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On the Notion of Faith

Druidus

Keeper of the Grove
I found an interesting blog that I thought a few people here might like.

On the notion of faith | Scary Reasoner

Here is an excerpt:

Faith. What a slippery word. What does it mean? Depends who you ask, and under what circumstances you ask them. I’m going to try to nail it down anyhow.

The word “faith” can be used innocuously, as a synonym of “trust.” “I have faith my friends won’t let me down” means essentially the same thing as “I trust my friends won’t let me down.”

But it has another meaning, a meaning unique to the word “faith.” “I have faith in Allah!” or “I have faith in Jesus!” or “I have faith in God!” for instance are a bit different, and, when pressed into a corner on questions of the existence of their various gods, theists, I have found, will often say something like, “well, it is a matter of faith.” As if this removes it from the sphere of rational inquiry, as if this is some sort of “get out of jail free” card they can play when their beliefs are shown to be unjustified.

So, in that sense,the best definition of faith I’ve been able to come up with is this:

To “have faith” is to believe something to a degree of certainty which exceeds what is warranted by the available evidence.

The (the? one version of the) Bible tells us that “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

If you convince yourself to be more certain about something than the evidence warrants, less doubtful than you really should be given the information you have, who are you fooling except yourself? Faith is inherently dishonest. It is dishonest because it involves lying to yourself about how certain you ought to be.

There've been some quite good posts there, but I'll stick to that one for now.

What are your thoughts on faith? To me, I find it, like the person who wrote that blog post, more of a vice than a virtue. People may think it provides them with some boon, but I think that's sort of a "mind-trap". I mean no offense to those who profess faith, it's just that from my point of view it is something that holds you back from using your reasoning skills fully, and locks you into a certain position until you shed it.

Anyway, hope you find the article interesting, as I did, and then share your thoughts on it.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I view faith as being equated more with gambling. You likely count on something as being certainly true, when in fact it certainly may not be so. ;0)

In face of things, I personally avoid the usage of faith as I don't adhere to such a concept anymore. Rather, it seems prudent to go with provisional truths as it seems more applicable IMC.
 

Monk Of Reason

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
Faith seems to be a fancy way of glorifying a belief or at least the concept of belief, without evidence or reason in favor of it.

So many christian based movies have characters struggle with their belief and then a Priest says "Thats why we have faith" as some kind of answer when there is no answer to be had. And then usually in these movies this is some kind of comfort to the person and they move on with life.
 

TheGunShoj

Active Member
I think the article that the OP pasted says it almost perfectly. I might add that faith is the excuse people give to believe in something without sufficient evidence or even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

I am of the opinion that even if God were proven to exist tomorrow without a shadow of a doubt, people who believe based on faith today are still wrong for believing in it because they are not rationally justified at this moment.
 
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