by AK - Jeff 20 Replies latest jw friends
faith: trust / confidence in a set of beilefs/doctrine that has no proof - close to a dictionary definition. My definition of faith is "A sense of knowing" This "knowing" has come from my personal experiences and if I had to try explain them to you, you wouldn't get it unless you have had something similar happen to you.
Do we need faith: I think it's part of our make up. We all have a certain amount of it or practice a certain amount of faith (be it religious or not) in our every day lives.
It may be worth noting that "faith," or "belief," is not as central to all "religions" as it is to Christianity, especially in its Protestant versions. This is ultimately due to the original Pauline rhetoric opposing "faith" to "works of the Law" as a way to "salvation," which was diversely echoed in most of early Christian literature (e.g., as "subjective" faith in the Gospel miracle stories, "your faith has saved you," or as "objective" faith = doctrine in the Pastorals), and which was revived from a still different perspective through Luther's personal experience and subsequent Reformation. So when we construe all "religions" as "faiths" or "beliefs" we are actually looking at them through Christian, and probably Protestant lens, which is not quite fair imo. While "faith" or "belief" certainly plays some part in all religions, most of them actually start with practice (of a ritual, initiatic or moral kind), and their "end" is not necessarily "personal salvation" as we understand it, but adequate personal integration to a social or cosmical order (a harmonious correlation of self-, society- and/or world-understanding) which can also be described in terms of "knowledge," "wisdom" or "ethics".
All knowledge starts with faith since we simply lack the time to check anything empirically.
Narkissos,
That is what Wicca is to me. There is no salvation in it nor any dogma. It is simply a getting to understand nature, myself, and others. At the end of it, there is more understanding but no salvation. There seems to be personal enrichment in it, too. There is no faith involved. It's more of an exploration for understanding, and it's very subjective.
The reason "faith" is required for religious beliefs is because they are unprovable and untestable by objective science. Something that is unprovable and untestable by science is as good as nonexistent... it's not part of our reality. People with religious faith or beliefs will take exception to that, but it's the hard truth. There is nothing else accepted as part of our reality that requires "faith" and cannot be tested or analyzed by science.
hamilcarr,
I do agree with what you said, but that is a different situation. Some may have "faith" that the Earth moves around the Sun (for example), but with the desire anyone can use objective science to see why we believe that way. With religious beliefs there is no option to use science to "prove" it. Sure, some try but they are met with failure.
"Faith" is the demand of a Dictator.
Do everything he says without question.... or he'll kill you.
The god of the koran, bible and torah has made the same demand.
That's along the point of my thinking, Elsewhere. Why would a benevolent God demand that our 'faith' in him were a determining factor in salvation? Why would he make it impossible to be assured of his existence and purpose so that faith was even needed?
While I might have faith in the words that I heard my dad say to me, why would he expect me to have faith in words that I was told by hearsay that he stated? Especially when such words are so widely and diversely interpreted by so many different people? With no provision to confirm what Holy writ, if any, contains his words, and with no proof of who has correctly interpreted the same words to mean the correct meaning?
IF I misunderstood my dad's promises, or never heard them, he would little expect me to show faith in them. Even once he spoke them directly to me, I would need to see that he trusted me enough not to put them in code that I had to sort through to find the real meaning.
That would be more like a movie arch-vilian who provides a riddle, expects others to solve the riddle or die. I would think that to be the opposite of loving benevolence. Wouldn't a loving God want us to be taken care of, in spite of our inability to know precisely what he wants us to know and accept about him?
Jeff
The other (positive?) side of my previous comment might be expressed as follows: inasmuch as the mediation of language and symbolism is an integral part of any human existence, barring out any immediate (strictly non-verbal) relationship to "the world," "others" and our own "selves," Christianity with its unique emphasis on "faith" does indirectly call to our attention one essential dimension of such existence: belief or implicit trust in meaningitself, which is literally groundless and without which we cannot know anything.
This imo is the "truth of faith" which is ironically lost when faith itself is objectivised as a particular doctrine that must be believed to attain some otherworldly "salvation".
Lots of great comments on this thread! "Faith" has become a very irritating word to me, and I have no need for it. Of course it is a word that is not connected to a god lots of times, but to differentiate it, drwtsn, you said it well,
Some may have "faith" that the Earth moves around the Sun (for example), but with the desire anyone can use objective science to see why we believe that way. With religious beliefs there is no option to use science to "prove" it. Sure, some try but they are met with failure.
