Does everyone have faith in something?

Great Debates
41

It also goes to show that touch typing’s more difficult than it looks;) Anyway, to steer the focal point of our discussion away from my typo, I do not claim to have all the answers. I don’t know anything about quantum physics for example. I have only dipped my toe in the ocean of knowledge and I know this. However the argument that I have to acknowledge Gods existence because I don’t know everything and therefore cannot say that I know that God doesn’t exist is one with which I do not concur. One might just as easily say that the universe is an alien experiment and we’re all living in a test tube, if we’re not prove me wrong etc…
I am not an atheist, I am an agnostic and whilst the distinction between the two may, to some, appear to be a trifling one it still does exist. It is my understanding that atheists put their ‘faith’ for want of a better word in this context, in the power of science and know that there is no God. I, on the other hand, do acknowlegde that in the future it may be possible for me to become reconciled with my belief in God, I said as much in my first post

However, at this moment of writing I do not think there is a God, there was a time when I believed unquestioningly but subsequent events which I would feel more comfortable keeping private led me to think differently. Given my new perspective, the power of my own mind and decision making process is really all I can have faith in. The title of your OP is Does everyone have faith in something well that is what I have faith in, myself. You can choose to translate this as simple self belief or just shift of the faith I used to have in God, however, when asked the quetion posed by your OP it is the only relatively relevant definition of faith to which I can aspire. Faith in myself.

Anyway, moving on. You also said in your OP that

I don’t think so. Bad things happen just as often as good things and on a wider scale, too. Amorality, Flagitiousness, death, disease and destruction are all around us. To me it all seems to random, so haphazard that to suggest an overwhelming force of good, to imply that there IS an order guiding the chaos is one which is at cross-purposes to the events themselves, events which would prompt such a supposition in the first place. I think that “an overwhelming force of good” is, like my previous definitions of chance and luck, a man made construct, designed to give comfort to those who fall victim to death disease etc… If you believe it and it helps you to believe it then all power to you but I personally don’t believe in it.

Also

I do not have faith in the common sense of fellow men. It is my experience that a large amount of people don’t posess any common sense at all. If they did then why is Adam Sandler so popular :slight_smile:

42

As I said earlier today, there is one of me and many of you. I can not respond to everyone without staying on line more than I prefer too. Please show me what I’m supposed to address and I will try to do so.

I agree.

As I thought I explained in a previous post, my definition of the word faith is the “substance of things hoped for” as given in the book of Hebrews. I do realize there are more definitions of the word and more usages for “faith” other than what I’m addressing, but the purpose of this thread is to convince anyone who will listen that they have a God given desire to believe in Him and they do have faith in something.

43

Then I have to ask again:

Why did you ask the question in the first place if you had no intention of listening to any answers that contradicted your pre-set answer?

44

Far be it for me to butt in here, but if you’re asking someone if they have faith and they say no, how are you going to disagree with them? Certainly you can disagree on definitions of faith. But if by using their definition of faith they have none, how can you say they actually do?

Forgive me for not seeing how you’re taking the position, in the OP, that everyone has a God-given desire to believe in a deity. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding you here.

45

jenkinsfan said:

I am shocked – shocked to hear that! :rolleyes:

We aren’t assuming force and matter. We can examine them. Don’t believe me? OK, go outside. Go maybe 10 yards away from your house. Now run directly at your outside wall as fast as you can, until you hit it.

Know what you just did? You examined force and matter. And I hope it knocked some sense into you.

Then why did you begin this thread by asking if people have faith? Just so you could preach to us when we said “no”?

Why should we need faith for those questions? Who even says we need to answer those questions?

They are important questions for you. Not for me. Not for a lot of other people. Just because you need a crutch doesn’t mean everybody does.

And that’s not what anybody has said. I don’t have that faith at all. I do not believe that anything happens once we’re dead (other than being turned into mulch). But that is different than having faith that nothing happens. I know the difference is probably too subtle for somebody like you to understand, though…

46

You know, this has got to be about the most irritating thing Christians do. It’s not just that you say “We’re right and you’re wrong”. Hell, everyone does that. (By definition, if I hold opinion A to be correct, then I’m implicitly asserting that everyone who holds opinions other-than-A is incorrect to the extent their opinions differ from A.) It’s not even that Christians try to persuade people who hold differing opinions of the correctness of Christianity. No–the most irritating thing Christians do is to run around telling everyone that deep down they really truly acknowledge the rightness of the Christian view of things–we don’t really not believe in your God, we just reject him, because we’re all such miserable sinnners.

Hey, jenkinsfan, c’mon, admit it: you don’t really believe all that nonsense, right? You’re just suppressing the truth, which you know is the truth deep in your mind, that the Bible is errant and false.

You are defining faith as it is defined in Hebrews 11:1–“Faith gives substance to our hopes, and makes us certain of realities we do not see.” Alternately, this can be given as
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”; or “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”; or “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”. Now this sounds to me like faith by my definition 2 from above. Before we go any further than this, I’d like jenkinsfan to tell me if he takes this passage to mean that Christian faith in God is “belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence” or “a confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing”? Of course I have confident beliefs in various things; but I try not to have beliefs without logical proof or material evidence.

47

As to faith and the issue of creationism, let’s look af four scenarios:

1. Both creationism and “evolution” (i.e., modern cosmology, modern geology, and modern biology) are based solely on “faith”, with faith meaning “belief without logical proof or material evidence”.

I reject this completely, because all of the things lumped together under the heading of “evolution” are based on an honest attempt to evaluate the material evidence at hand in a logically consistent way.

2. “Evolution” is based on faith, whereas creationism is based on material evidence.

Naturally, I reject this view even more vigorously than I do #1.

*3. Creationism is based on faith; “evolution” (modern science) is based on evidence.

  1. Both creationism and modern science are based on evidence and reason.*

Now, as far as it goes, I’m willing to accept for the sake of argument either position 3 or 4. If you take position 3, then naturally there’s no point in arguing with you–your position by definition does not rest on logical proof, and therefore cannot be logically disproved, or material evidence, and therefore cannot be refuted by presenting evidence against it. The only thing to argue about with a position 3 creationist is to firmly insist that modern science is not itself simply a rival faith-based system. As far as I can tell, position 3 is the most accurate one, but there are various different types of creationists out there. Note that when I say I’m willing to accept point 4 for the sake of argument I don’t mean that I think creationism is correct, or is an “equally valid alternative” to modern science. One may hold a view based on evidence and reason and be incorrect, because of errors in your reasoning process, or because you don’t have all the facts, or because you are misevaluating the facts. (People who looked at their surroundings in ancient Babylonia and concluded that the Earth was flat weren’t necessarily going by “blind faith”, they were just incorrect.) However, if creationists want to defend creationism along the lines of point 4, then they have to actually present evidence for their point of view, and not just stand in the corner and talk about “evolutionism” as being some atheistic dogma which the “religion of secular humanism” has imposed on the world via some sort of anti-Christian Inquisition. Creationism was in fact the accepted view of Western science to begin with–when Europeans started doing science, they started out assuming that the Bible was probably pretty much literally correct, and that things like Noah’s Flood and the Garden of Eden were historical events. This view was first modified and then gradually abandoned because the evidence was against it. These days, although you can find respectable scientists who are still theists, creationism is as dead as the four elements of Aristotle, in any sense beyond “I believe a Higher Power (whether a version of the Christian God or something else) was responsible for there being something rather than nothing”, with perhaps also a view of God “guiding” the evolutionary development of the Universe, with this “guidance” usually being defined so that it is indistinguishable from God not guiding the evolutionary development of the Universe to people who don’t have “faith” (“belief without proof or evidence”) in his presence.

48

Darn. Too much is being written to soon. Ok, please be patient.

Yes, you are! You assume the world evolved through force and matter even though you cannot prove it. And me running into a thousand walls has nothing to do with who my parents are, where I was raised, or how I was conceived. In other words, if force and matter could prove the world’s origins then this issue would be settled long ago. David B, in your efforts to discredit any existence of God you have blindly put your faith in what you have never seen-the process of evolution. But I really don’t wish to discuss evolution anymore in this particular thread.

Again, to all I would ask for patience in responses.

49

The study of force (assuming its not the Force your talking about) and matter is a way to attempt to guage the world we view and seem to share with others. They are assumed along with the assumption that we aren’t in some hallucination set up by evil robots whom use us as batteries.

Science has proved to be the most effective way of explaining the universe. Evolution is a scientific theory that has done the best to explain why there is life. Creationism and theism haven’t proven that effective for explaining the unvierse.

Now as for everyone having faith I don’t have much. I have the def 1 faith in other people to some extent but I do make a distinction between what I experience and reality. I have no idea how they are linked, and have no opinion on that link. I can never have an informed opinion on it. But I’ve also decided that curling up in a little ball of idiot nihilism isn’t for me. Also pain is unpleasent enough to avoid even if it isn’t real.

I find it dubious that everyon has a desire to have faith in something. Sure faith is a psychological mechanism common to huamns that is used to allieve worries. However not everyone employs faith as a protective blanket, and not everyone needs it. Personally I’d rather not be alive than alive in a blankt of illogical faith. Clarity is better than false certainty.

50

ARL: Evidence is not proof
JTC: Evidence is not proof
ARL: Right. Evidence is not proof
JTC: I SAID, (ahem) evidence is not proof

The scientific method requires experimentation, who said it doesn’t? But you can’t test things like pure math until we find a physical science that utilizes this area of math. I believe I said,

Where did I not allow for the scientific method?

In matters of definition, i.e.-does my mother love me?, we find evidence to support the assumption. This is not faith, nor is it proof. In matters hypothetical, i.e.-does my mom love me ehough to give her life to save mine?, we find the assumption in the question. This can be accepted in a strictly logical manner, reasoning from other evidence-based assumptions or proofs reasoned out previously, but in itself does not need to be tested to be true if the reasoning used to get to that conclusion was correct. If the thing IS tested and found to be false, the error was not in the logic used to PROVE this thing, but in the way we looked at the EVIDENCE OF OUR ASSUMTIONS.

I still, miraculously, have not equated proof with evidence.

In a court trial, the process I desribe above is painfully clear. The logic of conviction is almost second hand to the determination of that the evidence means. In other words, they are arguing over the assumptions because once those are agreed upon the proof is a forgone conclusion.[in matters criminal, though in a case that is trying to determine whether or not the law is applicable it is not the evidence of assumptions that are under attack but the potential for flawed reasoning about laws]

The case before us is whether or not everyone has non-evidence based faith in something. I claimed we did, but there were those of us who found this unacceptable and work toward either abolishing faith through evidence or abondoning the faith in light of lack of evidence.

51

I don’t think that’s an accurate representation of your discussions, for the theist’s contentions are more subtle than that. While you do agree that evidence isn’t proof, your arguments maintain that faith is believe without evidence. It isn’t. Faith is belief without PROOF.

Not at all. The proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, for example, is pure math. It does not require ANY experimentation.

To say that faith requires an utter lack of evidence is an utterly shallow treatment of the topic. Faith can be blind (without evidence) or it can be somewhat earned (i.e. rooted in some evidence) or it can be throughly earned (that is, based on much evidence). In any event, evidence is by no means inconsistent with faith.

52

jenkinsfan wrote:

Asmodean, do you see why I insult creationists? Isn’t it obvious that this guy completely deserves whatever he gets?

Jenkinsfan, the world did not “evolve” through force and matter. The Earth came about through the naturalistic processes, but this has nothing to do with biological evolution. Do we have “proof” that this is so? No, proof only exists in math. We do have overwhelming evidence concerning how the universe, the solar system, the earth, life, and humans got here.

And yes, we have observed evolution. If you have not, it’s because you’re a creationist who has no desire to learn anything.

This is the best I can do to rebut your post; it really doesn’t make all that much sense to me. Matter and energy are all that exist, not matter and force. Where you were raised or how you were conceived (there’s really only one common way, isn’t there?) are totally off-topic and I have no idea why you’re dragging them into the conversation.

If your type of mindset is what befalls a theist, thank God I’m an atheist!

53

Hebrews 11:1 (Revised Standard Version), “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

That sounds to me more like a description than a definition.

Hebrews 11:3: “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear”.

Now that’s interesting. In a first century context, there really isn’t any decent material evidence to support any theory of the origin of the world. Big question, no answers. I suspect that this was understood at the time, at least on some level, and that the creation myths of Genesis (or the 4 Gospels for that matter) were not taken to be definitive accounts. For that reason, the first 2 pages of the Torah can join 2 separate creation myths (See Genesis(1,2). Furthermore, the Gospels (“Good news”) can present differing accounts of some rather central narrative events. Yet there is no evidence that these textual conflicts bothered any ancient, or even needed to be explained away. One might speculate that none of them noticed these things, but I find that unlikely.

However. In a 20th - 21st century context, Hebrews 11:3 becomes something different. Faith becomes the belief in something despite material evidence to the contrary. And that’s a sort of faith which some of us aspire not to share.
Chapter 11 of Hebrews continues on the subject of faith. It’s quite poetic (IMHO) and presents one possible response to adversity or apparent abandonment; I wonder whether parts of the chapter extend outside the taxonomy that Bruckner presented to us earlier.

Perhaps those latter bits are what Jenkins had in mind when he asserted faith’s universality.

Apropos nothing: According to

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,119716+4+110574,00.html ,

Hebrews was considered a Pauline document by the early church, but is currently dated around 80-90 CE.

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jenkinsfan said:

Perhaps it’s time you explain exactly what you’re talking about when you say “force and matter.” Because if you’re using the real meanings of the words, what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. But as we’ve seen, you don’t limit yourself to the real meanings of words.

No, but, as I noted, it might knock some sense into you.

Newsflash: It is settled. Just because some creationists want to ignore reality doesn’t make reality go away.

I am not trying to discredit the existence of any deity. Evolution has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of a God (I thought we hashed that out months ago).

You apparently don’t want to discuss anything. You complain you don’t have time, but then you only respond to the evolution portion of my message, ignoring the rest. If you don’t want to talk about evolution here, we can start a new thread for it. Or you could actually answer the points that have been raised.

No. I’ve flat run out of patience for you.

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I have but one comment: jenkinsfan does not represent all Christians. For example, he does not represent me. He does not represent others I know.

56

Well, okay, it’s the most irritating thing a certain type of Christians does.

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That is what I said. Did you read what I said?

Clearly, pure math is not part of my quote that I emphasized.

To believe in things without evidence is faith. To believe unprovable things, like axioms or assumptions, is not faith, it is supported belief. To believe things which are not proven is to hypothesize. Scientific method, right? You remember how to use it?

58

Figured I’d put that there since its what I meant.

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ARL:
Supported belief, “To believe unprovable things on the basis of evidence, like axioms or assumptions…”

I hadn’t considered (or heard of) supported belief. Can’t that collapse into faith though? Some might believe in a supreme diety because, 1) Most people they know believe in God, 2) they have some subjective interaction with God, via prayer, 3) they believe that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That sounds like supported belief to me.

A creationist, in contrast, might have faith if (for example) she had some familiarity with the fossil record and carbon dating, but chose to believe that the world was created in 7 days because she interprets the Genesis literally. But I would suspect that some creationists might argue that they have looked at the evidence and they consider their subjective experiences with their God to be overwhelmingly persuasive.

Perhaps we should make a distinction between “evidence” and “justification”…

60

you know what I have faith in –

I have faith in my abilites to do my damnest to save someones life

I have faith that my partners will do the same

I have faith that my partners will not let me die

I do not have faith that any divine intervenition takes place when I do or do not save a life.
my 2 cents