In our American culture, so heavily permeated with the ethics and sensibilities of Protestant Christianity (“by faith alone are we saved”), we tend to respect a person “having faith” even when we disgree with the content of the faith in question. But should we? What value is there, really, in faith as such, irrespective of its content?
I suppose I’ll be the first to jump in and say… none really.
In my opinion “faith” is worthless in any situation unless it leads to good acts and morality. Somebody whose faith leads them to help the poor out of a sense of religious duty, or help people in need, and live a good life of not killing, stealing, etc. has a “good” faith.
Somebody whose faith is just “faith”, is relatively neutral.
People who use faith as an excuse to impress fervent beliefs on other people has “bad” faith.
I don’t “value faith”. Politicians who proclaim their faith lose my vote.
Even if their proclaimed “faith” is in democracy, the rule of law, the Constitution, etc.?
I think most people see people of “faith” as people that will think twice before jumping to conclusions/behaviors.
Which goes to show that W does NOT have any true faith.
Well there’s faith, and then there’s religious faith.
“Faith” in a general sense means something like trust, and it relates to how we see value in the universe. If you want to see someone who appears to have no faith of this kind, look at Der Trihs. (I hope he doesn’t mind me using him as an example.) DT has no faith in the goodness of humanity, in the value of life, or even his own worth. His belief system is nihilism with a vengence. Since in the US, religion is the primary expression of this general sort of faith, “faith” is also used as a synonym for religion. People also confuse faith in a general sense with religion: many people would be surprised to learn that all atheists are not like Der Trihs because they can’t imagine finding meaning or value without religion. (And I have to admit that as an atheist, I do find it hard sometimes not to slip into nihilism.)
“Faith” can also mean belief, especially blind, unsubstantiated, or dogmatic belief. DT has plenty of this (though he denies it), but I don’t think is a particularly good thing, in him or anyone else.
Faith has a negative value; it’s a destructive force.
:rolleyes: Yeah, and I eat babies too. “Nihilism” ? Hardly.
And since when has faith had anything to do with valuing anything ? If anything it’s the opposite; faith lets you stop valuing things like human life or freedom or other’s happiness, because you are focused on your own delusions.
Very few people Athiest or Religious are really ‘at peace’ in the modern world. Modern life is stressful and destructive. Pressures on us from every angle.
Faith is the backbone, real or fake, that provides us with the ability to carry on with a smile. Without faith I’d have become a Goth or something.
It seems pretty clear that he does mind–as do I.
Nothing in this thread, to date, needs to be tied directly to another poster. If the thread gets to that point where we are discussing the beliefs of other posters, it will be much better to quote explicit declarations of their views rather than posting one’s inferences regarding how one might possibly interpret those views–particularly when the interpretations are as unflattering as the interpretations you have posted.
[ /Moderating ]
given this definition, I’ll go ahead and agree with this statement, to an extent. The word faith has many connotations, one of them being “confidence or trust in another person or thing”. The thing is, I don’t think anybody is going to argue that “trust” in something is inherently bad.
Hence, my original, admittedly rushed post addressed something in the OP that I think IS worth debating:
which was my preferred definition when I responded.
Namely, that people have a blind dogmatic “faith”, some form of “unsubstantiated belief” (Dictionary.com, def. 2), that leads them to do certain things.
Now the OP asks, is there “any” value in faith (of the nature just described).
My (slightly more articulate this time) answer is:
Yes, there is, and can definitely be, value in faith. Namely, that regardless of why somebody believes something, if it leads them towards good acts (charity, helping the less fortunate, justice, truth), due to their belief in the positive tenets of their faith, then there is value in that religious faith.
“Faith” as the OP states (“in faith alone we are saved”) has no inherent value, since it leads to no action.
Furthermore, this faith that ALSO comprises dogmatic, backwards, archaic social ideas that lead to harm or bigoted beliefs based on the tenets of the faith is actually a BAD thing for society.
So, I take it you just don’t vote at all?
What, specifically, does it matter. I do not hold religious belief because it is useful to you, me, or anyone else. I hold it because I believe it is true.
Would that have been so bad?
I take it from the OP that we are not just talking about religious faith, but we are going for a broader sense more in line with trust. In that sense, faith is what keeps the world running. Let’s not get into the abstracts of faith in politics or money. Just climbing onto any mass transport can only happen with a massive amount of faith on a lot of people of whom you know nothing about.
Our modern lives depend on dozens of institutions of which we have no inside knowledge. We choose to believe they will work for us, no matter how many horror stories we have heard of their failures. Ever since we started with some degree of division of labour, we became creatures of faith
That’s not faith; that’s relying on past evidence, along with practicality.
Irrespective of its content faith or trust is very valuable. We couldn’t live without it. We have faith or trust in most of the things that make up our daily life, from trusting the toothpaste is safe, to trusting we will live another day.
So, in order to have a point to this discussion faith in “whatever” should be the discussion.
As usual on this board it comes down to faith in God, spiritual things, religion, etc. which is also very valuable. People who have this faith live longer and happier lives than those who don’t. There is a lot of research on this topic.
It is possible to have faith and still be an atheist. It is possible to use the benefits of spiritual methods and still be an atheist. Think creative.
Yes and no. It is true that you can see the statistics and see how seldom buses crash and kill their occupants. But there is also the contrary evidence of some staff with low education and low income pulling double shifts under the influence and all that. You are always putting your life in the hands of total strangers. That takes a lot of faith in the system to weed out the unfit for the job. The same system we have seen fail time after time, even if the stats are on their favour.
Faith, in the sense defined by the OP, is bad. Either you have evidence for your belief or your belief is held without any evidence. The latter is faith. But if belief without evidence is permissible, then you can permissibly believe anything–in unicorns or faeries, or that there are WMD in Iraq, or that God wants you to kill the non-Aryans, or whatever. Any view (such as the acceptability of faith) that has as its consequence that these are permissible beliefs is clearly false.
That said, I think that faith is more rare than you might think. If pressed, I think most theists would say they do have some evidence for God’s existence–either in the complexity of life, or in some religious experience they have had, etc. Obviously, some people believe purely on the basis of faith. But they have just placed themselves outside the scope of rationality; why should we think that is epistemically okay?
But “practicality” goes out the window if you can’t trust the driver of the mass transit to be sober and focused on the job and the vehicle to be in safe condition.
You trust the dentist to use perfectly clean instruments to work on your teeth. You trust the nurse to use a clean needle to give you a shot. You trust that the elevator that you take has been checked as recently as the certificate says.
You trust the administrators not to publish your private information on a public message board.
Some of this trust may be based on evidence from the past – and that may also be true for some people who have had religious or spiritual experiences; their trust, their faith is affected. But faith isn’t always based on experiential evidence.
Evidence or not, it’s still trust.
Faith is fine as a beginning. Before we know anything, we have faith in our government, in god, in our parents. It’s clearly impractical to thoroughly investigate everything before we make a move. Zoe may have faith in a dentist - I trust them because of licensing. Without that, I’d have done a lot more checking.
The problems start when faith is seen as the final answer. You might have faith in god as a child, but when I actually read the Bible, and some history, I lost it. A man who has faith in his wife when his kids don’t look like him is a fool (ditto for women and men.) Look how many people had faith in those nice Nigerian widows …