(September 19, 2020 at 4:49 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: No; you don't just trust the Bible and call it a day. As I've said before: Faith is trust in a God you already believe exists, not a method for believing he exists, nor a reason for thinking he is good. Faith is trusting your doctor because she has credentials, not a method for believing she has credentials.
Only after you know Superman is real and the DC comics are reliable can you have faith/trust in either.
Is that your question?
No.
That's not at all what I'm getting at. It's a question on psychology. Especially cognitive ability. Of how the mind, and ultimately the brain, functions. It's about the systemic structure in the mind on faith.
Faith is a lot more than what people usually realize, and apostates feel this intuitively, of what faith does. It's difficult for me to convey how it works, like how it's difficult to describe colors to a blind man. For all the explanations of colors, like what wavelength red is seen in compared to blue, there is a certain qualia that is impossible to convey. They have to experience these colors themself when or if they can see. What I'm trying to convey is that faith is like a blindfold.
Admittedly, to build on the assumption inherent in this analogy, some never see faith for what it is, or simply go through life unable to because their eyes have been entirely removed. Tell me, how would you know there was something wrong, that something was missing in your Experience? Remember, you do not know if you're wearing a blindfold or not, because you've never Experienced vision at any point in your life. It's an Experience without comparison, like colors for an actual blind man. You would have no frame of reference. And how could you? You. Do. Not. See.
Seeing what faith is, IMO, is analogically similar as examining a blindfold after you've removed it from your field of vision and able to see the blindfold itself with your own eyes and Experiencing sight for the first time. Disorientating at first, since you don't even have a frame of reference for color.
I'm intentionally being poetic about it, because when I finally became an apostate, it was a profound Experience just realizing there wasn't some disembodied mind of a deity aware of my thoughts. There was also loss, because in the same regard, all those prayers, all those pleas and other communiques I grew up with evaporated. I still remember them, sure, but I Experience those memories differently now; I was just talking with myself, thinking I was communicating with a god. It took me 4 years to accept that heaven and hell don't exist and can't be proven to exist either, and a host of other emotional & "rational" baggage that I had to let go of.
...
Do you know the historical account of Phineas Gage? Check it out, it's a physical analog of what I'm trying to convey. But instead of actual effects of brain damage, what I'm attempting to describe is that - for all its dualistic properties ascribed to minds and bodies - faith is a type of "brain damage" in this regard, but for minds.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman
