Faith vs Belief

[dyresand]

Having a belief in god is irrational. Here is the key problems with the idea of a belief in god. The person in question doesn't know who are what he or she is really believing in
or what motives and or actions that being has. That being said they use the bible as a explanation of how their god is good etc. Then there is the key problem with that there is more bad
done than good by that being to call him good. Then the other part being created in a god(s) image when there is no clear explanation of what a god(s) looks like. Then there is faith all it truly is, is thinking really hard or just hoping really hard something good or bad will happen and it does nothing.

[Whateverist]

Having a belief in god is irrational. Here is the key problems with the idea of a belief in god. The person in question doesn't know who are what he or she is really believing in
or what motives and or actions that being has. That being said they use the bible as a explanation of how their god is good etc. Then there is the key problem with that there is more bad
done than good by that being to call him good. Then the other part being created in a god(s) image when there is no clear explanation of what a god(s) looks like.

Yep, phooey on religious beliefs.

Then there is faith all it truly is, is thinking really hard or just hoping really hard something good or bad will happen and it does nothing.

Disagree. Like everyone else, you have faith in many things, including (hopefully) at least your self. Hopefully you have a reasonable faith in some other people too. Most of us have justified faith in at least one skill or talent we feel good about.

Beyond the mundane there is also faith that life has meaning and that we can find it. I for one like to think life is not just a conveyor belt carrying me from birth to death. I want to understand it as much as possible. Find and appreciate the good things. I have faith that is possible.

[Anima]

I think it is the difference between the form and the function:

Belief is the form and faith is the function.

As such, the act of accepting information without sufficient "proof" is faith. The combination, correlation, and/or integration of that information is a belief.

Ergo, I believe black holes exist by means of the faithful application of gravitational and general relativity theory.

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It would be amazing if we could somehow give theists a "day of atheism". Nothing weird, just kidnap a load and fuck with their brains or something. Just enough to remove their religious beliefs. Then we could see how many of them try and murder and rape all the people they see. I'd bet that all but any actual properly disturbed psychopaths would be surprised by their lack of action, and indeed urge. Then put their brains back to normal and return them to wherever theists go. A church!

It's like anything, if you're told you can't do it, it has some sort of weird appeal. But as soon as it's fair game, it loses that mystery and it's just dull.

It would be very interesting to force theists to go through their holy book and honestly highlight which parts they follow, moral wise, and which parts they don't. What percentages do you think we'd be looking at? About 5% of the former I reckon.

You need not be amazed. Theists often enough disassociate themselves from their theistic views and adopt an atheistic position in order to do something their theistic position prohibits. As expressed in another thread regarding the natural, ethical, and moral laws. When moral and ethical conflict it is natural (and proper) that the ethical shall prevail. The bastardization of this truth is to default to the ethical law not out of conflict but out of convenience when the moral law imposes an less than subjectively desirable position.

I agree with your holy book test I think it would be fun. But I do not subscribe to sola scriptura.

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See Munchhausen's / Agrippa's Trilemma concerning the need for faith (even by atheists)

[dyresand]

Having a belief in god is irrational. Here is the key problems with the idea of a belief in god. The person in question doesn't know who are what he or she is really believing in
or what motives and or actions that being has. That being said they use the bible as a explanation of how their god is good etc. Then there is the key problem with that there is more bad
done than good by that being to call him good. Then the other part being created in a god(s) image when there is no clear explanation of what a god(s) looks like.

Yep, phooey on religious beliefs.

Then there is faith all it truly is, is thinking really hard or just hoping really hard something good or bad will happen and it does nothing.

Disagree.  Like everyone else, you have faith in many things, including (hopefully) at least your self.  Hopefully you have a reasonable faith in some other people too.  Most of us have justified faith in at least one skill or talent we feel good about.

Beyond the mundane there is also faith that life has meaning and that we can find it.  I for one like to think life is not just a conveyor belt carrying me from birth to death.  I want to understand it as much as possible.  Find and appreciate the good things.  I have faith that is possible.

I have some faith and i have faith in myself not to do stupid things like subscribing back to baptism. 

When it comes to in a broader sense give or take im 50/50. Humanity in whole where my faith stands well

its a good 85% i mean we still have problems with irrational beliefs and bronze age barbaric religions. 

[Whateverist]

I think it is the difference between the form and the function:

Belief is the form and faith is the function.

Agreed.

As such, the act of accepting information without sufficient "proof" is faith.  The combination, correlation, and/or integration of that information is a belief.

Don't agree.  

Faith isn't about being naive or gullible, is it?  But what you say is pretty much true of all institutional religion today.  Institutional religions point to primary religious experience only in the past tense.  It is something people already did so that the church can concern itself only with understanding what that primary experience revealed about what is required of each individual today.  That is why "faith" as it is understood within institutional religion is necessarily a bastardization of the term.  True "faith" is concerned with primary religious experience, the encounter between each individual and that which gives rise to meaning.  Institutional religion saves the individual from the associated risks of the encounter so that it can control the form of its interpretation.  My Exhibit 2 (post number 4) included only the last sentence of the quote.  Here is the bulk of the paragraph before along with the next paragraph including everything leading up to that quote.

The Christian religion has always been an apologetic religion, in that it assumes a primary spiritual experience at its core, but uses the philosophy and the psychology of the times in which to clothe that experience so that one can make sense out of it and come to terms with what is demanded of the person in light of the experience. In the early days of Christianity, the Church used Greek and Roman thought to help amplify and illustrate the essential experience of faith. What was clear then and now is that the focus was on the experience of grace and faith, and not in the amplification or philosophical language used to help people understand their experience. Experience was primary and understanding was secondary.

So what are the clothes by which we understand this primary experience today? More and more people are turning to the mythic structure and language of depth psychology for understanding the essential core experience of life. However, one big problem then and now is that a great many people put their faith in the philosophical or psychological understanding, and not in the essential experience behind or underneath the explanations about faith and the experience that brought about the state of faith from the state of un-faith. Faith is not the state of believing but the state of trusting in the source that makes faith possible.

[Whateverist]

Just gonna give this puppy a little bump to keep it from going zombie before I can enter some of my favorite quotes.

[ignoramus]

[robvalue]

@Anima: You don't need to "have faith" to be an atheist, as far as I can see. The only faith you could say is that the internal message I receive which informs me that I am not convinced about god claim(s) is the correct message. Assuming it is correct, I am an atheist. I kind of have to assume what my brain tells me I believe/disbelieve is what I really believe/disbelieve, but that's more of a pragmatic assumption than faith. Of course, it could be wrong. As Jim Jeffries said, I think I'm here debating you lot. But I could be in a white room somewhere, staring at a wall shouting, "Guns! Guns!"

Being an atheist says nothing about claims of knowledge. It's simply about the state of mind; disbelief. Trying to analyze the reasons for that disbelief is where it gets complicated; but that is not atheism, it's an attempted justification for atheism.

Where does the faith come in? I'll read a link if you want, but a summary in your words would be preferable.

I would similarly say, before anyone jumps all over my ass, that you don't need faith to "be" a theist. It's a state of mind. It may be reasonable that the justification may require faith as an explanation, but that again is not theism. And it's not the only explanation. There could be any number of weird ideas people have. You do not choose to believe things, you either believe them or you don't. You can of course lie about what you believe.

The point I'm making is that the state of mind and the proclaimed justification for that state of mind are two different things. The first is out of your control, and that is atheism/theism. The second is where you have control, but it may not be accurate even if you think it is your real justification. So unless you say that to "be an atheist" you are required to give justification, then I don't see where the faith comes in. And no one is required to give justification, or to even have consciously thought about it at all.

[Whateverist]

@Anima: You don't need to "have faith" to be an atheist, as far as I can see.

Oh I do. Having no reason to believe in an external standard bearer, I have to take on faith that my aesthetic and moral judgements have value and that my attempts to understand the world and others is worthy. Luckily I'm blessed with an abundance of faith, so much so that I'm not at all inclined to insist on any of these things in a rigid matter of belief.

[robvalue]

Sure, I totally get what you're saying. But I would say those are your consequences of atheism, where you choose to take it. The fact that you are simply "an atheist" is just a matter of acknowledging the state of mind. Would you agree? Each person might need faith for whatever else they decide to do. But that's for those things, not atheism specifically.