is very, very hard and takes a lot of work and self denial and commitment. But it can be verified. I have walked in the spirit and seen many miracles, I have correctly prophesied peoples names before. I have seen the Holy Spirit's visible manifestation, felt the annotating on me, received many answers to many deep questions and seen the Holy Ghost transform my life and help me to be a better person. None of this happened through casually reading something on wikipedia, just as you do not learn to do the sort of engineering and mathematics that you do through casually flipping through something. It takes effort and sacrifice and commitment. And it takes faith, you must trust that there is some way to verify what you are learning about that exists somewhere, even if you cannot have access to it immediately.

I expect proof whenever someone says I should believe claim X. In this instance, you obviously are here to shine the light of "the anointed one" and therefore if you wish for me to believe you, I'll need the solid proofs of what you claim to be true.

What do you mean by "proof". You talk about proof as if there is some standard concept by which you can evaluate everything. Of course this is a total misunderstanding of how knowledge and science works. There are many different ways that people approach problems, there is no one standard of proof. And there are many arguments for the existence of God, whether they prove God's existence to the standard you might like, I doubt it, but together they point to a worldview that ought to be investigated seriously on its own terms.

That's great, but so what? Does this all of a sudden mean Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead?

It is to say that people should have a presupposition of the possibility of the truth of something, and have respect for its contribution to society (including the atheist society) and investigate it on its own terms, not to disprove but to learn from as a legitimate way that people see the world.

Once again, that's good for you and only you. If you stepped back for once and analysed these "miracles", I'm confident that you would be able to see the reasonable explanations for what you have seen.

You are confident because you are an atheist and have a presupposition against the supernatural, not because you can see from the words I have communicated that there is anything impossible about what I have described. You cannot disprove that spiritual entities exist. What sort of role should the testimony of religious people play in your understanding? Of course this does not prove that the experience was real, by why start with hostility to the testimony claims of religion and at the same time have a rabid fascination with the intellectual fruits of that civilization? Why not have a balanced approach to both?

I was going to church 4 times a week; Bible study group, worship team practice, youth group & Sunday mass. So my particular commitments to the church was playing for the worship team & being part of the team that would welcome new people to youth group and genuinely build friendships with them. I'm absolutely sure that I gave my life to Jesus because I would actively be doing works to bring heaven to earth. Such actions wouldn't have sprung out from me if I didn't trust Jesus and his claims of who he said he was.

Well, I respect your effort in seeking God. I wish that I could transmit my experience to you. I do not know why you religious belief was not more fruitful, or why you don't recognize the aspects of it which were fruitful. I can say that I know that God is real. I couldn't say why some people fail to get through.

I apologize if my post was harsh. I used to be an atheist, and I feel we probably have plenty in common