Can we look at FAITH in a more practical way?

by Terry 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

Terry

BELIEF is spackle.
You can't see the crack in your thinking when you exercise FAITH.
FAITH is denying the reality of alternate explanations to yourself and everybody else.
Consequently, a person of FAITH can not, must not, will not allow others the option of non-binary references.
The Spackle patrol is on duty!!
Choosing certainty over uncertainty eliminates the spectrum of grey area between BLACK and WHITE.
If you are afraid of the gray area because there are too many variables to consider and compare and feel comfortable with....the simplest way
to ease your anxiety is to eliminate that gray area by dogmatically insisting IT ISN'T THERE.
Therefore, you can't allow those who disagree with you to access or reference it either! It brings that anxiety back into play!
Result? MAN INVENTS ORTHODOXY .
What demonstrates binary thinking more than:
1. Good OR Evil No gray areas! (Sin dominates man. God forgives or punishes it.)
2.God OR the Devil. No overlap! (If God orders the slaughter of man, woman, child, infant and animal it is automatically Good.)
3.Obedience OR destruction. (Adam and Eve could not expect discipline and a learning experience!)
4. Bible True or Man is lost (Corruption of texts and no provenance cannot be issues worth considering. Believe the Bible or you are done for.)
5.Good works vs Faith in Christ (Not even Mother Theresa can earn brownie points. Just say the magic word: JESUS!)
6.End Times always now vs never going to happen (Contemporary Christians are always THE generation Jesus will save. Only the faithless are skeptical.)
7.One True religion vs some truth in all religion (MY religion can only be right and your religion is infested with Satan's lies)
So, the next time a True Believer adamantly refuses to engage you in a rational discussion with all possible facts and variables being considered
simply realize that their FAITH is SPACKLE! They cannot allow themselves to see the cracks in their cognitive dissonance.
How does a person of Faith apply the spackle?
1.They will repeat a simple phrase in place of a factual, demonstrable reply. (Jesus is Lord! Jehovah will handle it. God said it, I believe it, that settles it.)
2. Label skeptics as heretics, apostates or demon possessed. False pity their opponents by warning them of Hell or Armageddon.
3.Appeal to mysticism. (God TOLD THEM PERSONALLY. They had an EXPERIENCE that convinced them. Spoke in tongues. Received an angel. etc.)
4.Insist you prove a negative. Drift into speculation which includes metaphysical possibility. Justify nonsense with Spiritual jargon.
5.Redefine words and load them with Ad Hoc "meaning" thus hijacking actual communication. "Accurate Knowledge", The Truth, etc.
6.Restate the Skeptics statements as a Strawman Fallacy and attack THAT instead. (Atheists hate God, Agnostics are cowards, Evolution is Darwinism, Creationism is Intelligent Design, etc.)
7.Marginalize opponents and lump them in with the worst possible groups (Atheists+Nazis or Stalin, Skeptics+abortionists+murderers, etc.
Summary:
BELIEF is spackle.
You can't see the crack in your thinking when you exercise FAITH.
FAITH is denying the reality of alternate explanations to yourself and everybody else.
In the religious context of accepting what cannot be demonstrated....Faith plays the role of taking up the same space which might more practically be occupied by information of a factual nature.
You see, it is alot like this.
You are at a grocery store and notice a spill. You are not an employee. Do you report the spill or trust that somehow one of the actual employees will mop it up? Should you report the spill yourself? Surely, somebody else has already done so.....
In the above scenario outright affirmative effort trumps the passive acceptance that "somebody" is already taking care of it....or will do so.
Once you accept into your ACTIVE/PASSIVE decision process a defined alternative which places responsibility on OTHER (God, Jesus, Prayer, Prophecy, scriptural integrity, etc.) you UNPLUG from being a part of the SOLUTION.
If you can be a person of "faith" without becoming passive, without letting others think FOR you and without denying reality, what then?
You can be like a fellow I use to work with who would stick his tongue out of the corner of his mouth whenever he was writing something. You know, the way a small child might do...it would wiggle about like a worm in a bird's beak as he wrote.
I asked him if he knew he was doing it and he sheepishly nodded his head and told me, "I can't write without doing it!"
I think, for some people, faith and religion are like that---compulsively "necessary" in order to do essential things. But, actually, sort of unnecessary to do essential things. Know what I'm saying?
james_woods

Practical Faith, Terry? Isn't that an oxymoron?
Satanus

Good illustrations. I mark you good in 'use of illustrations'. lol
Exercising faith: every time a point of logic that threatens the belief structure comes up, EXERCISE FAITH. The faith exercise is a little or big program that is played to block logic or fact or thought that threatens the belief structure.
S
sabastious

Terry, you are just turning faith into a stereotype. Faith is not spackle because there is no drywall. The analogy doesn't fit. Inanimate objects don't serve as good illustrations for a very dynamic concept such as faith.
Think of human interpersonal relationships; friendships. These relationships are based entirely on trust. The more trust the better the relationship, the less trust the worse off the relationship is. Yes, people put faith in too many unprovable, and often provably false, ideas. However, there is one idea that deserves faith and that is the existence of God as a friend. God is a person and that person desires trust, just as we desire trust in our relationships with each other.
Human antiquity shows that God has tried many different approaches to gaining our trust, because trust is earned, that's how it works. As we look back on how our relationship with God evolved we see the makings of a dysfunctional relationship. Now, many will call God a wife beater of sorts, but this I strongly disagree with. God's grace is required because we are the one's being dysfunctional, not Him. The only way that he could be considered being dysfunctional is because he puts up with us while we devistate each other and the earth he gave us as our home. Logically, he should have done away with us a long time ago, but he is willing to work with our decayed state in order to make us better again. Just like a husband who decides to work with his wife that has betrayed him so many times. He does this because he isn't willing to give up on the love he has for her. This is not really a logical choice and that makes perfect sense if you call God love. However, there is an end to what the Harlot is allowed to do. Eventually repentance shows itself as impossible even when God is working with the people. At that point he cleans the slate.
Revelation and Isaiah paint a picture of a woman who claims she is invincible and is destroyed by God. There is a theme throughout the Bible that we, as a collective in a relationship with God, do very little but serve our own interests. The Harlot is shown to be a shameless cheater and she is eventually destroyed for it, just as if a man finds his wife secretly cheating on him with many men after being given many chances. The people of antiquity have cheated on God time and time again and eventually he puts an end to it and chooses a Bride that will not act in that way. However, that Bride is still a part of that failed collective that is the Harlot. They are the one's that would rather die than act like her and they HAVE died all throughout antiquity in horrible manners. To give up on faith in God, by calling it merely spackle, at this point in the game is simply flabbergasting to me. But to each his own.
-Sab
Christ Alone

FAITH is denying the reality of alternate explanations to yourself and everybody else.
The biblical definition of faith is the ASSURED expectation of things hoped for. It should be assured. It should be based on evidence, whether others accept that same evidence or not.
cofty

Excellent post Terry.
CA - Faith may be founded on facts but it exceeds those facts. That's the whole point of faith, it fills the gaps where evidence is lacking.
Rather than making stuff up the better alternative is to just admit what we don't know about life's big questions.
sabastious

Rather than making stuff up the better alternative is to just admit what we don't know about life's big questions.
Cofty, what if we COULD know, but are being repelled by forces we don't know exist? For instance, I know that governments of the world have secrets that would change how I view the world (take the Phoenix Lights for example). How do I know I shouldn't know the things I don't know?
-Sab
nicolaou

Christ Alone; The biblical definition of faith is the ASSURED expectation of things hoped for. It should be assured. It should be based on evidence, whether others accept that same evidence or not.
Surely faith based on evidence isn't faith at all - it's knowledge, or at least a sensible hypothesis. I could respect that and so I'm curious, what is the evidence that justifies YOUR faith? I was always of the opinion that when no real evidence can be found believers resort to faith. If faith is your reason for saying something is true isn't that exactly the same as claiming that something is true merely because you want it to be true.
Faith is not a reason to believe in something it is the lack of a valid reason to believe in something. Faith is an excuse for ignorance, spackle as Terry suggests.
Unless of course you really do have some evidence . . . . ?
WTDeserter

Hi All, new here, first post.
Appreciate Terry's point in faith meaning different things to different people, not being binary or black and white, at least for those of us who are no longer afraid to think with our own minds.
Here is a good chart on faith that I found some time back in an Atheist Forum it is showing faith (or a lack of it) in graphical terms, here is the link:

http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/09/25/8419/

I would place myself somewhere between Theist and Agnostic (according to the post author's terms) as I believe there is a God but pretty certain that I can not get to know Him closely.

Where would your faith fit in the graph?
nicolaou

How do I know I shouldn't know the things I don't know?
Posting Guideline 8: Please avoid; Posting in a language other than English.

Can we look at FAITH in a more practical way?

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