Faith, what is it?

[solarwave]

Quite frankly, yes I would require real evidence on big claims. As real as we can get.

The point I'm trying to make is that you should believe what seems reasonable to you and not hold out for absolute evidence for it.

There is no such thing as absolute evidence and I do not claim that. The closest thing to it is deductive evidence and that applies to mathematics. Empirical evidence is (to some extent) inductive evidence, not deductive. Biblical account is the worst possible kind of 'evidence' around. It is anecdotal and often the author is unknown. All effort of 'bible study' and 'theology' however is targeted at this content without any scepticism about sources, context, and historical references of alleged biblical facts.

I think we should believe in what works. Science works, we can cure diseases with it, fly to the moon with it, help amputees with it, understand the world we live in with it, accurately model and predict a broad range of phenomena with it. What does religion have to offer us? It cannot cure diseases, it cannot heal amputees, prayer has shown no effect at all, it has no predictive power (though claims of that sort have been ed) and its explaining capacities, once maybe impressive and effective to delude tribal illiterates, are an insult to intellect.

But I am not asking you to believe because the Bible tells you to or because theology does.

You are trying to put religion into the domain of science though. The main point isn't to cure diseases or to predict the future, that is what science is for. Religion (Christianity at least) is for having a relationship with God, morals, purpose and meaning, salvation. Christianity has shown to change lives. And I think to say prayer has been shown to have no effect misunderstand prayer. Under what, laboratory conditions? Pray isn't a magic that can be used when ever to prove a point, it is talking to a person. God doesn't want to people to believe He exists, He wants people to follow Him and have a relationship with Him.

Explain to me how someone a few thousand years ago was ment to know God before science? I believe the answer is that God is a person and so is known personally not by data.

Supposing that there was a god, in that time the best possible evidence were miracles and apparitions and they are all over the bible. Those people could see all of that with their own eyes! Sadly for us they are all written accounts and have to compete with many other magical stuff from other religions. Only in this time we are told to believe on basis of even less evidence than those miracles in ancient times. Isn't it strange that we should believe on basis of less evidence than in ancient times? A possible explanation of this is of course that ancient people were more perceptible to make belief than modern man nowadays (at least some of us).

So you would say then for those people then miracles were a reasonable reason to believe in God? I would also like to point out that the Old Testament is over hundreds of years, so there arn't all that many miracles for individual people. I think back then and now the reason people follow God is because they have had some kind of revelation of Him or for Christianity they know God.

Good point about he difference between now and ancient times. I do indeed think that without the scientific knowledge available today things would seem very different. I think that religion in those days was a way to cope with the world. There was much more reason to follow some religion in ancient days than now. Today however the results of science are available to everyone who is willing to investigate and everybody is profiting of it (just look around you in a nearby hospital). I indeed think this means each one of us has an obligation, the obligation to question the claims of religious dogma. Science is open to critique and actually thrives on it. Creationists are actually contributing to fortifying the theory of evolution by delivering their critique. It is a pitty however their critique has so little quality to it.[/quote]

I have no problem with science or with questioning religious dogma. I am all for stopping creationism and for understanding Christianity in a way which makes sense with reality, through science and philosophy.

I disagree that there are no miracles nowadays, in fact there are many healings nowadays, and I don't mean by 'amazing big time healers' but from the prayers of normal people who have faith in God. Its happened many a time to people in my church and by heals I mean instant ones (few seconds).

It does not happen under conditions controlled by scientific experiment. Also we have numerous anecdotal accounts of kidnapping by aliens. Do you believe those too? You should question it and choose an explanation that is most reasonable as you yourself suggested in the opening of this post.
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I do many things outside of controlled conditions does that mean most of my life isn't real? They may be what is needed for people who are outside the situation to believe a healing actually happened but I'm not really asking you to believe because of that. The difference is that I have seen people healed and know some people who have been healed. I don't simply accept anything that appears to be a healing, but some cases to seem to be genuine healings. For more than a year now I have been questioning many of my beliefs and this has changed some of those beliefs and how I see the world, so I would like to think I am taking my own advice.