you're dead. You just haven't keeled over yet.
Hate to break it to you but this true whether you have faith or not. That's why its important to experience every day as new journey preparing you for what hopefully will be tomorrow.
Why FAITH is actually a form of suicide
by Terry 99 Replies latest jw friends
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cyberjesus
Faith requires action to back up belief
says who? Paul or Jesus? Because they had different views.
you are expressing faith in your belief by your action
GLADIATOR: Just in case you didnt know you had "faith" ok :-) You can thank Freydo, now go be my follower
There was no doubt, hence, no need for faith
So by this definition, Nor the Apostles nor Jesus needed Faith. Actually no JW that is certain of their beliefs needs faith (which is most of them) .... St Paul and Jesus if you hear us: We dont need faith because we are certain of you. Why are we certain? because the bible say so. Who wrote the bible? Well You St Paul and Your Apostles Mr Jesus, thank you for that.
Agnostics are a similar group in that they publicly proclaim that they are "ignoramuses" which is the meaning of the word agnostic.
Ok so i have faith that I dont know how to have faith. I have faith that i dont know what i know..... We need to notify the dictionaries of the new definitions of Faith and Agnostics.... :-)
SO if I have faith that I dont have faith... do I have faith? If I dont know what to believe, am I really an agnostic?
Just thinking...
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freydo
In the end, atheism is stupidity backed with logic with faith in zero hope.
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cyberjesus
In the end, atheism is stupidity backed with logic with faith in zero hope.
Yeah, all those stupid atheists with zero hope! You stupid Atheists.. Stupid Einstein, Stupid Asimov, Hawkins, Hawking, etc. Your logic sucks! Shame on you, you have no faith!
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THE GLADIATOR
Some good points cyberjesus
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I am late replying to your challenge as I have been to Rome to appease the emperor. Your poetical post show that you are making progress and becoming quick-witted.
You threat concerns me greatly. Lions are easy to fight but Christians can be more difficult. They are slippery and can change their stance in the blink of an eye.
The result of such a bout would be in the lap of the gods. May your Christian god be at you side and strengthen your gladius hispaniensis.
I am not without belief or faith. I believe in gladiators. As for freydo - I believe he/she could be used as loin cloth to soak up my sweat in the heat of the colosseum!
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mindmelda
Hm, I concur with BTS on this one. I came to the realization that being a JW required no faith at all, except in the pseudo-profound utterances Watchtower, which seems to back up and run over itself every so often.
Witnesses seem only to require a cocksure attitude of being right about all things religious, and sometimes otherwise, all the time. That's nothing special, the glassy eyed cultist always has that. That's not faith, it's being utterly brainwashed.
True faith in anything religious or otherwise, requires questioning, doubt, investigation, resolution, pondering... all sorts of complex mental and emotional processes denied Witnesses as it's deemed "weak".
The only things those actions weaken is their stranglehold on your thoughts and emotions.
I guess I define faith as merely having a good degree of confidence in your conclusions, at least enough to justify them. Not too mystical, I'm afraid, but there you are.
The religiously inclined will tend to use faith in the metaphysical sense, to be sure, but on an everyday level, we all have it in ordinary things. I have faith that the sun will rise every morning, for instance. That's based on the fact that it always has. I don't know 100% that it will, but it seems a pretty valid assumption given my admittedly limited powers of observation.
I guess faith is a conclusion one makes on the preponderance of evidence, or at least on how they interpret that evidence.
Personal interpretation seems to have a lot to do with it, and even in a court of law, no two people have the same interpretation of any single event, which makes eyewitnesses among the least reliable evidence of all.
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Terry
Well, I've read the posts on my thread here and I have to say I'm disappointed.
Was my first post too subtle? Did anybody read it?
I'm framing the issue a particular (precise!) way but the responses seem to ignore what I'm saying.
Maybe I'm just a horrible writer.
Dunno....
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THE GLADIATOR
I have faith that the sun will rise every morning, for instance.
To be pedantic, the sun dies not rise, the earth rotates. You have faith that the earth will continue to rotate.
However this is not faith as used in a religious context. It is acceptance of a physical phenomena that has occurred for millions of years. You have witnessed dawn and dusk for your whole life along with billions of other people; felt the sun on your face and watched it light up the earth. You have seen the physical evidence.
Faith, in a religious or theological context refers to belief, ranging from confident to absolute without evidence or even in the face of contrary evidence.
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THE GLADIATOR
Terry - I did express my current thinking on your suicide claim, when I said:
"I think that Terry uses the extreme word 'suicide' to make a point. Faith is perhaps just an impairment to our rational process which paves the way for acceptance of other concepts that do not require rationality. Ultimately it is a path that robs us of the ability to make useful decisions in the real world - unless there is a God, in which case the believer has gambled and won. Heads or tails - you choose!"
People have taken on board what you have said. But while seeing faith as a threat to rationality are not yet certain that it amounts to suicide. Suicide is the total and deliberate obliteration of self. A desperate act of people who have lost the will to live. Faith while dubious is, me thinks, a lesser evil? Perhaps we have some way to travel down the road to catch up with you.
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mindmelda
Yes, I know, that's why I referred to that as "faith in the metaphysical sense". Sun rises, earth rotates, same difference. *shrugs* Point is, however the process is described, from the subjective observable "sunrise" or the objective, scientific "earth rotating", it does.
Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with the existence of the inexplicable, the metaphysical, although it causes me no pain when someone comes up with a scientific explanation for the previously inexplicable. *G*
But, faith in the unseen or unknown as being beneficient is a particularly human trait, and I don't see it going away anytime soon, nor does it need to.
For one thing, it probably keeps us from going crazycakes wondering about all the things that can actually go wrong in the universe, galaxy or solar system and obliterate us in no time at all. It's easier on the psyche to visualize (and humans are excellent at imagining and by doing so, creating emotions that react to those imagined scenarios exactly as they do to real experiences) a beneficient universal force that actually gives a hoot about us and gives us special purpose in being alive other than just randomness or chaos. Human brains hate chaos...they fight it, and religion may be a reaction to that fact. A universe full of gods or God controlling everything, even when it's going wrong, is more acceptable than randomness.
Did I mention humans innately hate randomness? LOL Hence, the essentially random nature of the universe (as we've come to discover) scares the pee out of us. I'm sure a lot of people hate science for finding that out, if nothing else. Damn science, messing up our nice imagined controlled beneficentily run universe!
No sense worrying about stuff like that we have no control over anyway, and most of the time, the universe is indeed "benevolent" in that it allows us to keep existing, aside from the usual hiccups of plague, extreme climate shifts, earthquakes and lethal weather. That's about as good at is gets, I guess.
However, I have a concept of God or the metaphysical that doesn't require constant attendance or even constant benevolence as proof of godliness, so I'm fine with the universe the way it is....it's better than banging your head against the wall of wanting God to fix everything for me.
Getting rid of notions of God as Santa or Mr. Goodwrench or eHarmony dating services or my three wish genie in the lamp is the only way I can continue to believe in God at all.