The Bible...trust in Faith or trust in Fact? (page 2)

Check_Your_Premises

So much for experiental faith!!!

(CYP fuels his jet, rather then face the possiblity that his entire worldview is based on the misfiring of a THC addled synapsis)

The streets will flow with the blood of the unbelievers!!!

Narkissos

I wonder if our brains, in the absence of instinct, are necessarily wired for faith?

I think you've got something here. It would be interesting to have a neurologist's and/or psychiatrist's opinion. I guess it is less absence than repression of instinct, which is substituted with symbolism and imaginarisation as soon as we learn language. We actually stop dealing with things and we deal with words and representations (cultural, arbitrary non-objects) instead. This is what Lacan called the symbolical cut, requiring from the speaking subject a basic sort of "faith" in the very non-fact of meaning -- starting with one's own personal name.

This principle of symbolism Lacan (who was of Catholic background) interestingly called "le Nom du Père" (the Name of the Father). And he once made a pun on this by his famous formula "les non-dupes errent" ("the non-dupe err"), pointing to the difficulty or impossibility to believe in meaning as the root of neuroses and psychoses (psychosis being basically, according to Lacan, forclusion of the Father's Name).

Btw, the exchange between CYP and Kid-A reminded me of something I have often thought: there may be no difference at all between a believer who is really aware of what believing is and an unbeliever who denies any idea of "God" (or whatever) claiming to be more than belief. Mysticism and atheism meet, inasmuch as the God of the mystic doesn't "exist" in the sense of being "someone" or "something" along with the "rest of reality".

OldSoul

CYP and kid-a, I think you are both describing the same thing: the moment when you stopped believing what others told you to believe and started believing for yourself. Kid-a, you think it was a loss of belief, but from your description it was actually the point at which you started to determine your beliefs.

Respectfully,
OldSoul

Check_Your_Premises

Btw, the exchange between CYP and Kid-A reminded me of something I have often thought: there may be no difference at all between a believer who is really aware of what believing is and an unbeliever who denies an idea of God claiming to be more than belief. Mysticism and atheism meet, inasmuch as the God of the mystic doesn't "exist" in the sense of being "someone" or "something" along with the "rest of reality".

I am to dumb to understand this, so I must fuel my jet for you as well!!

BUt seriously. Let me ask for clarification. My God, for me, exists outside of reality and that is like an atheist who claims that God can't exist without believing in Him/Her/It?

jgnat

Wow, I LOVE the way this thread is going! There's enough meat in here to feed me a dozen Sundays. Nobody tell Rex it's here, OK?

The grass became greener. The sky became bluer.

That happened for me the day my granddaughter was born. Tralala I was singin' that day.

Check_Your_Premises

Just to enhance the experience of my infidel threats, in my head I am using the voice of the Soup Nazi.

"I fuel my jet plane for you!!!"

bebu

Very enjoyable post, I agree!!!

I remember once reading the comment that if the Word of God is the Sword of the Spirit, then it is not the sword of man. It makes a tremendous difference...!

bebu

tetrapod.sapien

Btw, the exchange between CYP and Kid-A reminded me of something I have often thought: there may be no difference at all between a believer who is really aware of what believing is and an unbeliever who denies any idea of "God" (or whatever) claiming to be more than belief. Mysticism and atheism meet, inasmuch as the God of the mystic doesn't "exist" in the sense of being "someone" or "something" along with the "rest of reality".

yes, but most "non-believers", or atheists, do not claim their lack of belief to be more than belief. that would be illogical. it's a lack of belief. how would that work?

i agree, that when an atheist makes a positive assertion ("there is no god"), then they have strayed into the realm of belief, as it's impossible to know conclusively. a lack of belief, however, hardly garners it peerhood with mysticism, considering that mystics have no data for their assertions, and atheists (weak) are awaiting data, simply put.

i really do not go in for the whole post-modernist "it's impossible to truly know anything" school of thought. i am going to go find your other post about faith now.

cheers,

ts

jgnat

Still enjoying the thread..

So you are saying bebu, that the bible is not to be used as a weapon against others?

I am reminded of the proverb, "as iron sharpens iron.."

tetrapod.sapien

BTW, jgnat, nice write up!

Narkissos,

first of all, i like the idea. when i read it, i immediately went "ya, we do.". but after lying awake thinking about it for a while, i have a couple of thoughts.

A number of things can be backed up and secured to a certain extent within the social and technical arrangement which we call "world". But basically my relationship as a speaking subject ("I") to everything (starting with my own "body") rests on some sort of "faith". Every minute we all take millions of parameters, on which we have absolutely no control, for granted.

it's not technically faith, even with the above definition, as per what a religion practices faith as. with nature, we have technical data she freely gives up, that allows us to understand the predictability of nature itself, and us as part of it. so, for example, we understand astro-physics and chemistry. this allows us to not suspend security, but rather reaffirm data.

i get what you're saying, but the obvious fact that we live our lives (rather dangerously at times relative to an early man's understanding of nature) via the understanding of technical data, goes a long way in showing that we do not really have faith in the data, but just faith in our ability to interpret it. which is different. we know that the probability of molecular structure breaking down in a brand new car and it dissolving on the freeway, for instance, is astronomically low. that is simply just not reality. it's secure probability, not faith.

religion, however (as you well know), has no data to reaffirm regarding their beliefs. none yet, anyways. and so, they truly do live a life of faith.

if we mock that, we are mocking a lack of data, and their inability to interpret that lack of data. what does a lack of data regarding something usually mean? for most possible things, it means they don't exist. and we don't bother with it. if something gave us a suspicion born of economy that something may exist that we have not documented, then the probability of it's existence changes.

again, not faith, but probability. do i make sense? it's possible i don't. but i would like to understand further your thinking on the matter. i'll try to keep up.

We are all walking on the sea (and poking fun at "faith").

the sea is only a decimeter deep, as i see it.

ts

The Bible...trust in Faith or trust in Fact?

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