What is "FAITH"

[Bad Writer]

If you ever are lucky enough to escape your delusion you are going to hate yourself for poisoning others with it.

Putting faith in a religion, especially if the natural world can beyond a shadow of a doubt prove such a religion erroneous, is certainly perpetuating a delusion. I was a Mormon once, and I even served a two-year mission. I don't hate myself for converting people to Mormonism though. In a way, I helped others think about other options in life during that time, even if I wasn't leading them any further to really examining the world around them.

The reason atheists harp on the fact that religious folk use faith is because it helps them fill in the gaps for things they don't know. If you already have faith that God created all living things 6000 years ago, for instance (and I'm not saying you do, I'm just using this as an example), then when the evidence arises that shows how the world is actually 4.54 billion years old, and humans have a common ancestor with chimpanzees, that's where believers draw the line. Why won't they investigate the claims of renowned geologists and biologists to see if they are correct in their calculations? The answer is simple. You put all your faith into believing something very contrary to the facts, so much so that you feel what you believe has to be true. You will now stare in the face of insurmountable evidence and call it phooey. This essentially halts the train of human progression, and it's all the fault of a faith for something hoped for, yet not seen.

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I disagree with your definition of good faith. At many times, you have little reason to expect the desired result. One can have faith in his flunking child that he will heed his warnings and turn his grades around. You can have faith in your steadily aging spouse that he will drive safely. "Having faith" in things is more of a last ditch effort that summons what you know about a person's true qualities (persistence, caution) and asks you to hope they will use them when you need them very much. People appreciate when this kind of faith is put in them because it reflects how much someone believes in who he or she is and the qualities he or she has.

You can say you disagree, but what you are writing here is in harmony with what I just said. I especially like what you say about the "last ditch effort", and how it effects other people. That's essentially where it stops for me. I don't personally know, for example, Mohammed the prophet, so putting faith in someone who's been dead for so long seems like a foolhardy gesture. I will say the same for Jesus Christ. Sure, you can say he's still alive, or his soul lives on, or that he was just the embodiment of God...but just saying these things, and taking them out of a 2000 year old book that was being written and compiled decades after his death doesn't prove a thing for me, and it shouldn't prove a thing for anyone else.

By another definition, 'faith' is trust. Which is very much that for many religious people. Some of them claim to have had real experiences with the divine. I do not. The trust more contemplative religious people have in God comes from previous encounters with good in their lives. These encounters suggest that good is invisible and unchanging, and this good is what God is. The 'faith' part comes from the belief that the same being that has brought good into a life before will bring it again in times of trouble if you simply trust, or have faith in, Him.

Trust is a good way to describe it, as I did in my earlier post. I think you and I are still tracking here, and I like it. I want to get a little deeper in here though. How do you know that all good is attributed to God? Is bad not also attributed to him? You may say that bad is only of the devil, but let's level with each other here.

Let's say I give a homeless man a ten-dollar bill. I attribute my good deed to my own desire to make the world a better place, and especially to brighten this man's day a bit. Now, because I made the conscious decision to do this, all of my own accord, should that be attributed to God, because it's good?

Another example. Let's say God chooses a new prophet akin to Ezekial or Moses. He speaks through this man to bring his word to the men and women of the world. He tells those that follow him that God has ordered his followers to take up arms and slaughter those who do not believe so that they may reside in their place and build up a holy kingdom dedicated and consecrated to His holy will. Is this kind of slaughter bad or good? I would hope that you would see that any kind of disregard for life and the slaughtering of many is a bad thing. Yet it's attributed to God...so does that make it good?

Do you have faith that your God will not order you to commit such heinous acts? Or is your faith such that if the time came, and you were ordered to rain destruction upon the heads of the non-believers of the world, would you carry out these sacred orders?

By the way, I used Moses as a model prophet because he did just what I described above...and it was all in the name of God. If you want evidence for your faith, then I hope this is helpful to you, because I just gave you some.

I can give you more examples on down the road if you need.