Do you see any benefits to religious faith?

[bennyboy]

Fuck you too, xtian.

Don't make me handle you, your serpent!

FIFY

[Arkilogue]

Don't make me handle you, your serpent!

FIFY

[Mudhammam]

Not all religions are about ingestion and regurgitation of dogma, some are paths of inner growth where you forge the necessary tools of concentration of cleave your own path through all the bullshit. In doing so you outgrow all static forms of religion and it becomes your own growing relationship with God. I've had to slay every form I've come across or imagined in the process. God is far more to me than an objective ideation.

Of course some forms are virulent, some have even been weaponized and commercialized for power over peoples minds and the money the make with their bodies. In my estimation many are actually an anti-religion, eschewing personal relationship with God in favor of a murderous group self righteousness.

Are there clear lines that one can draw to distinguish 1. What we know, 2. What we don't know, and 3. What we simply cannot know, due to our epistemic situation, and moreover, which should be determined by faith, as opposed to that which should be left to our intellect? And how should we assess which content belongs on the side of faith rather than that which belongs on the side of knowledge, or its counterpart, pure imagination?

[Arkilogue]

Are there clear lines that one can draw to distinguish 1. What we know, 2. What we don't know, and 3. What we simply cannot know, due to our epistemic situation, and moreover, which should be determined by faith, as opposed to that which should be left to our intellect?  And how should we assess which content belongs on the side of faith rather than that which belongs on the side of knowledge, or its counterpart, pure imagination?

Not unless you have a very good imagination!

I know what I know because I think I know it having satisfied my own questions to the level of confirmation I need. This level might not be good enough or even too much for another, and many others do not care about the questions I have ask. There is no accounting for anyone else.

What I don't, I know a little about, but it mostly consists of what I don't know I don't know and that's half the reason I'm here getting my ass regularly handed to me. The fastest way to gain growth for me currently is to expose what I think I know, which at the same time exposes my ignorance and I get shone where I am weak and and they are strong. I'm finding it a quite enjoyable self destruction.

I don't put limits on what I can't know. I am (and so is everyone else) objectively composed by what ever universal truth exists, immersed in it and propelled by it, there is no where to go to escape from it. Unless one is actively fighting against it, apprehension is inevitable. Truth is the like the ocean and the journey of life is like a river. When you get to the truth/ocean, the journey does not end, there is a new dimension to explore and new freedom from a one way current to explore it.

Faith means something very different for me. Mine was authored during a powerful spiritual experience that was followed by an NDE. It was not produce from my mind but it was induced in it...couldn't very well be induced anywhere else...

You could think of it like a grain of sand that was introduced to my consciousness. One extremely irritating to the private ego (I am transparent to higher orders of beings) and so over many years I have accreted a pearl of research over it with many many layers.

My faith and intellect work hand in hand, beliefs are nebulous and subordinate but I also use them like a fishing rod and line, using my informed imagination (belief) to cast out beyond my sphere of knowledge and pull things intuitively out of the ethers. I come up with descriptions that I look up online and it leads me to other peoples works regarding the same things.

I try to orchestrate everything in concert and work the inconsistencies out in all my internal spheres as I go. I've shed scores of beliefs like old skin I've outgrown and grow better ones in a new form....till I outgrow that one.

Knowledge to me is like the rungs on a ladder; to be reached for, pull up by, stood upon, and passed beyond.

[Whateverist]

What are an atheist's beliefs?

I was referring to his belief that "faith" mean's human belief and while certainly it is used that way today, the bible clearly states in many places it is not made by man, not belief, it is a gift of God.

It does not matter if there is or isn't a God in this instance, the syntax and context is crystal clear on it's ancient usage and meaning.

Which is why I use the Superman example, the lore is crystal clear: He is weakened by kryptonite, not samsonite.

Well I for one refuse to be corralled into the narrow confines of your assumptions.  I place a great deal of store in "faith" and have no problem assigning meaning to "soul" and "grace".  So long as one doesn't insist on a strictly dogma based definition I think my own meanings are far superior.  I can even indulge your quaint formulation of faith = "a gift from god", provided that "god" isn't defined as a unique entity standing on its own and tricked out with omni-powers.  (That would just be lame.)

There isn't much an atheist must do without .. apart from believing stupid, literal things based on any particular traditional system of beliefs.  That I don't believe those things is why I'm atheist - but I also reject your silly assumptions about what we all must believe.

[Arkilogue]

I was referring to his belief that "faith" mean's human belief and while certainly it is used that way today, the bible clearly states in many places it is not made by man, not belief, it is a gift of God.

It does not matter if there is or isn't a God in this instance, the syntax and context is crystal clear on it's ancient usage and meaning.

Which is why I use the Superman example, the lore is crystal clear: He is weakened by kryptonite, not samsonite.

Well I for one refuse to be corralled into the narrow confines of your assumptions.  I place a great deal of store in "faith" and have no problem assigning meaning to "soul" and "grace".  So long as one doesn't insist on a strictly dogma based definition I think my own meanings are far superior.  I can even indulge your quaint formulation of faith = "a gift from god", provided that "god" isn't defined as a unique entity standing on its own and tricked out with omni-powers.  (That would just be lame.)

There isn't much an atheist must do without .. apart from believing stupid, literal things based on any particular traditional system of beliefs.  That I don't believe those things is why I'm atheist - but I also reject your silly assumptions about what we all must believe.

I'm just letting you know how I use it, based on how it was used.. Semantics and syntactics. The third aspect to language is pragmatics and that it what your definitions allow you to do...or limit you from doing. Define it and use it as you will.

I figured that it would be overlooked which is why I bolded OF God. Not "from" God. A gift of God itself. Like a seed of pattern and growth potential (tree of eternal life). What you do with it is up to you. Or a touch of a something so powerful it changes some of your dross into pure conductive gold, so that you may know what to refine the rest of yourself into...or not. It's not a quantity, it's a quality of being that is pure and unclouded by personality or weighted down in self/other judgment or shrouded in a temporal personality. God is not another greater piece of highly complex and pretty origami, God is what you get to experience when you unfold into a perfectly flat sheet again..and the smoother your surface the more accurately it reflects.

Let me give you something to help look where I am looking from, don't believe or disbelieve just look and feel.

Belief is what one thinks to be true.
Faith is what one knows to be true and in this belief is no more.
The third step is fruition, man and truth as one and in this even faith is lost.

It describe a transformation of the subject/object (you/truth) relationship. The first is a stage of belief and or doubt that the object (truth) exists. The second stage is finding truth and collecting enough to gain a working model that you abide by and gain feedback in you life from following. This is all personal trial and error. A willingness to wrestle directly with God and not let go until blessed.

Through that process of seeking/finding and using truth to slay self falsities, is the process of dissolving the veil between subject and object. Fruition is when you become a fluency to truth, an instrument. All doers of good are instruments of God (quality of being) knowingly or unknowingly. The I becomes an eye...an aperture.

[Mr Greene]

The iconography of mythologies can tune-in a persons perceptions of the world around them to highlight particular aspects of it that may be significant though not easy to communicate to younger members of a society;
eg. The importance of ravens to caribou hunters, highlighted in Norse iconography and indicating a carcass on the ground or possible predators in the area.
I don't hold much hope of finding anything similar in the Abrahamics however.

What about the Deism of someone like Thomas Paine or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which basically simply asserts that there is a Creator and that our actions will be rewarded or punished as is truly consistent with his benevolent character?  Might some adults not benefit no less than some children?

Personally I see Deism as nothing more than an excuse at the end of the Kalam non-sense. A failure to close the argument, nothing more. IIRC Deism says nothing to the character of the proposed creator so the position is merely speculative.

[robvalue]

Why is it always assumed a creator is benevolent? Where does that come from?

Considering ~100% of our universe is toxic to us, I wouldn't say he's really that crazy about us.

[Mudhammam]

Not unless you have a very good imagination!

I know what I know because I think I know it having satisfied my own questions to the level of confirmation I need.  This level might not be good enough or even too much for another, and many others do not care about the questions I have ask. There is no accounting for anyone else.

Hmm... I'm inclined to say yes, and no.  I agree that you, rather than anyone else, are responsible for your own happiness and whatever ideas you find to be most conducive to that.  On the other hand, other people's ideas -- perhaps at least, and sometimes even more, than one's own -- shape the world in which one must live, so it'd be nice to try to have some measurement by which we can all cooperate in the areas of thought that have practical repercussions for the total sum happiness.  Maybe you think that the specific ideas that appeal to your needs don't overlap with the conditions of anyone else, but are the methods by which you have arrived at your conclusions different from those which underlie the so-called virulent forms of belief, the supposed knowledge of which its adherents have persuaded themselves is every bit as apprehensible as our most basic beliefs about reality, although you and I perceive their notions of reality (it can be anything you want--someone out there is likely to believe it) to be over-simplistic and dogmatical?

What I don't, I know a little about, but it mostly consists of what I don't know I don't know and that's half the reason I'm here getting my ass regularly handed to me. The fastest way to gain growth for me currently is to expose what I think I know, which at the same time exposes my ignorance and I get shone where I am weak and and they are strong. I'm finding it a quite enjoyable self destruction.

I don't put limits on what I can't know. I am (and so is everyone else) objectively composed by what ever universal truth exists, immersed in it and propelled by it, there is no where to go to escape from it. Unless one is actively fighting against it, apprehension is inevitable. Truth is the like the ocean and the journey of life is like a river. When you get to the truth/ocean, the journey does not end, there is a new dimension to explore and new freedom from a one way current to explore it.

Faith means something very different for me.  Mine was authored during a powerful spiritual experience that was followed by an NDE. It was not produce from my mind but it was induced in it...couldn't very well be induced anywhere else...

You had a NDE, the contents of which you have interpreted, I assume, metaphysically?  In so far as you have reasons to support your interpretation of this experience, why call it faith?  And where you don't have reasons, what purpose does faith have other than being a sort of obstinate overconfidence in one of the many directions that your speculation might take?  

You could think of it like a grain of sand that was introduced to my consciousness.  One extremely irritating to the private ego (I am transparent to higher orders of beings) and so over many years I have accreted a pearl of research over it with many many layers.

I'm not sure what you mean by the letters in bold.

My faith and intellect work hand in hand, beliefs are nebulous and subordinate but I also use them like a fishing rod and line, using my informed imagination (belief) to cast out beyond my sphere of knowledge and pull things intuitively out of the ethers. I come up with descriptions that I look up online and it leads me to other peoples works regarding the same things.

I try to orchestrate everything in concert and work the inconsistencies out in all my internal spheres as I go. I've shed scores of beliefs like old skin I've outgrown and grow better ones in a new form....till I outgrow that one.

Knowledge to me is like the rungs on a ladder; to be reached for, pull up by, stood upon, and passed beyond.

I liked how you put this.

[Brian37]

I already said that it has a placebo affect. But no, sorry, it is only a benefit to the individual or the society, the downside is for the reasons I stated before. For all the success the ancient Egyptians had in their polytheism it still did not make their gods real. And worse and far too much when someone gets it in their head their god is real, they can also be successful in form big enough groups to murder minorities or start wars or commit acts of genocide.

Faith is not a virtue, it is a cop out. Our species gets hindered by religion as much as we think it helps. 

Our morality isnt coming from old books or fictional beings. Our species ability to make discoveries, succeed or fail are in our evolution.

That's quite the irrelevant rant.  I didn't talk about, nor do I care about, ANY of those things you are talking about.

The OP question is whether there are benefits to religious faith, and there clearly are.  Whether religion overall serves a greater good in society is an issue of debate-- I'd say probably not, but we haven't had purely secular societies long enough yet to really see if non-religion allows us to do any better.

Evolutionary fact is not "irrelevant".

The question DOES apply to science. I answered the OP's question and clarified your answer.

YES AND NO.

Religion is of false comfort. There is no polite way to put it. Our scientific reality has cockroaches and bacteria that outnumber us and have survived far longer, and neither have religions or fictional sky heros.

I said the benefit is as hollow as the success the Ancient Egyptians had, AND THEY DID, for 3,000 years centering their lives around gods that did not exist in reality. Religion DOES have a benefit in creating social order and groups, but the downside is that it is not based in reality and far too often the problems the divisions cause as a result of those delusions, hinders human progress. 

I've also addressed atheists too in not thinking they are morally superior either. Our species behaviors are in our evolution. I'd be weary of using the word "secular" in the context of the way you just put it. If the planet were 7 billion atheists we'd still have divisions and prisons. But that is still no excuse to cling to old myths. It isn't that we can or should force any religion out of existence, but we also cannot nor should be afraid of giving up on old claims. Secular does not mean only "atheist". It simply means government neutrality. http://www.au.org is a multi label org that strives to protect separation of religion and state.

Carl Sagan is where my thought process is in his Pale Blue Dot. I'd only say verbally I don't have his patience. But physically and law wise, we certainly SHOULD protect all non violent humans regardless of differences. 

Religion is a horrible way of gaining consensus and diplomacy, even within the umbrella label. A Tibet Buddhist does not view Buddhism the same as a Chinese or Japanese Buddhist. An Orthodox Jew living in Israel may not have the same views as a liberal Jew in America. Sunnis and Shiites certainly prove this. And you wont get right wing Tea Party Baptist to agree with a liberal Obama voting Baptist. 

But the same applies to even atheists. I have said before, I DO NOT agree with every atheist on all things all the time. I don't like libertarian atheists who support the likes of Ayn Rand. But  nor do I support atheists who think Che, who lead to Cuba is a cure. It still remains all 7 billion humans are just that, humans.

Religion is really just another way of our species to make excuses to set up social order. In reality it is still gap filling, a sugar pill.