What is "FAITH"

[The Grand Nudger]

What facts might those be? I'd like to ignore me some facts. Lay em out, bullet point style. Should be simple, what with being "facts" and all.

---

@ Con

Faith is not an assertion for knowing anything, but having roots in logic, can be a basis for believing or thinking that something is true..

Kindly point out those roots and we'll dig them up. I don't believe that this statement is even remotely close to accurate.

[Consilius]

Gladly.
An example would be cases of 'luck'.
The luck we percieve we have from our opportunities gives the human being a sense of purpose.
When good things happen, we trust that the same benevolent being that brought these good events can do so in adverse times as well. That's what trust is.
An example of 'luck' would be the degree of opportunity that someone is born into.

[Minimalist]

"Faith" is a pile of shit, Frods. Stand in it if you like....but don't expect me to join you.

[fr0d0]

What facts might those be? I'd like to ignore me some facts. Lay em out, bullet point style.

Done mate. You can lead a house to water, but you can't make it drink.

[Consilius]

And in cases where your house is not a living organism, you can take your horse out for a drink, too.

[Brian37]

What facts might those be? I'd like to ignore me some facts. Lay em out, bullet point style.

Done mate. You can lead a house to water, but you can't make it drink.

Yea but see, you try to lead people to Kool Aid, we try to lead people to water. Just because it is a liquid does not make the sugar placebo "drink" good for you. And it isn't even real Kool Aid, it is a mental dessert mirage you have needlessly inflicted yourself with.

You simply have a different flaver Kool Aid mirage in your mental dessert.

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

[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.

---

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.

[Consilius]

The good in the world is executed by our own conscious decisions. The opportunity or the availability of us to do these things is much 'by chance' or beyond forces we can't usually control. How did you come across that ONE homeless person at the time of day he was out when there are a number of them in the city who beg at different times in different places?
The slaughters of the Old Testament were mostly acts of war, which were frequent between tribes at the time. So if a nation attacks a band of slaves in the middle of the desert, you can expect that they plan to wipe them out. The Israelites instead returned the favor, as law around the world in the OT dictated. The Amelekites would have expected it from any people that they had attempted to exterminate. Notice how Israel, when, as a nation with a population much harder to exterminate to their enemies, only went to war with the soldiers, because Israelite opponents had only the intention of political conquest and not racial genocide.
This law was the imperfect or incomplete law that existed on earth because of Adam's sin. When the time was right, Christ instituted God's law of mercy in fulness through the ultimate example of himself. We live by this law today, which is why there were Chrisitan martyrs. Also, even if we DID live under OT law, Christians are so many that any attack on us would most likely not be intended to kill all of us, and the retaliation prescreibed in the OT would come short of international genocide.
Let me also say that God's law is fully consistent with the Bible. What we should and should not do are not conditional until told otherwise. There have been plenty of so-called 'prophets', and they have little influence on the Christian community as a whole. We do not work under God's direct commands, but follow the morals of what is compiled in the Bible to do what we think is right and continue doing it that way.

[Bad Writer]

The good in the world is executed by our own conscious decisions. The opportunity or the availability of us to do these things is much 'by chance' or beyond forces we can't usually control. How did you come across that ONE homeless person at the time of day he was out when there are a number of them in the city who beg at different times in different places?

I happened upon him by random chance, as you suggested. I think that's believable in and of itself, and it doesn't need to be qualified by saying "God made it so", which would kind of take away free will, another staple of Christian teachings. You're not saying that though, so I'm not really sure where your point is leading to.

The slaughters of the Old Testament were mostly acts of war, which were frequent between tribes at the time. So if a nation attacks a band of slaves in the middle of the desert, you can expect that they plan to wipe them out. The Israelites instead returned the favor, as law around the world in the OT dictated. The Amelekites would have expected it from any people that they had attempted to exterminate. Notice how Israel, when, as a nation with a population much harder to exterminate to their enemies, only went to war with the soldiers, because Israelite opponents had only the intention of political conquest and not racial genocide.

In my world, this is called cherry picking. You take one aspect of the story, call it good, and you...eh...kinda sorta leave the rest of the ickyness to the side of it all. I know the Bible isn't perfect, and neither were God's people in it, but the fact remains that god told them to initiate those genocides and mass murders, wiping out the previous inhabitants from those lands, and even taking the women unto themselves as they saw fit (and it was also commanded that they do so.) This wasn't just any prophet telling them to do it either. We're talking about Moses and his successors.

The problem I have with this is not the validity of the stories themselves. Rather, the big issue is that the religions out there are not owning up to the fact that maybe Moses wasn't a very good guy. The Catholic Church has gone and has spoken openly about its indiscretions in the past, as well as the Mormon Church, whose members confessed to the Mountains Meadow Massacre that happened during its early days. These were people supposedly acting in the name of God. Trying to sugar-coat the acts of Moses and his people is like saying Hitler had a point to his proceedings.

This law was the imperfect or incomplete law that existed on earth because of Adam's sin. When the time was right, Christ instituted God's law of mercy in fulness through the ultimate example of himself. We live by this law today, which is why there were Chrisitan martyrs. Also, even if we DID live under OT law, Christians are so many that any attack on us would most likely not be intended to kill all of us, and the retaliation prescreibed in the OT would come short of international genocide.

Wait...! Hold on a second. You believe that? But your book preaches something else...let's see...

Matthew 5:18 - For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Dude! Jesus SAID that! You cannot unwrite the law that was written in the OT. The only thing Jesus supposedly fulfilled in the Christian worldview was that no one needed blood sacrifice again because of his death on the cross. All other laws remained! I mean...are you going to throw out the Ten Commandments just because there's a New Testament now? Please...why even keep the OT on hand if you aren't going to abide by it?

All sarcasm aside now...ahem. How does Jesus' death make it so there are Christian martyrs? If Jesus had lived, but people died in his name, there still would have been martyrs...so...I guess I don't get your point.

And as for that last point. Yes. You are right. It's also a very scary thought. I think you have a little disclaimer to that somewhere...here...oh yes, here it is, just below what you wrote.

Let me also say that God's law is fully consistent with the Bible. What we should and should not do are not conditional until told otherwise. There have been plenty of so-called 'prophets', and they have little influence on the Christian community as a whole. We do not work under God's direct commands, but follow the morals of what is compiled in the Bible to do what we think is right and continue doing it that way.

Oh, so it's wolves in sheep's clothing sort of thing.

Yeah...um...dude...my example didn't include that. I said something along the lines of if there were a prophet of god among men today. This means that this particular prophet definitely speaks for god, and everything he says in god's name is righteous in god's eyes. But that was just an example because we both know that a man speaking for a god is silly...right? Right?

Okay, I got silly again. I'm guessing you don't subscribe to the notion that God speaks to men today, but that he did in times past, which is why we have the Bible. So my new question to you is: why? Why can't he speak through men now, if that was his preferred method of informing the masses back then? (Chances are your answer might be completely opinion based, so arguing with you on it won't be very effective...I just want to know what you think.)

[Rahul]

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?

*Homeless Man stares at the ten-dollar bill while BadWriterSparty walks away*

Ten bucks! I can get 3 bottles of Mad Dog with this!