How does one acquire Faith? Are you born with it or can you be taught it? If you weren’t brought up in a religious setting how could you ever be expected to “get” Faith?
It seems prisons and soup kitchens produce more Christians than the Churches but I guess if you have a captive audience it would be easier.
My question is how does a person acquire that phenomonem called Faith?
I would suggest it most easily comes by brainwashing or demonizing the alternative (knowledge). This happened to me, but I got over it by trusting my instincts. Secondly, I think it most often happens by someone simply running out of luck and needing to replace it.
Well you have faith. Faith is simply where science fails. Does science say that the sun wont crash into the earth tomorrow? No it says the sun has a 99.9999999% chance of that not happening. The other % is faith:D
I think you can learn to trust and that builds faith. Prisoners need hope, but I don’t know if they have faith and practice it, or wouldn’t they come out of prison “reformed”?
Faith is not the opposite of knowledge, nor is it any sort of alternative to it. In fact, faith is the very basis of knowledge. As Spiritus Mundi has so eloquently argued so many times, every epistemology is faith-based.
We believe our axioms to be true. Basing our axioms on “evidence” does not relieve us from having based them on faith. For evidence based epistemologies, we must always believe that our evidence is sufficient.
As I’ve learned so well here at Straight Dope, especially from the best thinkers here who classify themselves as atheists, brainwashing and demonizing go both ways.
Simply by accepting it.
When a scientist has faith in an hypothesis that occurs to her, and that she believes rings true, she will set out to test it. Why? Because she believes that testing it will render it either true or false. She will publish her results and invite others to test her theory as well. Why? Because she believes in the scientific method.
We all have faith in our epistemologies.
Take Brian Bunnyhurt, for example, who has faith in his instincts. But by a particular precept in his own epistemology, which he might explain to us, he believes that “trusting his instincts” got him over his faith. It would seem that one is the kettle , and the other is the pot. In that context, what is the epistemological difference between trusting and having faith?
Cool question, and one I’ve always wondered about. Personally, I’m inclined to say that faith cannot be learned. But I take it on faith that the sun will rise each day, and I figure this is primarily based on science and experience (every day of my life), so I guess that particular faith is learned.
So, I guess, for me, faith based on science is relatively easy. It’s not much of a stretch to think the sun will rise as it has for the last 4 or 5 billion years. Anything else, especially religion, is impossible for me.
Libertarian, I cannot grasp your “Simply by accepting it.” line. I mean, I’ve heard this before, and I know it works with some people. But for me, it’s like me coming up to you and claiming, “I’m the ultimate being in the universe, greater than that which you call God (assuming this is your belief).” What would it take for you to accept this? I could further say, “I have people that follow me that will attest to this, and literature as well.” Being open-minded as you no doubt are, you’d probably look into it, but would you seriously consider it at the end of the day? I wouldn’t. I think I’d be mentally incapable of accepting it, whether I wanted to or not.
Clearly, for me, knowledge is the very basis of faith, not the other way around, as you wrote. I’m not trying to sound like an ass, and I agree with everything else you wrote, and I’d love to hear more because I really want to understand this issue. Is it possible for me to learn to have a faith based on (IMO) little knowledge? And, in all honesty, I had trouble following this part of your post:
It’s probably germane, so could you please explain it? (Keep in mind I’m a little dense with these things :))
I posted a response to your question but accidentally started a new thread with it. It is up on the board now.
It is written in the Bible somewhere about having as much faith as a mustard seed you can move a mountain. If there really is such a thing as Faith, why does this sort of thing not happen? Maybe all those claiming to have Faith really are just brainwashed. By the way, I don’t think the mustard seed is the smallest seed, have you ever tried to plant carrotts?
Faith is opposed to reason, by claiming a lack of knowledge, or by asserting the unknowable. I consider faith to be an anti-epistemology and based on a false assertion of God’s will. Assuming God, we can’t even know that he demands faith. It is a dangerously false assumption, which favors dogma. There is no reason or knowledge to have faith.
Assuming God, we can’t even know by the evidence if he is benevolent. If he is active, as dogma assumes, then he is evil or duplicitous. If he is inactive, as we may assume by his hidden nature, then activist dogma is evil.
Also, even if we assume God is testing us, it is absurd that anyone claim to know the true “answers” to this test. We cannot even blindly assume that one religion is favored over another, when it is God who allows people to openly misrepresent him, and it is absurd to assume one true religion when it is the case that only one religion usually governs a region by brutality.
It is likewise absurd to assume that the test is based on will-power against reason (faith) since this mind-set or attitude would be worthless in God’s presence. God would not need us to worship him in ignorance to be God (which would be an insult to any real God). In other words, faith is not only unnecessary, but always wrong.
So, what can we then know about God? So far, nothing. It is moot. It is not required. Furthermore, God does not need to create, control or use evil to be God. That is human gullibility to believe so. Assuming a test, we are capable of being tested as to our responsibility and integrity without any of these things, and at various intelligence levels. God can make robots to worship him, but he cannot force-create people to be courageous. Temporary evil can be self-generated by human selfishness. We merely need an environment where we can be free and cannot be forced to assume God’s will, and refrain from attempts that selfishly avert or cheat the test, which is the main goal of dogmatic religion. Dogma and superstition is then the failing of this assumed test itself. The nice thing is, this failure not only conforms with reason, but supports reason to rescue us from dogma.
Note: Instinct is natural, and to trust it implies being presented with a false epistemology that does not conform to instinct. If I were not presented with a mind-control mechanism, I wouldn’t have needed my instinct to “distrust” it.
Trust God. You can not have faith without trust.
For example, I might claim to have faith that I can fly. I may tell people I can fly, and try to convince others that they can fly, but until I leap off the top of a building I don’t have faith that I can fly in the true sense of the word.
Likewise, if you wish to stop doing evil, you must have faith that God will take care of you. But you do not really have faith if you do not stop doing evil.
I don’t think as many people stop doing evil as you may have been lead to believe.
Oops, I really wanted to include my sig on that last one…
Flyboy:
Sure you can, as indicated by this:
Same same.
Bryan Bunnyhurt:
Do you assert that A is A?
Brian Bunnyhurt:
By the way, what is the basis of your saying that faith claims a lack of knowledge? On the contrary, faith is exactly a claim of having knowledge. Just like your faith that A is A, or that you exist, neither of which you can prove.
If someone simply says, “I know God and Jesus have ABC properties and XYZ relations based on my faith,” this is problematic. I am fairly accustomed to encountering such people and not only do they say these things, they also claim faith in the person that originally said it (claiming he was inspired) which not only assumes this process is valid, but is an assertion they can never know (nor is the assertion derived from reasons, but traditions).
Which begs the question again. How does the person who asserted the relations and properties of God and Jesus know these things? By faith? By feeling? Or a visitiation perhaps? If the latter, how does he/we know it wasn’t a hallucination, a vision or dream? Taking someone’s word for anything is never knowledge if it directly applies to us, even assuming the sincerest people (who could be mentally ill or good liars). If so-called religious “knowledge” derives from a witness or feeling while around a person who has strong faith or “knowledge” that Jesus lives, then this is nothing more than pure emotionalism (at best) or demogoguery (at worst).
By the way, there are no reasons which support the divine validity of any personality cult. Faith is asserted to avoid this fact and encourage one to commit their energies. Because knowledge and reason are related as data and process, this is why faith claims to be both knowledge and process (an easy flip-flop that confuses most people). If we convince someone to even pray once to prove an assertion, then by the power of suggestion, they have already committed themselves into wanting to believe it. This is a false religious experience and is always associated with fraud (ie, demands to spread the faith by appealing to children or ignorance).
Sometimes faith is so directly opposed to reasoning and the knowledge it affords (from making sense of related phenomena), that national religions have attempted to limit, deny or place a ban upon those who would advocate reason or knowledge or science. This was/is called heresy, or deviation from dogma.
Note: If faith were to purport to be knowledge, then it could be disproven by the assertion. If you say “I know God exists” then it cannot be said that you also know it by reason. That’s why dignified, established religions don’t like to claim knowledge, because it voluntarily weakens their position without someone even disproving God (and by the fact that other religions also claim the knowledge by different dogma). Only a desperate cult claims knowledge. Currently, some forms of virulent faith attempt to claim that science is a belief and that the bible is the true scientific knowledge. This is called fundamentalism and is a disease of the lowest character.
Ignorance is an equally debilitating disease.
There are many people who believe in God (or not) based on an epistemology of reason. There are also many people who believe in God (or not) based on an experiential epistemology. And there are people who believe in God (or not) based on manifold eclectic epistemologies.
I recommend that you examine what faith is, and how it is as much a part of your own epistemology as it is mine.
If you are talking to me, you need to worry more about faith denying experience, knowledge and reason instead of supporting it (which backwardly assumes faith). It does not follow by faith that God is necessary, benevolent, active, extant, atemporal or even singular. Claim all you want, it is subjective and more associated to the domain of fraud and delusion. As such, faith leads us to spend more energy developing opinionated defenses of cults and religions than in personal development, hence it is always bad faith if it is a hope for something to be real.
[ul]
[li]Lib and bunny are using different definitions of the word faith.[/li][li]Accepting faith is easier said than done.[/li][li]Trust as a prerequisite of faith is indistinguishable from faith as a prerequisite of trust.[/li][li]In reference to my stance on epistemologies: using teh word faith to describe both the assertion of a first element and a valid epistemological method creates a confusion or terms.[/li][/ul]
Brian Bunnyhurt:
Is yours the only experience? Have you a proprietary claim on knowledge? Are you a reasonable man, whereas I am unreasonable? Were I to deny God’s existence, then I would be “denying experience, knowledge and reason.”
Your consciousness (like mine) is a closed universe; I cannot experience yours, nor you mine. I accept you at your word that your consciousness precludes the existence of God based upon your instinct epistemology. Whether you accept me at my word that my consciousness Ockhamly requires God’s existence based upon my experiential epistemology is up to you.
But remember that your own instinct is subjective. To project that subjectivity onto others (like me, for instance) is a fallacy.
Spiritus:
Quite likely. The definition I use is, I believe, pretty much the standard one. Faith is the belief in something unprovable.
That depends. Faith in what? If what confronts you fits well within your epistemological model, then acceptance is easy; otherwise, acceptance is problematic.
You might readily accept that you exist, so long as your epistemology will allow you to state premises that you need not prove, as in deduction. But if your existence is the very thing you must prove, and your epistemology will not allow you to beg the question, then you must induce your existence, and accept its truth on faith.
Yes, in fact the Greek “pistis” in the New Testament is manifoldy translated in the Amplified as “faith”, “trust”, and “reliance”.
Chicken and egg. You must assert a valid epistemological method in order to assert a first element. That makes your first element the assertion of a valid epistemology, which is what you must have done anyway had you decided that a valid epistemology must have preceded a first element.
It is my view that epistemologies work best when suited for their purpose. Objective observation is well defined by induction. Syllogistic implication is well suited to deduction. Experimental verification fits nicely with the scientific method. Subjective experience lends itself easily to identify that which is beautiful or ugly.
But if we induce exclusively, we will encounter statistical anomolies. If we only deduce, we will not learn anything new. If we cannot construct an experiment to contain our elements, then we cannot know. And if we project our subjective experience onto others, then we have fooled only ourselves.
Originally, I came to my belief in God by way of an evidence epistemology. In my opinion, the evidence of His existence outweighed evidence to the contrary. It was in a moment of realization (you’ve seen my story before) that my epistemology shifted to a revelatory one. Over time, it has settled into an epistemology of experience. In that experience, I have learned of Love. It is my belief that that epistemology (Love) best fits the knowledge scope of the God Whom I worship.
We are not discussing faith by itself, that’s why I can have faith in humans or my own instincts and argue against faith in gods or demons. The “implication” is that you are advocating a real doubt in reason, a doubt in science, and a doubt in humanity, to have faith in the idea of God, and by extension a guy named Jesus.
You perhaps think you can assert faith as a knowledge, then conveniently add the words God and Jesus. If someone said to have faith in Satan as redeemer, or faith against one God, it somehow wouldn’t apply to your argument, because it is faith specific.
Again, faith in God only applies within specifics, that why Christians make a big deal about it. To them, it is faith in God’s specific representatives that provides this need, ie, faith in dogma.
If you say we need faith by itself without anything attached, this is where the idea breaks down to an absurdity. What for?
In other words, you are selling faith to sell a personality cult. You can’t make your point without Jesus or someone else that faith is needed to accept the divine realm.
I would still wonder that “faith in science” is really what all of us have.
That is, accepting something as true based on whatever we use to believe in something in lack of a better alternative is probably not faith as it is sommonly used or understood. Accepting it as true period, because it cannot be proved, is faith.
I don’t know that SM ever said epistemology is faith-based; certainly it can be, and certainly it is (if it follows logic) unable to be verified, but again: accepting something as true in lack of a better alternative is not quite the same thing as accepting something as true because we say it is true and that’s that. (Really, though, epistemologies as SM explains have no truth value)
As brian said very well, faith is an empty term until it is applied to something. Faith in science is surely possible; faith in Jesus Christ is possible; faith in Eris is possible. To extrapolate and abstract “faith” from these examples assumes that, in all things, one has faith. I do not think that is a valid extrapolation because I do not have “faith” in science in the same way one has “faith” in Jesus Christ. I dont think that those faiths are the same. As well, as I’ve already said, it isn’t even necessary to have faith in science. Surely anyone who met God in heaven (assuming God exists and one can meet Him) wouldn’t have faith anymore either in His existence, but then the faith moves into, as jmull said, trust in what you think God does.
I don’t think, as asmodean said, that the little 0.00001 bit is faith for all people; some of us do believe that that 0.0001 percent chance is that the earth will go crashing into the sun. I am not 100% sure of anything. But that is because I don’t have faith (except in the second law of thermodynamics, which I see evidence of everywhere ;)).
OK, I’ve rambled enough.