Why Faith?

[gweber41]

I agree with you Sir Doom. We always have evidence, and we either use that evidence to support our faith or we ignore it/explain it away. Very rarely will anybody believe something with absolutely no evidence. Even ancient mythology had a certain degree of evidence for it because other people believed in it. So to say that faith must be without any evidence is quite an overstatement to me.

 

[dandbj13]

So, if I look at a field of flowers and I see a multi-spectral display of floral insect attracting organs I am privy to evidence (seeing) that such a thing is before me therefore this is not faith.

Additionally, if I look at a field of flowers and I see a beautiful scene of colorful life designed purposefully by a loving creator for the viewing pleasure of his most loved creation, I am privy to the same evidence (seeing) that such a thing is before me therefore this is also not faith.

And I'm the one negating the term?

What you are describing is a data point in a hypothesis. Your example does not amount to evidence. You see the field of beautiful flowers, therefore, God. You see the data point, and jump straight to your conclusion. You do this without accumulating any evidence. You might call it a reason to believe, but it is not. It is simply a data point without context.

If you have been told a story that, when the ground shakes, that means the gods are angry and you need to throw a baby into a volcano. Well, when the ground shakes, you might say that is proof of your story. It is not. There is a huge difference between data points for further consideration and evidence. What you were describing is not evidence.

 

[Valjean]

The world is full of evidence, and anybody can find evidence that supports their worldview. However, for most things, we can't find enough evidence to completely prove something, and that is where faith comes in.

We can never find enough evidence to 'completely prove' something. Proof is a mathematical concept. The best we can do in the real world is draw reasonable inferences, as Jayhawker mentioned.
Faith, however, is often not even a reasonable inference, and it's not uncommon for faith to be strongest -- or at least most vehemently defended -- where evidence is least.

The original article quote 2 Corinthians 5:7 that says, "We live by faith not by sight." The author took that to mean Paul was saying we live without proof. That is not what he means; he merely meant you can't see God. In those days, many Christians would have known whether or not their message was true because it was based off of a historical event of which many of them were witnesses. That event was Jesus's resurrection from the dead. Either they knew it was a lie and were still willing to die for it (11 of the 12 Apostles were martyred according to church history) or they knew it to be true. I choose to believe it was true.

"Many of them were witnesses?" Who are these many? Were any of them disinterested parties? Are there any 1ry sources?
Certainly Paul wasn't a witness, nor was Timothy, if you think he had a hand in 2 Corinthians too.
Apocryphal, magical appearances in closed rooms or on the road are pretty poor evidence, and the incident at the tomb changes and becomes more remarkable with each retelling (gospel).
Intensity of faith is not evidence of veracity.

I agree with you Sir Doom. We always have evidence, and we either use that evidence to support our faith or we ignore it/explain it away. Very rarely will anybody believe something with absolutely no evidence. Even ancient mythology had a certain degree of evidence for it because other people believed in it. So to say that faith must be without any evidence is quite an overstatement to me.

But people have believed all sorts of things down through history that we do not believe today; things with no credible evidence whatever.
Other people believing in it is hardly evidence. Consensus is not evidence.

 

[Kemble]

So to say that faith must be without any evidence is quite an overstatement to me.

gweber, exactly. Yet it is evidence without context. An ideological/religious context is typically made-up by the believing community instead.

 

[gweber41]

We can never find enough evidence to 'completely prove' something. Proof is a mathematical concept. The best we can do in the real world is draw reasonable inferences, as Jayhawker mentioned.
Faith, however, is often not even a reasonable inference, and it's not uncommon for faith to be strongest -- or at least most vehemently defended -- where evidence is least.

I agree with you here. We always have to make some base assumption so we can never really prove anything. That assumption may be that I can trust my senses or it may be that there is a God. And I agree that faith is often not a reasonable inference. it seems where we disagree is just semantics--namely, what constitutes evidence. You appear to define evidence rather narrowly while Sir Doom and I define it more broadly.

"Many of them were witnesses?" Who are these many? Were any of them disinterested parties? Are there any 1ry sources?
Certainly Paul wasn't a witness, nor was Timothy, if you think he had a hand in 2 Corinthians too.
Apocryphal, magical appearances in closed rooms or on the road are pretty poor evidence, and the incident at the tomb changes and becomes more remarkable with each retelling (gospel).
Intensity of faith is not evidence of veracity.

The witnesses I was referring to were the Apostles as well as the other people to whom Jesus appeared (which the Bible records as over 500 in 1 Corinthians 15). Obviously, this is not enough evidence for somebody to believe without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, but that was not my point. My point was merely to state that some early Christians knew for sure whether or not Jesus died on the cross and rose again. Instead of believing in something they could not prove, they were either accepting the gospel because they knew it was true, or they were believing a lie for some other reason.

But people have believed all sorts of things down through history that we do not believe today; things with no credible evidence whatever.
Other people believing in it is hardly evidence. Consensus is not evidence.

It's may not be good evidence, but it is evidence nonetheless. I think you'd have to be a fool to believe something just because someone else believes it!

 

[Sir Doom]

What you are describing is a data point in a hypothesis. Your example does not amount to evidence. You see the field of beautiful flowers, therefore, God. You see the data point, and jump straight to your conclusion. You do this without accumulating any evidence. You might call it a reason to believe, but it is not. It is simply a data point without context.

If you have been told a story that, when the ground shakes, that means the gods are angry and you need to throw a baby into a volcano. Well, when the ground shakes, you might say that is proof of your story. It is not. There is a huge difference between data points for further consideration and evidence. What you were describing is not evidence.

Data point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What?

 

[Valjean]

The witnesses I was referring to were the Apostles as well as the other people to whom Jesus appeared (which the Bible records as over 500 in 1 Corinthians 15). Obviously, this is not enough evidence for somebody to believe without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, but that was not my point. My point was merely to state that some early Christians knew for sure whether or not Jesus died on the cross and rose again. Instead of believing in something they could not prove, they were either accepting the gospel because they knew it was true, or they were believing a lie for some other reason.

But how trustworthy are these apocryphal appearances, reported by a few dedicated proselytizers and spreading by hearsay and legend? How did these early Christians "know for sure?" I'll concede that they may have honestly and sincerely believed, but I also think their credence bar was set pretty low. There was a confirmation bias at work.

There's no shortage of wonders and miracles in the world's library of mythology. Why would you give this particular resurrection any more credence than any other religion's miracles? Should we give credence to all the Bible's miracles? and how do we deal with conflicting reports within the Bible itself?

 

[gweber41]

But how trustworthy are these apocryphal appearances, reported by a few dedicated proselytizers and spreading by hearsay and legend? How did these early Christians "know for sure?" I'll concede that they may have honestly and sincerely believed, but I also think their credence bar was set pretty low. There was a confirmation bias at work.

There's no shortage of wonders and miracles in the world's library of mythology. Why would you give this particular resurrection any more credence than any other religion's miracles? Should we give credence to all the Bible's miracles? and how do we deal with conflicting reports within the Bible itself?

If the Biblical account that 500 people could testify to seeing the resurrected Christ is true,I think it would be very hard to deny it actually happened. If 500 witnesses in court gave the same testimony, the jury is going to accept it even though it technically is possible they were all fooled by an illusion or something of the sort. I think the real question is, is the Biblical account honest and reliable? Whether or not you or anyone believes in the miracles of the Bible is a personal decision of faith that cannot be enforced on you.

Christianity, as with pretty much all faiths contains elements of the supernatural, things that cannot be verified through logic or science. You are a Hindu correct? In Hinduism there are countless instances of miraculous things occurring. For instance, if my understanding of a puja is correct, the god that a Hindu is worshiping comes and inhabits the murti. And then there are other ones too. The point is, both of our religions accept miracles not by saying "Based on the evidence, it has to be this way" but by saying "Based on the evidence, it could be this way, and by faith I will believe it." anda:

 

[Valjean]

A court would interview the witnesses privately to see if their stories matched.

Witness testimony to miracles can be found in a lot of religions. What makes the Christian witnesses any more reliable than those of any other faith?

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

If the Biblical account that 500 people could testify to seeing the resurrected Christ is true,I think it would be very hard to deny it actually happened. If 500 witnesses in court gave the same testimony, the jury is going to accept it even though it technically is possible they were all fooled by an illusion or something of the sort.

While US courts (as well as many other countries) still accept, and in fact often rely, on eyewitness testimony, psychological research has demonstrated that humans are not particularly reliable witnesses, especially in stressful, unusual situations, such as crimes, accidents, disasters, etc. The fact that the reported events and individual witnesses are separated from us by many centuries and many editors and interpreters, when combined with the psychologically demonstrated unreliability of humans as witnesses, means that it's just a story that we have to take on faith.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

A court would interview the witnesses privately to see if their stories matched.

Witness testimony to miracles can be found in a lot of religions. What makes the Christian witnesses any more reliable than those of any other faith?

Good investigators know that when the testimony of witnesses is too similar to each other, there is good reason to suspect something else is going on--some sort of collaboration and/or fabrication.

 

[Sir Doom]

Good investigators know that when the testimony of witnesses is too similar to each other, there is good reason to suspect something else is going on--some sort of collaboration and/or fabrication.

I suspect good investigators are suspicious of whatever they find. >.>