It is.
Approaching a task with a positive attitude certainly increases your odds of success. But it is entirely possible to fail even if you’re supremely confident. Positive thinking can only take you so far. And negative thinking has its virtues. If you think that what you’re doing is crap, you’re more likely to exercise the sort of self-critique that improves the quality of your work in the long run.
Faith is more than believing without evidence IMHO. A general belief can be swayed by evidence. But a faith-based belief actively resists evidence.
I think some religious followers don’t have faith as much as they do belief. You can eventually reason with these people, especially when they aren’t around their religious support network. But the faithful? The more you debate them, the more entrenched their beliefs get.
True faith is based on experience. Usually that means some sort of life altering religious experience, but not necessarily. And it doesn’t have to be a vision of god or angels. I’ve known people who have found faith in a tab of acid or mescaline. But that experience is so profound that it survives the temporary alteration of their mental state and functioning.
What most people don’t understand is that we aren’t and shouldn’t be bound by logic and reason. Zen Buddhists understand this and it’s one of the reasons I admire them so much that I got my undergrad degree studying them. But it’s not a position that can be easily explained to those who are not open to the idea.
There are, IMO, two levels of “Faith”. The first is the kind of Faith that is taken for granted, but still needs nurturing, because it walks on the thin ice of baseless presumption. This is the kind of a faith that a child is brought up with in a religious family … much like being told the Santa Clause fable, this Faith will wain in time if it’s not reinforced by the specific adherents and acolytes of said Faith.
The second type of Faith is anchored in a “gut feeling” that there’s “something more” than what we see; that there is "something " greater than us and our mundane reality. This Faith is observed when someone not raised by Faithful parents, or who has abandoned the first type of Faith, is motivated by inner feelings to seek out a force subconsciously perceived, to find answers that require a “supernatural” cause. They just have intuition that there is a “Maker” and their lives won’t be fulfilling without a knowledge of and relationship with this “Force”. The feeling won’t go away and it won’t be defeated by appeals to logic or evidence.
This is not to imply that either type of Faith is actually based on any real evidence or facts, but that the second kind involves a gut instinct that is self-sustaining and won’t readily fade in the face of a reasonable challenge.
Thank you Chronos. I have to agree.
I have been suffering problems with my connection recently, so my replies have been severely buggered. I lost alot of time typing, and my work vanished in the connection process. My apologies to everyone. I am working on solving the errors w/my provider asap.
Thank you for the correction Czarcasm - after more research, it appears you are correct.
All of this interaction is the main reason for my post. The questions re:faith & belief are of extreme importantance to me, and after a quick look at this board I was pretty sure that you would help straighten out my thinking.
My provider just opened, so my connection problems should be over with very soon.
Thank you for your patience. 
I think I am ok now.
Looking over this thread, I think I should have asked "do you believe that the power of belief can effectively change/create things in the “real world”?
God, as conceived of by most mainstream monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism, etc.) is eternal—meaning that God never “poofed” into existence; God always existed.
…which would tend to explain why religion & I split up, several years ago. An eternal super-being is a hard concept for me to accept.
Holy crap, what a screwed morning! But lo & behold, I said a quick prayer & my day turned totally around.
Not by itself. A positive outlook – faith – belief – trust – is a nice lever to make one’s intentions more productive. But it’s only a viewpoint. The real work still involves labor and thought.
Inspiration is a great thing for artists to have. But talent is also vital, and even more important is discipline. Many a great work of art has been envisioned…and then abandoned – or never even begun.
The lack of belief can be an anchor, slowing one down and making progress harder. But the presence of belief doesn’t get the laundry washed. Real progress takes application and shoe leather.
A good line but just for today, observation went with me, the believer. Everywhere I went, someone had some kind of blessing for me. I am not saying that I am all good w/organized religion again but I am looking hard at belief.
Check back a couple of posts and you will see that I went from faith to belief, Mangetout, and slightly rephrased my opening question.
I agree. I googled “the power of doubt” just to see the results and found several positive links.
This is happy-pill talk.
Attitude (positive/negative) has a greater bearing on the outcome than belief (or lack thereof). I think Henry Ford is credited with saying, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you’re right.” It seems a valid argument. If you want to accomplish a thing and set your mind to it, you have a greater chance of achieving your goal. It’s not a guarantee but it sure gives better odds than doing nothing, or leaving it up to god to grant a wish. Having a “belief” in the outcome may inspire some to try when they would not otherwise, but in the end it’s confirmation bias - you credit belief if it turns out well and wave it off as something “not in god’s plans” if it doesn’t.
And when you’re having a really lousy day and no one has any blessing for you, what do your observations tell you then?
People see only what their beliefs lead to them see. If you believe in “blessings”, you’ll see blessings everywhere. If you believe in ghosts and aliens, every mysterious light in the night sky is either a ghost or an alien. If you’re depressed and believe yourself to be worthless, then every mistake you make only serves to confirm how right you are.
It’s called confirmation bias. Everyone has it. And this is pretty much what amounts to the “experience” of a Believer. They start off thinking God is going to bless them, they have a string of good days where everyone is nice to them and everything goes their way, and suddenly they’ve got a testimonial to give at church on Sunday.
My contention is that people with faith do not have faith in ‘God’, they have faith in what others have told them about ‘God’. In other words they have faith in other people.
I like your posts and thought process, but positive thinking is scarce here.
I am positive also and would like very much to exchange philosophies with you.
I am, by all accounts, a very positive person - I do believe very heavily in ‘the messages one tells oneself has an affect on the outcome’ - but this is a personal thing, there is no ‘god’ - there is no ’ I think happy thoughts for person x it helps (directly) person X’.
However, along with positive thinking there is a requirement for positive action.
I also abhor the platitude folks and the religions that want to equate this with a ‘higher power’ or ‘spiritual nonsense’.
For you to say that ‘positive thinking is scarce here’ is disingenuous at best.