Why is faith important?

[FallentoReason]

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 remember my dad highlighting something very unique to me about nature when I was younger. I can't remember the exact details of the dispute between Einstein and a group of scientists, but basically there were fifty scientists who were all saying "Einstein, you're wrong about claim x". Einstein supposedly chuckled to himself and said, "it only takes one scientist to disprove a theory". Moral of the story? There is no "trusting" authorities like you would trust your pastor to bring you a Holy-Spirit-inspired word when it comes to science. Nature's self-evident truths are there for all to see and discover, therefore your appeal to authorities is invalid. It doesn't matter how popular or powerful some scientist is because if they're wrong, they will be caught out.

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

I'm not sure how this ties in with what we're talking about, but I make it my daily task to be someone who contributes and impacts my society in a positive way. I always live by Confucius' moral philosophy from the 6th century B.C.E: "Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself".

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

Morality.

Right. I don't see what learning a language has to do with morality.

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.

It's called "studying". I did not prove your point because you said you learn maths through "recitation" and not proofs, which (after you cleared up what you mean by "recitation") are two completely different and non-related things. Maths has proofs which you study in order to master the concepts.

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.

Once again, good for you and only you! I'll be honest here and say it gets tiring hearing about god x doing miracle/deed y. From the Father of History himself, Herodotus:

"Then it is related by the Lydians that [Lydian king] Crœsus, having learned how Cyrus had changed his mind, and seeing that every one was trying to put out the fire but that they were no longer able to check it, cried aloud entreating Apollo that if any gift had ever been given by him which had been acceptable to the god, he would come to his aid and rescue him from the evil which was now upon him. So he with tears entreated the god, and suddenly, they say, after clear sky and calm weather clouds gathered and a storm burst, and it rained with a very violent shower, and the pyre was extinguished."

Croesus saved his life by summoning Apollo's powers. Why is this relevant do you ask? Well, isn't it funny how he believes in Apollo and not Osiris, not Baal, not Thor but Apollo therefore Apollo saved him, which is one of the gods he believes in? So when a Muslim/Christian/Hindu tells me their god(s) did x, what do you think is the most reasonable explanation? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say their biased view of the world makes them fervently believe that what they have experienced is of their god, but at the same time, every other god than theirs is false.

Maybe you're seeing the things you want to see and believe?

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.

By proof I mean a reasonable amount of conclusive evidence to support a particular proposition. No offence, but your god is too ambiguous, too shy & and mysterious to really say he exists and messes about in human affairs. All the "miracles" I hear about from friends are so mundane and common that the only thing they're proving is that their view on reality is skewed by their culture's religious belief -- nothing more, nothing less.

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 can see that your presupposition is that anyone who disagrees with you must be an atheist. I'm a Deist.

I discard all anecdotes about miracles because every religion & civilization has claimed the same things over and over and over again about their beloved god(s) (like what I highlighted with Croesus' story). So what do we do? Do we say all these gods exist? No, that's obviously contradictory in every way possible. Do we say just one of these gods exist? Sure, but how can we tell if everyone is fervently claiming the same sort of stuff? This is why I leave it at "good for you", because that's all I can really say for you. Good for you that your life has purpose and meaning and you think you're interacting with a character who only seems to exist inside a book. It makes you happy, so go for it, but don't go around the place claiming that he's real because of [most likely] your personal delusions.

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

You haven't been harsh in the slightest! I've really enjoyed our discussion so far.

It seems like my entire church is fruitful in the area of "warm feelings" because I would see so many people crying and other weird manifestations of joy and happiness during worship. When it comes to miracles though, a community of almost 1000 devout believers have failed to produce just one miracle in the 5-6 years I spent there. That's hundreds upon hundreds of attempts at prayer over those years which I was involved in that never happened. It's quite entertaining hearing about "miracles" that happen/ed though, because you analyse the particular individual and it's evident they haven't healed, or it takes a week/month (depending on the severity of the injury) to heal, like it would naturally. Yet they attribute the recovery to Jesus the Christ. The mind is a very powerful thing I tell you.