Why Faith is Self-Defeating

by cofty 56 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Xanthippe

  Yes a belief in a God is often expressed as being based on the evidence of creation. Beautiful creatures, the human body, wonderful edible plants, fruits, trees. Then you are left with the creatures that sting, bite, try to eat us and the plants that have poisoned us. Plus earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and floods. Add to that terrible diseases that shatter lives.

  So the whole web of religious beliefs seem to be trying to explain these 'anomalies'. The main answer provided by religion for the things that are wrong with the planet is, we have caused them. Somehow according to all the monotheistic religions humans have caused the world to go wrong by disobedience, lack of faith, just not being good enough.

  However God in his beneficence will put it all right, either in this world or the next. How can we be sure? We must have faith. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!
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  Heaven

  Religious Faith requires one to abandon truth, logic, reason, and honesty. It has been my personal experience that the God ideal and Religion are oppressive and abusive. These destroy trust. Without trust, you cannot have a proper, true relationship.
  

  In order for me to have 'faith' in anything, a set of conditions has had to have already been established. One of these conditions is that truth is spoken, that accurate facts are given. Another is that oppression and abuse must be absent. Trust cannot be established if these conditions are not met. As soon as an intentional lie can be uncovered, or abusiveness is present, trust is lost.

  God and Religion are unable to establish truth and accurate facts. They are abuse wrapped in a smiling veneer. Trust can never be achieved when these are present which means a relationship is never going to last unless one consciously decides to accept lies as truth, to become intellectually dishonest. At some point, reality contradicts belief/faith. This is the moment where a person chooses an honest or dishonest path.

  For me faith did not stand up to truth and I abandoned mythology for reality. Once I did that, my nightmares stopped.
  
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  Vidiot

  IMO, faith is - ultimately - 'self-defeating" because no matter what belief you have faith in, sooner or later (sooner, these days, it seems), contradictory evidence pops up its ugly head to refute it.

  In fact, back when i was still in (but in retrospect, on my way out), I actually acknowledged this to an agnostic co-worker of mine.
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  Island Man

  Faith is the assured expectation of what is wished for. The pretentious demonstration of unproven fantasies. For by means of it, the men of ancient times deluded themselves and others into religious servitude. Faith is the enobling of credulity. Faith is folly dressed up as a virtue. Faith is religion's shield against the fatal missiles of evidence and sound reasoning.

  By faith religious people perceive that each different species of animal was magically brought about by an invisible man in the sky, so that all the scientific evidence proving evolution has to be ignored and denied.

  By faith the religious mind is blinded so as not to see, far less admit to, scientific evidence contradicting the claims of ones cherished fantasies.

  By faith there exists myriads of contradicting religions, for by logic and evidence they would all be discarded as rubbish.

  Faith is adult-approved childish behavior; adult approved belief in imaginary friends; adult-approved make-believe.
  
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  Finkelstein

  Faith becomes self defeating when that faith is based upon wishful ideological concepts which aren't based upon practical evidence in reality .

  JWs waste their lives from the deceptive alluring tactics of a publishing house that creates an illusion of wanting emotive desire..
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  Ucantnome

  i thought faith was to do with trust
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  Island Man

  i thought faith was to do with trust

  Faith is about belief. Trust can be considered as a form of belief. To trust someone is to believe that they are dependable either as a safe person to be with or a dependable person to rely on. So So faith can involve trust. But trust is not the only kind of belief so faith cannot be limited to trust. Faith applies to any and every kind of belief that does not involve definitive detectable evidence.
  

  Faith is about believing without seeing. "The evident demonstration of realities that are not seen"; "Happy is he that believes without seeing."; "Walk by faith not by sight"

  Every time JWs and others say that faith in not blind, THEY ARE LYING against their own holy book!
  
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  Ucantnome

  Faith is about believing without seeing

  sounds like trust

  I have to admit i prefer the JW over atheists.
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  Xanthippe

  i thought faith was to do with trust

  Surely we trust people who come through for us. Trusting someone who has never been there for us when we needed him is just well .......religion.
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  Finkelstein

  I have to admit i prefer the JW over atheists.

  Would like to elaborate upon the position Ucantnome ?