Why have you rejected all forms of faith? (page 7)

googlemagoogle

Faith in God is likewise based on experiences. These experiences are subjective. It is entirely possible for someone to believe in something they have never had any experience with.

it is possible to believe in something i haven't experienced. but it's not intelligent. because there are many contradicting faiths of subjective experience.

one experienced jesus, one mary, one allah, one his dead grandfather, one the evil flu-causing spirit of the amazon balsa-tree. one experienced UFOs or even aliens. one the poltergeist.

if you had one of these experiences, well, build your faith on it or go to the psychologist, depending on what impact it had on you. but what's the point in believing something you have not experienced and have no proof for it at all?

funkyderek

AuldSoul:

FunkyDerek, thank for the "concession." That was big of you, especially since we are dealing with a fact of reality.

Maybe not so big. I did say it was for the sake of argument, as we weren't getting anywhere. It seemed to me that whatever argument you had about faith was built on this belief that certain things can't be defined objectively. Now I see why you wouldn't give that up.

The fact that a thing is subjective (such as faith, love, God, respect, humility, pride, etc.) doesn't prevent these things from being believed in.

AuldSoul, one of those items is a red herring and I think you know that. You can't just slip God in among the emotions, and then claim he's subjective as well. Either God exists objectively or he doesn't. I'm really disappointed with that. I had hoped you were going somewhere more interesting.

googlemagoogle

such as faith, love, God, respect, humility, pride, etc.

do you suggest "god" is an emotion? i could accept that...

Big Dog

i find the "do you believe in love" thing funny. and how it's used to make faith appear more rational

Then you misunderstand the point that was being made if you think it was simply made to promote a belief in some supernatural entity. At the outset this thread was not meant to be a do you believe in God thread, but whether you had faith in anything outside of yourself. The point was that we have faith in many things, so that having "faith" is not irrational.

Funky made two comments:

I don't think I ever really had faith. I always believed what the available evidence compelled me to believe. AND

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

Those comments prompted my question about love, contrary to what anyone would like to believe, love cannot be proven with a capital P, it can be inferred, it can be assumed but in no way is there a scientific method of PROVING that someone loves you, ergo, you go on faith. The point I was trying to make is that we humans operated on faith in many ways, in the mundane things as Doogie pointed out with his remote to basing our life on the faith that our significant other truly loves us and wants to spend their life with us, to things that science tells us that we as individuals can't verify (ie. I believe in the theory of relativity but the maths to prove it are far beyond my reach) so I take it on faith.
So the point is and was that faith is with us in many ways, and that if we only believe that which we ourselves can prove or verify we won't be believing in much. The question regarding love was not to make faith in a god appear more rational, but to illustrate that we operate on faith on many levels, both in our secular life and for those of us that have a spiritual life. If someone wants to see that as rational or irrational that's up to them.

AuldSoul

I say that God is subjective, like the other things listed. I am not attempting to prove the existence of "God" any more than I am attempting to prove the existence of "love." I was drawing attention to the distinction between objective and subjective, that was the only distinction I was drawing.

I was combining like things under one accurate descriptor, "subjective." Doing so is not offering a "red herring." Would anyone like to show me in what way God is objective. People are simply unused to thinking of God in terms of which primary category of reality God would fit into.

I am glad that you see why I categorize reality into the two primary groups that science categorizes reality into, FunkyDerek. It seems reasonable to me to do so. I was a little stymied by your attempt to objectify what science places in the subjective realm.

AuldSoul

doogie

caedes:

Doogie, argumentum ad populum tsk tsk

easy, tiger. maybe i didn't make myself clear...

i wasn't personally making any argument. i was just saying that "observation" alone can't be considered objective evidence since observation is merely in the eyes of the beholder. you're right though, as far as objective evidence of god's existence goes, billions of people saying that they've observed god's hand carries no greater weight than one person "observing" him.

if all we had for evidence of the Earth's rotation around the sun was observation of the sun rising every morning, belief in a revolving earth would be faith based as there would be no mathematics showing why it does this (without math, who knows why the sun rises every morning? it could be a revolving earth just as easily as it could be a revolving sun. the observation would be functionally the same in either case).

however, we have detailed equations and measurements showing that the Earth orbits the sun and not vice versa, so faith in an orbiting Earth is not required. if a tribesman with no access to those equations and measurements still came to the conclusion that the earth revolves around the sun, his belief would be faith based even though he's right because he simply believes his subjective evidence (observation of the sun rising every morning)...just like a man who has no idea how his TV remote works but uses it wth confidence anyway (i.e. 'me') or the man that believes in god(s).

funkyderek

AuldSoul:

I say that God is subjective, like the other things listed.

But God is not at all like the other things listed. The arguments you applied to things like "love" and "faith" simply do not apply to "God". Now God may also be subjective for completely different reasons, but you've given none. Or else you're redefining "God" as an emotion. Which is it?

I am not attempting to prove the existence of "God" any more than I am attempting to prove the existence of "love." I was drawing attention to the distinction between objective and subjective, that was the only distinction I was drawing.

Your chain of reasoning seems to go something like this: "Love is a feeling, and can't be tested for. Therefore, love is subjective. God is also subjective." There's a huge leap of logic in there that I just don't follow.

I was combining like things under one accurate descriptor, "subjective." Doing so is not offering a "red herring."

Yes it is. The label "God" is quite clearly the odd one out in the list of labels you provided. All the other labels stand for human emotions. The "God" label stands for an omnipotent being.

Would anyone like to show me in what way God is objective.

If God exists in any of the forms he is commonly described as, then he really exists as an objective entity, independent of the minds or perceptions of individual humans.

People are simply unused to thinking of God in terms of which primary category of reality God would fit into.

Reality is objectively real or it is not reality. Our perceptions of reality are subjective. "Objective" and "subjective" are not "primary categories of reality".

I am glad that you see why I categorize reality into the two primary groups that science categorizes reality into, FunkyDerek.

You're mistaken. I don't see it, and I've never heard of "science" dividing things up quite the way you do.

It seems reasonable to me to do so. I was a little stymied by your attempt to objectify what science places in the subjective realm.

I was quite baffled first by your unwillingness to distinguish between a definition of an experience and the experience itself, and then by your lumping God into the same category as human emotions without any explanation. To help me understand, can you please divide the following items according to your two primary categories. If necessary, you can put some into an "I don't know" category or explain why they don't fit your paradigm. Person, friend, warm, tomorrow, weight, hunger, disease, alien, ghost, memory, colour, flavour, dehydration, Jupiter (the planet), Jupiter (the god), World War II, magnetism.

AuldSoul

Love is not subjective because it is a feeling. It is subjective because it cannot be tested for. That is the connection you are missing.

You have thus far failed to grasp the balancing point of subjectivity vs. objectivity. Once you cross that boundary you will see that unless you can test for something/falsify something, it is subjective.

Unless you believe God can be tested for, God fits the "subjective" category perfectly. As does love. As does faith. As does pain. I suspect you believe God is subjective, you just never thought of God in those terms.

AuldSoul

kls

I gave on on faith along time ago . If there is a God where the hell is he and where has he been all my life ,so since if he excist , why should i worship him for all the shit i have had in my life . No matter how much i prayed there was never an answer. Thats is why i gave up and give up.

Ya , kinda pity answer

funkyderek

AuldSoul:

Love is not subjective because it is a feeling. It is subjective because it cannot be tested for. That is the connection you are missing.

Ah, OK. So you're using the word "subjective" to mean "untestable". May I ask why? Had you used the standard definitions of words, we wouldn't have spent so long going around in circles.

Why have you rejected all forms of faith?

Share this