Faith- It's not what you think
While studying for a test recently, I had a thought which perplexed me for a while. So many people appear to call the act of believing in some form of deity 'faith'. While faith seems to fit this part alright, it isn't limited to a religious act. Faith can represent a number of daily activities, but it happens to go unnoticed majority of the time.
The technical definition of faith is: Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.(noun) You put faith into your driving, cooking, and even your ability to walk. You don't doubt them, because they've never failed you before. (If they have or do, I'm sorry) Faith isn't just for those who believe in a God, but for those who believe that there isn't. If you aren't scared out of your wits every time you go to bed, than you probably have faith that you'll wake up in the morning!
Saying that having faith is reserved for those who are religious is absurd in some sense. After all, every one has faith! All though it may not be in the same things, every single person puts their trust in one thing or another. Faith is also a feeling, as well as a concept. You feel faith when you trust or place your confidence in someone/thing. The concept of faith would be that belief that is there when you are not conciously making it a choice, even though it's still there.
Do you believe everyone has faith or am I just being ridiculous?
The technical definition of faith is: Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.(noun) You put faith into your driving, cooking, and even your ability to walk. You don't doubt them, because they've never failed you before. (If they have or do, I'm sorry) Faith isn't just for those who believe in a God, but for those who believe that there isn't. If you aren't scared out of your wits every time you go to bed, than you probably have faith that you'll wake up in the morning!
Saying that having faith is reserved for those who are religious is absurd in some sense. After all, every one has faith! All though it may not be in the same things, every single person puts their trust in one thing or another. Faith is also a feeling, as well as a concept. You feel faith when you trust or place your confidence in someone/thing. The concept of faith would be that belief that is there when you are not conciously making it a choice, even though it's still there.
Do you believe everyone has faith or am I just being ridiculous?
Comments (70)
The truth is we don't really have any insider knowledge about how the universe works. We just kind of have to reverse engineer knowledge from our surroundings. You do have to put faith in what you hope will work, but you also shouldn't put faith in things you know won't. I don't put faith in God coming down and curing my sinus infection and flu right now because that is unprecedented in both my life and all reliable documentation. I do have faith in the antibiotics I'm taking because I've taken them before and so have many others.
Everyone has to put faith in something, but it is in the best interest of everyone to put our faith into things that we have worked to prove and have a good chance of actually helping us.
Fath is simply something we believe and understand.
Most people have fath in what they see some in logic, ext. I would think it would be extremely hard to find someone without faith in something.
Faith is precisly NOT a reason for believing in something. It is the answer you give only if you have no reason. If you had a reason, you would just say that.
So the “faith” in god is different than “faith” in your driving. The latter is just something people say, a figure of speech.
When asked why someone believes in their driving, they can cite reasons. When someone is asked why they believe in god, they might have reasons for believing in god as well. If that reason is “faith”, they are confused. That is not a reason, it is the answer given when you do not have a reason.
This is what puts the claims “i have faith in the sun coming up tomorrow” or “i have faith in my wifes fidelity” in a different catagory than “i have faith in god”. The former is referencing their belief not their reasons for that belief. The latter references their reason for belief (from their confusion they fail to see that it is in fact not a reason).
When someone claims everyone has faith in something, this is merely an attempt to muddy that distinction so that all belief has equal merit or is in the same catagory so they no longer have to justify their belief in their imaginary fairy tale friend. Excepting of course, for people who cite actual reasons for believing in their imaginary fairy tale friend, as opposed to people who cite “faith” as their reason.
I think you’re basically correct, but there’s more that can be said.
First of all, it is indeed correct to say that faith in a broad sense is fundamental to the social order. Currencies, contracts, insurance policies, and so on, all depend in some sense on faith - faith that the other parties to the contract will observe it, and so on.
The Buddhist word for faith is ‘sraddha’ meaning ‘to place one’s heart upon’. So it’s a sense of trust or confidence. However it doesn’t have quite the same connotation of ‘unquestioning trust’ that it does in Christianity (Protestantism especially).
But I think a deeper issue is the role that ‘faith’ plays in Western culture, in particular. This goes back to the big historical conflicts over orthodoxy and heresy. The issue there was, not only that you were expected to have faith in particular religious doctrines and principles, but that if your opinion was deemed incorrect, you could be punished for it. Recall the 30 Years War which was marked by appalling slaughter initially along religious sectarian fault lines, not to mention the Inquisition. Then also consider the emphasis that Protestant Christianity put on ‘faith alone’ as the only means to salvation. I think these factors have had huge influence on how Western culture appraises the matter as these are the kinds of conflicts that drove the adoption of secularism as a guiding philosophy.
(You might find this OP interesting.)
Indeed. Just today I saw a guy riding in a narrow bike lane while hundreds of total strangers raced by at 60mph just a few away. Now THAT is faith!
It's trust or confidence in something in lieu of other evidence/support for it.
Well, I define ''faith'' as belief sans evidence. This is probably the conventional meaning of ''faith''.
If so then you violate the fundamental principle of rationality which is to believe only on evidence. Basically, you're irrational if faith is your way to truth. In fact the path of faith will probably take you away from the truth.
When you cite examples of faith-based behavior in our lives you forget that they actually aren't so. For instance I believe my car will take me to my destination because it always has and there's no reason why it should fail. No faith involved here. Simple reasoning with justifications for your belief.
Religious faith is an extreme sort of attitude wherein you don't provide evidence for theism and also refuse to acknowledge counterevidence. This, I think, is being dangerously irrational.
...a "belief" is merely a blind guess disguised by the use of the word "belief." That is all it is...a blind guess that at least one god exists...or that no gods exist.
"Faith" is merely INSISTING your blind guess is correct.
Mostly that "insisting" is done on the theistic side of the question...which is why "faith" is more closely associated with theistic sentiments.
BUT...if someone on the non-theistic side makes a blind guess that no gods exist...and insists that the blind guess is correct...then "faith" applies there also.
The problem with that for religious belief is that it undermines the conviction/commitment of it. If you only believe because there's a logical argument or proof, then your belief isn't as significant, and your belief can also crumble if the logical argument is shown to have problems.
That's why faith as something sans other evidence is cherished in religion.
Yes but belief sans evidence is a modern derivation that had nothing to do with the word in its original form. Wherever the word pistis appeared in the NT, it carried with it these significations (assurance, persuasion, trust) which were known to the Greeks. The nuance and richness of the word was lost through transliteration somewhere along the way. I think its worth getting at the etymological roots. The title of the thread is: faith - it's not what you think. I'm inclined to agree.
If you agree that faith in the earlier sense undermines conviction/commitment/significance of religious belief, why would you think that the other sense is something we should go back to and that the original sense is more nuanced and richer?
What would make the original sense different from belief in something based on logical argumentation or empirical evidence?
If I was going to go by faith, or just faith, then I would go with something more creative: I have faith that the world is a giant floppy green giraffe called "Philip", and we are all fleas on the giraffe who dream of being humans on a planet called "Earth".
It is both true and trivial that there is faith in a sense besides religious faith.
Yes, Ive been following that and some of your other discussions. Word of advice: just lead with a good breakdown of good ol’ Dunning Kruger. Everything you need to know will be included in the responses and you’ll waste less time. ;)
Lol, ill be less entertained so on 2nd thought just keep going.
The dictionary describes faith in two senses.
Faith
1. Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
"this restores one's faith in politicians"
2. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
-a system of religious belief.
"the Christian faith"
-a strongly held belief or theory.
"An Atheists faith"
I copied and pasted this directly from an online version of Merriam Webster's Dictionary.
I said what I said based on this entry. If you care to disprove the dictionary, which is based on logic, go ahead. But you all put faith in your houses that they aren't going to fall over and crush you, because your house has never failed you before. You completely trust your house, therefore you have faith in it. You don't necessarily have faith in the second sense, but you definitely do have it in the first.
I agree that it's reasonable to use the terms belief and faith as synonyms, and that in this sense everyone "has faith" in something or other.
I disagree that "faith" always means or entails "complete trust", despite the fact that this is one of several definitions in the dictionary. That particular sense seems especially ill-suited if we allow that faith can be a matter of degree: It seems nonsense to distinguish between having a little bit of complete trust and a whole lot of complete trust. Rather, a little faith is a little trust, and a lot of faith is a lot of trust. I'm not sure what "complete trust" is supposed to mean in this context, especially if trust is in principle revocable as events unfold.
I might not say that faith "is also a feeling". I prefer to say that the fact of faith -- of belief, of expectation, of trust -- is associated or from time to time may be associated with feelings. Hume suggests that belief is correlated with something like a "feeling" of belief. We might say there is "something it's like" to believe, to expect, to assert, to remember. Of course there is a difference between "having" a belief and "entertaining" or "affirming" a belief; and we needn't be aware of a belief as such in order to be said by others to have it. Beliefs are often ascribed in the third-person in light of an agent's behavior.
Preachers and theologians sometimes speak of "pure faith". One way to take this phrase is to suggest that pure faith is or entails belief without rational justification, or perhaps regardless of rational justification. That's been one traditional refuge for the faithful, whereby one may wave off embroilment in the interminable controversies that have churned through Western culture since the Enlightenment in the wake of philosophical anxieties about an alleged conflict between reason and science, on the one hand, and morality and religion, on the other.
Here too we recognize use of the same phrase in secular contexts. A stranger makes an extraordinary promise. I find myself believing he will come through -- or I decide to trust that he will come through -- though I know there's at least as much reason to expect the opposite outcome. I might say my belief in the promise is a matter of "pure faith".
Not sure of what you were trying to say here, but, respectfully as possible, you missed.
In classical Greek science...the Earth was a relatively flat disc in the center of the universe with the Sun, moon and stars circling it.
Your post was irrelevant to the points I made. Not sure why you put everyone altogether in that as if your short response could adequately cover so many peoples points, but at least I can give a clear answer to your question. Yes, you are being ridiculous.
No I wasn't, I can see that now. Why I put every one together was so that you could see what my final conclusion was concerning this post. I am now convinced that either 1. The dictionary had a typo
or 2. Faith is miscommunicated sometimes.
Yes, I see that putting too many people in that was not exactly reasonable, but I wanted to get the message out.
Dictionaries primarily tell us how words are used...not what they mean.
If you were to look up "curse" "profanity" "vulgarity" "swearing" in a dictionary...you might easily find that they are considered synonyms.
They are not...each has a meaning which is rather specific...but they are used interchangeably.
In any case, the words "belief" and "believe" are used in a religious discussion context as a disguise for blind guess.
By both sides of the issue.
A person saying, "I believe in God" (a form I detest) what they actually are saying is, "In the absence of any reliable, unambiguous evidence upon which to base a meaningful guess...I am blindly guessing that at least one god exists...and that god happens to be the God I worship."
"Faith"...is insisting that that blind guess is correct.
Same thing applies to the other side of the issue. A person saying, "I do not believe in God" (another form I detest) is actually saying one of two things. Either:
a) In the absence of any reliable, unambiguous evidence upon which to base a meaningful guess...my blind guess is that the god being discussed does not exist...or...
b) "In the absence of any reliable, unambiguous evidence upon which to base a meaningful guess...my blind guess is that no gods exist. (More often the latter than the former.)
"Faith" for these people is the insistence that their blind guess is correct.
Think about it. You'll see that I am correct.
Quoting OpinionsMatter
:brow: Isn't the dictionary supposed to be reporting word usage?
Isn't the rest of our lives based on popular opinion? It is based on logic in the sense that everyone else uses it that way, is one person's opinion going to change it? Absolutely not. Yes it reports word usage, but is it not us, as humans, who dictate what is and isn't considered to be the 'right way' to use those words?
Faith is a way to quit using, "God given" power of Reason and Logic, and cause the faithful to embrace doctrines that moral people reject.
The God of the OT says, “Come now, and let us reason together,” [Isaiah 1:18]
How can literalists reason on God when they must ignore reason and logic and discard them when turning into literalist?
Those who are literalists can only reply somewhat in the fashion that Martin Luther did.
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”
This attitude effectively kills all worthy communication that non-theists can have with theist. Faith closes their mind as it is pure idol worship.
Literalism is an evil practice that hides the true messages of myths. We cannot show our faith based friends that they are wrong through their faith colored glasses. Their faith also plugs their ears.
Regards
DL
Nice commentary. I was with you right up until the end.
Then it got a bit murky...with that, "We cannot show our faith based friends that they are wrong..."
Did you mean to write, "We cannot show our faith based friends that they MAY BE wrong?"
Or did you mean what you wrote?
If you meant what you wrote...we part company.
If your faith tells you they are all real, and logic and reason does not tell you that your belief is completely wrong, then you are allowing your faith in the supernatural to guide you instead of logic and reason.
If you are doing that then I do not mind parting company with you are you have allowed your mind to go into intellectual and moral dissonance.
If you are that then I will give you cab fare to leave ASAP. You, as this link indicates, are a disgrace to the human race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjxZ6MrBl9E&feature=related
Regards
DL
What you said makes sense to me.
I am NOT a theist.
IF you were saying what you wrote...you are essentially saying that theists are "wrong." That means you are saying "there are no gods."
If you are saying that...we are not in agreement. I do not know if there are any gods or not...and neither do you.
In the meantime, I thought I was speaking with an adult. Apparently I was incorrect. I apologize for the mistake.
I am going by the evidence. Try it.
Quoting Frank Apisa
Accepted, you pathetic piece of garbage.
Regards
DL
That's right. He's NOT a theist. He's a WEAK ATHEIST.
"The evidence!"
What a laugh.
Identify two pieces of unambiguous evidence pointing one way or the other on the issue.
When you find you cannot...
...identify one!
I am not here for that.
I believe this quote and only go personal in a reciprocal way.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt
If someone is a fool, I prefer to not bother with them.
Regards
DL
Awww...are your feeling hurt?
C'mon, grow up.
Understood, my lady.
Does not compute.
My guess is you do not.
I do not understood? :chin:
Should have been "feelings."
I made a mistake. You are correct in pointing it out to me.
Sorry for the mistake.
Okay!
I still do not understood. What are "feelings"?
The absence of evidence in favour of the existence of God is absence of evidence in favour of reasonable grounds for belief, and that is evidence for rejection. If you're okay with abandoning reason, then go ahead and believe in God, if you can. I cannot, because my reason prevents me. The alternative is called either atheism or agnosticism, but it's the same difference in this sense, although some people get their nickers in a twist over the terminology.
I understand.
Okay.
Yeah...like the lack of evidence that there are any sentient beings on any planet circling the nearest 25 stars to Sol...
...is evidence that no sentient beings live on any of those planets.
Good grief.
What are you doing in a philosophy forum?
You must not have read what I said about what the evidence was for, or you just thought that it would be entertaining to attack a straw man. Perhaps you had blind faith that I meant something completely different to what I wrote. Are you a theist, perchance?
Faith are the coalesced ideas. Or perhaps the coalescing of ideas.
Take gravity, for instance: we fall down when risen above the ground. This happens because of the faith in that what has risen, must fall.
We can fly using planes and helicopters: it is the faith in scientific machines that makes them fly.
They are true miracles: you can even tie up a profounder disbeliever (say, a mormon) and ship him in a plane to China. He will fly, oh yes.
Consider the imperfect miracle of not being bitten by a snake: the snake might be accustomed to your handling, and will not bite. Your miracle is hidden in coincidence and "could be"s. Then faith is not what makes the miracle work, but what the miracle works in you: certainty about the impossible.
You're joking, right? Bodies do not fall to the ground because we have faith that they must. That's absurd.
Quoting Louco
Haha! You're funny. I could've sworn I had filled the engine with fuel, not faith.
What is not absurd? That small balls hit each other and that builds reality? Or that spirit becomes flesh?
Madness is just another option. Up to you to take it.
The former is not absurd. It is the result of a wealth of scientific evidence. The latter is religious mumbo-jumbo.
Quoting Louco
No, it isn't a choice for me. I cannot help but follow where reason leads me. Religious faith is just madness with widespread approval.
You chose materialism, and I respect your choice. There are those who chose religion, and I respect their choice.
But I do find it disrespectful to confound these things. Religious folk are the stiffeners of thought; madmen are facilitators of imagination. When you say religion is madness, you make a disservice to madness.
That sounds like madness as put by a romantic poet. True madness isn't quite reflected in your pretty poetry.
Quoting Louco
What's to respect about it?
Quoting Louco
It is somewhat of a paradox, it seems. They get carried away by their imagination, yet they're usually very unimaginative. They're usually a member of an organised religion, and feel the need to dogmatically conform.
I am NOT a theist...although I do not "believe" there are no gods.
And I am NOT an atheist...although I also do not "believe" there is at least one god.
In the name of baby jesus this is getting SO tiresome.
Not believing in at least one god is what atheism means! You have just declared you are not an atheist by describing your atheism!
Help me Odin, Zeus, Thor, Oprah, Hubberd...fucking anyone take my hand and guide me to where something so simple can be understood! Fuck!
Is it just the internet?! Please oh holy god of holyness, tell me its just the internet and this isnt what passes for a critical thinking person in the world at large.
Phew. Done. Carry on, sorry you had to be the back breaking straw frank, but THINK about what you are saying!
No it doesn't.
No, I haven't.
There are people who "believe" there is at least one god; there are people who "believe" there are no gods. I am not part of either group.
I am not a theist...and I also am not an atheist.
I do think about what I am saying, Dingo. And you are just wrong here.
I am NOT a theist...and I also am NOT an atheist.
It is not a zero sum game. One does not have to be one or the other.
Forget your logic. He simply does NOT like BEING CALLED an ATHEIST. Or a THEIST. It TRIGGERS him.
AND DON'T ACCUSE HIM OF SHOUTING!!! HE'S JUST EMPHASISING!!!!!!!111!!!!!!1!!ONE!!
Someone IS being triggered, S...YOU.
Don't let me get to you so easily.
And call me anything you want. I am simply telling you I am not a theist nor an atheist. I also am not a Martian...but if you want to call me a Martian...go for it. I'll just tell you I am not.
I know, I just had to let the steam out a bit or my head would explode. After reading through the responses in the “kill 1 billion” thread Ive began wondering why im here at all. Screw the “forest for the trees”, I cant see the worthwhile discussion for the philosophically brain dead. What are you guys up to in the “Morality” thread? 64 pages? Astounding fortitude sir. I do not have it in me.
Yes, you've already made it crystal clear to everyone that you do not identify as either. Congrats.
No! Don't go. You're one of the few people who talks real sense around here. It is reassuring. But at the same time, I completely understand the feeling, brother.
Thanks.
No u!
Quoting S
There is no "u" in thanks.
Thanks, I appreciate that. There seems so few sense makers here that ive wondered if it isnt just a matter of the medium or miscommunication of some kind but...how in the fuck can you know when most everyones not making sense!? Lol
I dont even care if some is ignorant or dumb, who isnt ignorant or dumb about something, but its not recognising ones own limitations or not having the humility to have an open mind to being wrong I find truly irksome. Plus, I don’t WANT to sound like an arrogant prick but...so many being so wrong. Whats a guy to do?
Okay, thunks.
Beat 'em over the head with logic and dry wit. They might never sense, but it feels good to beat people over the head.
Yer Velcomb.