Definitions of Faith (page 4)

Since I'm not able to start new topics right now for some reason, I thought I'd revisit some old ones.

What I want to add to this thread is that the illustration of having faith that the sun will come up tommorrow does not work. One does not need faith nor does anyone have faith that the sun is coming up tommorrow because, the sun does not really come up or move in any way that we can discern by simple sight. It is a metaphor. Thanks to our current understanding of the universe it no longer technically makes sense to believe that the sun is rising. What is really happening as we all know is that the world is spinning. We can observe the world spinning by simply looking up at the sky and noticing the stars moving as we rotate in space. If we watch the world spin to such a position that we can no longer see the sun, we can continue to observe the world spinning by wathcing the stars move as we spin. Therefore as long as the sun doesn't disappear (I mean disappear from everyone's view, even the view of people on the other side of the planet, like if the sun explodes or something, it will be there when WE come around again.)

So, no faith is needed in the sun rising tommorrow because at no time has the sun been out of sight from humans in general (and other beings of course too.) There is always someone watching the sun. We could call them on our cell phones and ask them if the sun has exploded or not. If not, then the sun is still there and we are on our way around to see it again. If we noticed that the world has stopped spinning by noticing that the stars have stopped moving, then we will know that the people on the other side of the planet are being scorched to death, and that soon, we will on this side of the planet freeze to death. No need for faith when the sun is present and observable 24/7 and our spinning is observable 24/7. At no moment is the sun ever out of our sight. If it blows up we will see it happen, or feel its effects very quickly. No need for faith to believe that the sun is "coming up" tommorrow.

My suspicion is still that faith does not exists. It is an imaginary concept that is impossible to define in any consistent universal way. The "need" to have faith was commanded by whoever wrote the Bible. Before that, faith was never a concept, did not exist. After the idea of faith came in from Bible writers (whatever the original idea actually was we'll never know as this thread has pointed out - we can never decide on a consistent definition of the concept, so in other words, if faith exists, we don't know it exists, and we don't know what it is) faith still did not really exist but as a muddled confused concept.

It is just as likely that the true definition of faith is either lost forever or it never existed in the first place. Or perhaps that the Magic Tonic salesmen who were trying to sell people on the Jesus Brand, were just trying to come up with a conversation stopper and thought stopper so that arguing with them would become impossible and they would walk away from every doubter or cynic feeling like they won the argument no matter what the argument was and no matter what the facts actually were.

The same thing I believe about faith is the same thing I believe about god. If we can't define god consistently, then we don't know what god is, and we can't have a conversation about god if no two people can come up with a consistent definition of god. In other words, when I say Chevy, you think Dodge and someone else thinks Toyota, and so it goes. Sure we may all be talking about cars, except for those people who picture a motorcycle, and people who have never seen a car will picture a donkey driven cart, but we all have a totally different pictures in our heads. Who is to say which one is right? Or, if you are not brave enough to face the idea that there simply is no god at all, you might try to say that all the pictures of god are correct. Then what about the conflicting beiefs about god? Can opposites both be true? Can god give 72 virgins to muslim extremists and give harps to Christians? Reward Muslims with virgins while at the same time torturing them in hell for not accepting the divinity of the Christ?

Some people are going to be right about god, and some people must be wrong about god. No two people believe in the same god. I suspect that most people actually see a bearded man with a robe and sandals every single time they hear the word god. Whatever we pictured in our heads when we were infants and first exposed to the idea of god (maybe as kate as the teens) is what we still picture in our heads today as an adult, I'm willing to wager. Faith was an invention, exactly like I suspect, to squash inquiry and to obscure truth.

Definitions of Faith

blueviceroy

Shawn10538

Share this