by AlmostAtheist 79 Replies latest jw friends
FD I don't quite understand how someone can lose faith in one belief system, but still have faith (or find it again) in another. If you have faith, what can ever cause you to change your beliefs?
You can loose faith in something. Faith is your conviction in something not proven. As evidence comes forth that you misplaced your faith in that person of system was , you loose your faith in it.
steve
stevenyc:
You can loose faith in something. Faith is your conviction in something not proven. As evidence comes forth that you misplaced your faith in that person of system was , you loose your faith in it.
OK, that makes sense, I suppose. I was thinking more of cases where someone believed in spite of the evidence, rather than just without any. Your scenario suggests a similar question, though. After having a long-held belief overturned by the first appearance of evidence, wouldn't you be very wary of believing in something unproven ever again?
Funky,
Do you believe in love?
FD After having a long-held belief overturned by the first appearance of evidence, wouldn't you be very wary of believing in something unproven ever again?
It usually take more than just the first appearance of evidence to destroy faith in something. Especially God / Religion. But I think we're both the same in where we see the God / Religion faith, personally. But, for me, it took a lot of evidence. I couldn't move to another religion because the JDubs had already destryed my faith in those. Loosing my faith in God took time, research, and evidence.
steve
After 50 years of, ...RIGHT AROUND THE CORNOR.....
I'm still burned out, .............from
caring, meetings, active JW things, I gave all I could, ... now I just can't any more.
Big Dog:
Funky,Do you believe in love?
Are you coming on to me? Seriously though, yes I believe in love. I see abundant evidence of love, have good physiological and psychological explanations for it, and have experienced it myself. So my belief is based on evidence, rather than faith.
I see abundant evidence of love, have good physiological and psychological explanations for it, and have experienced it myself. So my belief is based on evidence, rather than faith.
I feel the same about faith. However, if you had never experienced love you would only have evidence based on the experiences of others. Like faith. Evidence is not proof. Evidence only helps to form conclusions. Proof is very different.
Conclusions arrived at by evidence are not necessarily proven and they may still be very subjective. What is evidence of one conclusion to you may be evidence of an entirely different conclusion to someone else. The existence of love is not falsifiable, therefore it is not proven. QED, belief in love requires belief in something unproven.
AuldSoul
AuldSoul:
I feel the same about faith.
So do I, for the most part. I see abundant evidence of faith, have good physiological and psychological explanations for it, although I have not really experienced it myself.
However, if you had never experienced love you would only have evidence based on the experiences of others. Like faith.
Agreed. If I had never experienced love, my evidence for its existence would not be based on my own experience. Like faith, which I've never really experienced but definitely exists. Or Russia, where I've never been personally but the existence of which I'm pretty certain of.
Conclusions arrived at by evidence are not necessarily proven and they may still be very subjective.
Not if they're based on real verifiable evidence and the conclusions follow a perfectly logical chain of reasoning.
What is evidence of one conclusion to you may be evidence of an entirely different conclusion to someone else.
How would you distinguish between the two sets of beliefs? Faith? Or examination of the evidence?
The existence of love is not falsifiable, therefore it is not proven. QED, belief in love requires belief in something unproven.
Nonsense, sheer nonsense. Please define love in such a way that it's existence is unfalsifiable.
After finding out how the bible was put together basically by priests who borrowed stories and myths from others and claimed them as their own, I saw that it was all about control, getting people to listen and obey God or so they said, when it was really the priest, king or ruling party at the time that made this up. What better way to get people to follow your instructions without disagreeing, pay their taxes, remain unconfrontational, ignorant etc. than telling them that God told you this, or you saw a vision of this or that.
After realizing this, I can no longer believe in Religion, because it is simply a control tool, if God wanted us to follow a "True Religion" he would appear in the sky for all of us to see, and he would tell all of us what to do to please him, if he indeed needed anything from us, which I don't believe to be the case. It would not be a revelation that one single prophet received with no one around to witness, that is when you know there is a lie involved.
I will never again believe that God would speak to someone over another, when we are all equal, he made us this way, the sun shines for all, good and bad. I just saw the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" very interesting by the way. If only people realized the fallacy of Religion, and the farce that is that book called the Bible, the hold it has on people would be removed. Because all the problems in the world now have really been created because of belief in that book, if Muslims, Christians and Jews investigated the veracity of this book, they would see that there is no need to fight any longer, that God has not chosen one over the other, we are all part of his creation, but of course it would take alot of humility and removal of the "We Are The Chosen People" mentality, and only this would really bring peace for everyone. I hope somehow God whatever his name is, helps us with this process of opening peoples eyes so we can see some kind of peace in our lifetime.
IC
FunkyDerek, please objectively define love.
I believe it cannot be objectively defined to begin with, but you want me to define it in such a way that it is not falsifiable. I won't engage in that exercise until you can objectively define it. It is not falsifiable no matter how you subjectively define it, because the subjective is not provable, because the subjective is inherently not falsifiable. By its nature.
If you know the Scientific Method then you know that you cannot falsify that which is not defined.
AuldSoul
