Funny, EP!!!
Can we look at FAITH in a more practical way?
by Terry 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Terry
At the heart of Faith is a terrible fear of dying.
A man dying of thirst in the desert "sees" the mirage of water just up ahead and keeps on moving toward it.
Think how practical that is!
If he just gives up he dies anyway. If he keeps moving and finds water he survives.
When Faith keeps you moving forward and TOWARD actual and real possibilities it is GOOD.
When Faith wastes your time and keeps you rooted in place ignoring actual possibilities--it is BAD.
Simple enough.
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THE GLADIATOR
Faith is not separate from reality but is what the mind has accepted as true and placed its trust in. Often faith in someone or something will be vindicated. Sometimes faith or belief will prove to have been misguided.
The mind is capable of playing tricks on itself in order to achieve emotional comfort. Often just having a faith in something brings comfort and security in the present, so it serves a real purpose even if the object of the faith does not actually exist. The tragedy occurs when faith constantly takes precedent over reason and results in a wasted and unfulfilled life. Jehovah's Witnesses are an example of this.
Provide faith is used in moderation I think it has its uses, alongside alcohol, movies, novels and other forms of escapism that help to soften the harsh realities of life.
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Etude
Wow! Everyone here provided a great exchange of opinions. However, it seems to me that the primary poles of discussion are sabastious & Terry. You both present compelling ideas, worthy in their own right.
Although I didn't initially like Terry's "spackle" analogy because, as you sabastious said: " there is no drywall ", I reconsidered and now think that the drywall is reality, and that faith, according to Terry, is what we use to spackle reality. When our drywall-reality continually shows unexplained holes, instead of admitting that we can't find the explanations (answers) for the holes (questions) and that they're going to keep popping up, we spackle them away by "trusting" (exercising faith) that an alternate explanation will make the drywall-reality significant and smooth again. At this point I'm stretching the analogy and not meaning to say that that's what Terry intended to say, in case he didn't. In addition, I believe there are different ways of defining faith, belief, hope, trust and love.
You noticed, sabastious, that I emphasized the word "trusting" above. This is because you used the term "trust" in terms of relationships or friendships. But it seems to me that you're putting what happens in trust out of sequence. We don't decide to trust someone before we know something about that person. While the process is gradual (the more you know about a person, the more you trust them), it seems to have a quid-pro-quo: somebody gives a little of themselves (warmth, private confidences, caring, etc) and we in turn afford more trust to the person.
If a person fails to return a borrowed item we trusted him or her with, what we tend to do is assess whether we will lend that person another thing again, even if we evaluate the number of reasons for their failure to return or replace the item. We can make the same decision if they acted out of simple neglect or because we interpret that they were greedy and never intended to return it in the first place. The level of trust is changed. Yes we trusted, but it was on the basis of social rules and the expectation of everyone's participation that when you borrow, you also return. That is the foundation of that kind of trust. If the item lent is of great value, there are also rules that allow you to take someone to court for compensation.
If I were to base my faith and trust in God, I wouldn't do it because the U.S. Dollar says so. I would do it for the same reasons I just explained. sabastious you said: " Human antiquity shows that God has tried many different approaches to gaining our trust, because trust is earned, that's how it works. " And herein lies the problem. I can look at history and see what you're saying as well as the human toll "God" has caused not only by his policies (some of the things he commanded in the Bible) but also by the atrocities those who put faith in him have committed. If those acts cancel each other out, then there's no compelling reason to trust or put faith in God. Instead, the basis used for trusting Him are arbitrary and at times contradictory. I don't feel right picking and choosing which one will spackle up the holes.
sabastious stated: " what if we COULD know, but are being repelled by forces we don't know exist? " Really? Please think about that. Give it your best self-argument. In high school, we'd argue whether a rock was "alive" or "aware" -- By the fact that we cannot detect that a rock "thinks" doesn't mean it doesn't think. So therefore, not being able to prove it doesn't think does not mean it doesn't think and means it could think and be alive -- Even though it feels like mental masturbation, there are elements of the argument that can lead us to a conclusion. After further reasoning, I concluded that although the remote possibility of a sentient rock exists, there is no experiment or information available to me to make that deduction and therefore I'm forced to assume (trust or have faith) that rocks are intellectually inert, not alive and not aware of anything. Do you see the foundation for that conclusion?
A similar situation uses the same argument in the rock example: "Prove to me that that invisible man is not there." It sounds like this famous quote:
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." Donald Rumsfeld while explaining the missing WMDs in Iraq.
As others have mentioned here, there are different ideas of what "faith" means. I make a distinction between faith and credulity. A credulous person believes in the face of lack of evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary. One dictionary definition of "faith" is "trust". Given my previous explanation of how trust is earned, it seems to me that faith is earned from some foundation while credulity is the spackle Terry is talking about. It seems to me that what makes me agree with Terry is that you both are talking about credulity and not the faith in the sense of "trust" based on some tangible foundation.
I tend to make a similar distinction between love and infatuation. Of course my distinction is subjective, depending on how you define them. But as the phrase goes, when people "learn to love one another", to me love involves the same elements needed for trust. I learned to love my wife, even though I was initially "infatuated" with her. Maybe it's that she was pretty or I was horny or both. But that was infatuation. Love is what I've learn after more than a decade of sex, arguments, joys and sorrows. Love, in this case, is NOT "not logical", as you sabastious put it. It's born out of our common experience and not out of a simple desire to experience it.
Earlier, I posted my definition of "faith" with a profound twist. Even though I find that we shall not have significant answers any time soon about the nature of matter and the foundation of the universe, the faith a scientist must exercise is based on the idea that the laws of Physics which have led us up to this present stage of knowledge have not failed us so far on most things. That they actually fail when we look at matter at the nanoscopic level lets us at least trust that there's another explanation we've yet come to find. In the mean time, it's OK to say "I don't know" and not be forced to assume that God must be there to make sense of it all or that we're decidedly in one of an infinite number of universes. While we're free to consider both of those possibilities, we need to refrain from attesting to one or another for the sake of our own mental or emotional security.
I think many of us also obfuscate belief with hope. Belief to me involves the acceptance of an idea, whether accurate or not. It involves our perception of reality, whether accurate or not. Hope is more nebulous. Hope projects our expectations to a reality that has yet to become. sabastious said: " Without belief we would never have discovered so much about reality. " The reality is that "reality" will happen whether we believe or not, whether we exist or not. I'm speaking of a reality that expands beyond ourselves and beyond what we can immediately perceive. So, our reality is no less real for those who have stopped "believing" because they are dead. There is no further discovery for them to make and "reality" (meaning the world as we perceive it and what we agree upon) continues on!
That reality must include the makeup of the physical world, the laws the govern the universe and the biology of man, and the archeological evidence about us we can uncover. No matter how significant the dead one's influence might have been on our "reality", it's easy to find examples of how they might have made profound influences in spite of their belief.
So, for me, credulity is the arbitrary and unfounded spackle on the drywall of reality. Faith (as well as trust) is an inconclusive but probable belief of or in something based on some previous act or related fact. Belief is what we hold to be true, whether it is true or not. Hope is simply what we wish would happen based on our true or false belief. Infatuation is when our gonads do our thinking and love (if you get it) is what we learn after we spend time with someone.
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tec
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?
Faith IS based on evidence. Not proof. But evidence. Sometimes evidence is personal, but it is still evidence.
I did a thread on some of what I consider evidence for my faith. I could link to it if you want. (though you might have been just asking CA or Sab) I doubt it will be evidence that would convince you. But it is evidence for me.
I was always of the opinion that when no real evidence can be found believers resort to faith.
That does not make sense to me.
Now, if you have faith in someone (like Christ), built upon evidence, then you might continue to put your faith and trust in him on things that you do NOT have an answer for. Trusting that there is an answer, and that it will not be in conflict with anything else He has taught, but that you just don't know or understand that yet.
Not much different, imo, than not knowing an answer to a scientific question... yet. You trust that there is an answer, but you don't personally know it yet, because we do not have the knowledge/data from science yet.
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.
Only if you go by what you have said you think faith is.
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.
Once again, only by your definition. My definition is not the same.
Peace,
tammy
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tec
At the heart of Faith is a terrible fear of dying.
I must disagree.
It is not at the heart of my faith.
I have never had a fear of dying. Certainly not a terrible fear. (in the manner that I die, perhaps... like painfully, but death itself... no)
A man dying of thirst in the desert "sees" the mirage of water just up ahead and keeps on moving toward it.
Think how practical that is!
If he just gives up he dies anyway. If he keeps moving and finds water he survives.
Interesting. Of course, he only finds water if it is actually there. Not if it is a mirage.
When Faith keeps you moving forward and TOWARD actual and real possibilities it is GOOD.
Agreed.
When Faith wastes your time and keeps you rooted in place ignoring actual possibilities--it is BAD.
Also agreed.
Peace,
tammy
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Terry
Although I didn't initially like Terry's "spackle" analogy because, as you sabastious said: " there is no drywall ", I reconsidered and now think that the drywall is reality, and that faith, according to Terry, is what we use to spackle reality. When our drywall-reality continually shows unexplained holes, instead of admitting that we can't find the explanations (answers) for the holes (questions) and that they're going to keep popping up, we spackle them away by "trusting" (exercising faith) that an alternate explanation will make the drywall-reality significant and smooth again
By George, I think he's got it!