Rationalizing faith.

[DBT]

There are some breathtaking attempts at justifying faith being floated.

Here is an example, enjoy:

Quote;
''What then is faith? As a first pass, we should understand faith as simple trust. When we trust, there is always some thing (or person) that we trust. This is to say that faith always has an object. That is, one cannot have faith in some nebulous way. There must be some thing or person one has faith in. So this could be a chair one is considering sitting in. Or one could trust an airplane one is waiting to board. Or one may place one’s trust in a person to whom one is about to say “I do” in a wedding ceremony. The object of one’s faith would be the chair or the airplane or the soon-to-be-if-all-goes-well spouse.

Notice that, on this understanding of faith, faith is not, by itself, a set of beliefs, or a proposition, or even a claim. So an immediate problem with the above caricatures of faith is that they do not place faith in the right sort category. Faith cannot be “belief without evidence” since it is not a belief to begin with. It is a state that may involve beliefs or may be caused by beliefs, although it is not itself a belief. Rather, it is a state of trust.

But we don’t have faith in something from a distance. Faith seems to connote the idea that we trust in action. When we genuinely place our faith in an object, we always venture something. If we trust the safety of the airplane, but we never get on board, then we haven’t really placed our faith in the airplane.

Faith requires not trust from a distance but an entrusting ourselves where we venture or risk ourselves and our wellbeing to some thing or person. To truly place our faith in a chair, we must sit down and risk the chair’s collapsing. Or a much better illustration is the risk one takes when one gets married. A healthy marriage requires us to entrust virtually every area of our lives to our spouse and this opens us up to the deepest hurt when there is betrayal. A toxic marriage is of course one in which there is deep distrust and suspicion. But the marriage will also suffer if one merely trusts from a distance. A healthy marriage requires us to jump in with deep and mutual ventured trust.''

''Everyone has faith, in this sense, insofar as they entrust themselves to someone or something. Again, when we get married, we entrust our feelings, wellbeing, livelihood, possessions, etc., to our spouses. When we fly on an air plane, we entrust ourselves to the aircraft, the pilots, the mechanics who serviced the plane, etc. When we do science, we entrust ourselves to certain methodologies, prior theories and data, and our empirical and mental faculties. There is nothing unique about Christian faith other than the object of that faith.''

 

[DBT]

Faith is no longer a belief held without the support of evidence of evidence, it seems,

Faith it appears can be anything the believer wants it to be.....evidence, no evidence, it's all the same, it's all faith. Apparently, faith is the prime principle of the Universe.

 

[steve_bank]

Seems to me the Christian obsession with converting the world is more about convincing themselves. If I convert somebody I must be doing something right.

Misery loves company.

 

[skepticalbip]

Gotta love that whoever wrote this destroyed their argument in the first couple sentences.

''What then is faith? As a first pass, we should understand faith as simple trust. When we trust, there is always some thing (or person) that we trust. This is to say that faith always has an object. That is, one cannot have faith in some nebulous way. There must be some thing or person one has faith in.

Religious faith is about belief in a nebulous idea, not trust in a person or thing as they claim.

 

[DBT]

Even online dictionary definitions have shifted to reflect common usage. Faith practically being synonymous with trust and confidence, etc. It's quite odd.

 

[steve_bank]

Many words can be contextual.

I have faith a jet I am on will fly, baring failures...based on knowledge of aerodynamics and observng many planes flying.

Theists see observati0nal evidence that reinforces faith, but it is subjective. At least to us skeptics.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Many words can be contextual.

I have faith a jet I am on will fly, baring failures...based on knowledge of aerodynamics and observng many planes flying.

Theists see observati0nal evidence that reinforces faith, but it is subjective. At least to us skeptics.

I would call that trust more than faith. There is an estsblished track record, a performance history.
Vaccines, medication, treatment protocols, cars, planes, subs, are the tip of very long spears i can see and test, or at leadt know there has been peer review.

 

[DBT]

Yes, equivocation inevitably creeps in....

 

[DBT]

Many words can be contextual.

I have faith a jet I am on will fly, baring failures...based on knowledge of aerodynamics and observng many planes flying.

Theists see observati0nal evidence that reinforces faith, but it is subjective. At least to us skeptics.

One is trust built through objective experience, the number of accidents, falure rate, etc...the other a belief held without the support of evidence: faith.

Trust without evidence becomes an instance of faith.

 

[DBT]

From a long time ago:

"Faith is like a piece of blank paper whereon you may write as well one miracle as another." ~ Charles Blount (1654-1693)

 

[Tigers!]

Even online dictionary definitions have shifted to reflect common usage. Faith practically being synonymous with trust and confidence, etc. It's quite odd.

Or perhaps the dictionary(ies) are merely reflecting what has been within them for a long time.

Faith is a belief held without the support of evidence of evidence

- paraphrasing Dawkins and others.

Do you have a year(s) in which the aforementioned quote first appeared in a dictionary? I do not know where it first appeared.

If it appeared quite recently then it is hard to justify that the conventional/traditional meaning of the word 'faith' are attempts by theists to change accepted meanings.

 

[DBT]

We have a condition where people do believe in the truth of something without the support of evidence. We call that "faith." That condition, that class of belief provides the context for the given definition.

 

[abaddon]

There is no "the" meaning, there are TWO meanings. The problem is when people conflate the two different meanings.

Having faith (ie trust) that a chair won't break when you sit on it is completely different from having faith (ie a belief in that is "based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof") that an invisible chair is present in an empty room.

The latter is not trust that existent things will persist.

 

[ronburgundy]

They are confusing two completely different meanings of the word, one meaning (the secular, colloquial usage) merely refers to some level of trust or confidence without referring to the basis of that trust. The other meaning is the epistemological meaning often referred to by the Bible and religion dealing with the fact that the trust is not based upon (and thus is impervious to) reasoned thought, empirical evidence, or anything but deference to a religious authority (whether the doctrines, "the word", etc.)

This latter is what the father of Protestantism was referring to when he said "Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God." Anti-reason and anti-intellectualism are foundational to Protestantism, which advocated direct appeal to the authority of the Bible (leading to literalism) and a purely emotional relationship to God, both of which bypassed any need for the centuries of Church controlled (pseudo)scholarship and theology.

But Luther didn't invent that conception of faith as emotional belief against reason. It is central to the Bible itself, with many versus advocating faith as belief without and often against empirical evidence, reason, knowledge, wisdom, and admonishing any who have any of the doubts these things inherently give rise to, while praising the absolute certainty that only unreasoned emotionalism and authoritarianism can produce.

"For we live by faith, not by sight."
"Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
"For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified
"But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."
"Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Note that last one equates faith with "hope" as in being a kind of wishful thinking, and though the second phrase mentions "evidence" the "not seen" makes clear that it not empirical evidence or anything rational though counts as evidence but rather that the desire/hope that it is true is taken as the basis for it being true.


This idea that faith is belief in what the reasoned mind says is impossible is also at the heart of the idea that those who have faith will be able to do things that reasoned thought says is impossible.


“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
"Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them."
"Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, "Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.”

The Bible wouldn't spend so much time threatening and promoting harm, damnation, and genocide towards those who doubt or don't believe, if there was any sense that such believe should or could be based in reason, which is the opposite of responding to threat.
And the Bible is wise to take that epistemological stance, b/c it's claims and God's existence never could be rationally based, and modern science has severally eroded even the pseudo-intellectual pretension of reasoned belief (e.g., argument from design).

 

[Politesse]

Point of history:

Even online dictionary definitions have shifted to reflect common usage. Faith practically being synonymous with trust and confidence, etc. It's quite odd.

That's not the change. The idea that faith and trust are separate contexts is the change, a product of the changing philosophical and scholarly trends in European tradition. Faith, in Christian contexts, does and always did mean a personal relationship of loyalty and mutual trust/obedience; it is a translation of the ancient Greek term pistis, which held both meanings, likewise its Latin equivalent fides from which the English term is etymologically derived. They often were used in civil contexts to indicate legal relationships; for instance, a viceroy had the "faith" of his king, and something similar was being implied about Christ and his followers in relation to God, that they were adopted sons of God and therefore had the faith of and in God, a reciprocal relationship of faith and authority. No one predating the Renaissance ever talked or wrote about faith as though it were synonymous with "acceptance of a philosophical proposition". But cultures and priorities change over time. That new definition came to sit alongside the older sense of the word connoting trust and confidence, and both senses have been used (often interchangeably) in religious circles and secular contexts from the end of the Renaissance onward to the present. Four hundred years is a long time, and both definitions are commonly in use in our society at this point.

 

[steve_bank]

Back a ways on science as to evolution theist made this argument.

Science can not experimentally prove evolution created humans, therefore it is faith.
Religion can not prove experimentally faith that god exists.
Therefore religion is as valid as science.

 

[Politesse]

They are confusing two completely different meanings of the word, one meaning (the secular, colloquial usage) merely refers to some level of trust or confidence without referring to the basis of that trust. The other meaning is the epistemological meaning often referred to by the Bible and religion dealing with the fact that the trust is not based upon (and thus is impervious to) reasoned thought, empirical evidence, or anything but deference to a religious authority (whether the doctrines, "the word", etc.)

This latter is what the father of Protestantism was referring to when he said "Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God." Anti-reason and anti-intellectualism are foundational to Protestantism, which advocated direct appeal to the authority of the Bible (leading to literalism) and a purely emotional relationship to God, both of which bypassed any need for the centuries of Church controlled (pseudo)scholarship and theology.

But Luther didn't invent that conception of faith as emotional belief against reason. It is central to the Bible itself, with many versus advocating faith as belief without and often against empirical evidence, reason, knowledge, wisdom, and admonishing any who have any of the doubts these things inherently give rise to, while praising the absolute certainty that only unreasoned emotionalism and authoritarianism can produce.

"For we live by faith, not by sight."
"Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
"For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified
"But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."
"Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Not that last one equates faith with "hope" as in being a kind of wishful thinking, and though the second phrase mentions "evidence" the "not seen" makes clear that it not empirical evidence or anything rational though counts as evidence but rather that he desire/hope that it is true is taken as the basis for it being true.


This idea that faith is belief in what the reasoned mind says is impossible is also at the heart of the idea that those who have faith will be able to do things that reasoned thought says is impossible.


“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
"Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them."
"Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, "Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.”

The Bible wouldn't spend so much time threatening and promoting harm, damnation, and genocide towards those who doubt or don't believe, if there was any sense that such believe should or could be based in reason, which is the opposite of responding to threat.
And the Bible is wise to take that epistemological stance, b/c it's claims and God's existence never could be rationally based, and modern science has severally eroded even the pseudo-intellectual pretension of reasoned belief (e.g., argument from design).

Tell me, which makes more inherent sense:

1. "If you have enough confidence, you can accomplish anything."
2. "If you have a correct philosophical position based on rejection of evidence, you can accomplish anything."

To put things another way is it necessarily true that your (presumably Protestant) would-be handlers have taught you the most correct and obvious interpretation of the Matthew passage you're quoting? In your opinion, are they normally trustworthy guides to what is or is not true? Do you have faith, let's say, that they aways teach about the Bible in an unbiased fashion?

 

[abaddon]

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Note that last one equates faith with "hope" as in being a kind of wishful thinking, and though the second phrase mentions "evidence" the "not seen" makes clear that it not empirical evidence or anything rational though counts as evidence but rather that the desire/hope that it is true is taken as the basis for it being true.

The sentence structure is "Faith is... the evidence".

So believing-in is itself the evidence for what's believed-in. IOW "it's true because I believe it real hard".

Theists feel God's presence "in their hearts" by staying fervent in their belief till a presence is felt. So they get their evidence of personal experience by striving for their evidence of personal experience. Likewise a person could easily feel a deceased person's ghost in the room with him if he worked at it.

This sort of thinking is the basis of "he didn't pray enough" and other excuses for why a Christian might lose their faith that God/Jesus exists. The believer would have stayed a believer if they'd created the feeling of God more assiduously.

 

[DBT]

Point of history:

Even online dictionary definitions have shifted to reflect common usage. Faith practically being synonymous with trust and confidence, etc. It's quite odd.

That's not the change. The idea that faith and trust are separate contexts is the change, a product of the changing philosophical and scholarly trends in European tradition. Faith, in Christian contexts, does and always did mean a personal relationship of loyalty and mutual trust/obedience; it is a translation of the ancient Greek term pistis, which held both meanings, likewise its Latin equivalent fides from which the English term is etymologically derived. They often were used in civil contexts to indicate legal relationships; for instance, a viceroy had the "faith" of his king, and something similar was being implied about Christ and his followers in relation to God, that they were adopted sons of God and therefore had the faith of and in God, a reciprocal relationship of faith and authority. No one predating the Renaissance ever talked or wrote about faith as though it were synonymous with "acceptance of a philosophical proposition". But cultures and priorities change over time. That new definition came to sit alongside the older sense of the word connoting trust and confidence, and both senses have been used (often interchangeably) in religious circles and secular contexts from the end of the Renaissance onward to the present. Four hundred years is a long time, and both definitions are commonly in use in our society at this point.

I wasn't disputing that the word 'faith' has been, and still is used in multiple ways, synonymous with trust, confidence, etc, just that this semantic drift creates sufficient ambiguity to allow theists to align and defend their faith, a belief held without the support of evidence, with trust or confidence.....which are not the same, thereby muddying the water.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Back a ways on science as to evolution theist made this argument.

Science can not experimentally prove evolution created humans, therefore it is faith.
Religion can not prove experimentally faith that god exists.
Therefore religion is as valid as science.

Some folks say that religion is as valid as science, but they don't demonstrate as much in their behavior, else they'd pray away illness, disease and injury.

Isn't faith really just hope? Faith is only required because there is serious doubt that a certain belief or claim is true. That's why faith is needed, because of the evidence that causes doubt. If there wasn't so much evidence against, one wouldn't ever need to deal in faith.