Does Buddhism have a word for faith? Do they reject its content? — Gregory

‘Saddha’, meaning ‘to place one’s heart upon’. It’s less about belief, more about insight, in the Buddhist context. It’s a very difficult distinction to grasp because it is nearly always looked at through faith-coloured glasses.

A superb comment!

Some partial lyrics (in part pertaining to the term's usage):

If God is dead and an actor plays his part
His words of fear will find a place in your heart
Without the voice of reason every faith is its own curse
Without freedom from the past things can only get worse

[…]

Convince an enemy, convince him that he's wrong
Is to win a bloodless battle where victory is long
A simple act of faith
In reason over might
To blow up his children will only prove him right — History Will Teach Us Nothing (song by the musician Sting)

What do you think of Schopenhauer when he says the world IS our Will? — Gregory

This is my brief understanding on Schopenhauer. The only way we can access and interact with the world is via our Will.  Our will is supported by intelligence, thoughts and reasoning, as well as bodily desire for pleasure, reproduction and survival..

And have you ever listened to Jim Newman the non-dualist? He's got lots of stuff on youtube. He's ideas are fascinating in light of Schopenhauer — Gregory

I am not familiar with the name afraid.

My position is that absolute truth is Freedom, Will. That can be the answer to the problem of pain. If God is sitting up there infinitely happy as we suffer, trying to perfect ourselves, how does that reflect a beautiful world? I think we make the world what it is in some sense, "positing" everything and each other, as Fichte said.. Why is there pain? There is no reason really. It's just free. So the Ideas guide the Will, but the Will is in charge

"faith" is the same thing as what I call "intuition." — T Clark

I never responded to you on the other thread. I think we are on the same page but I’d name the moving parts a bit differently.

Believing is found in a moment of consent, and your actions are based on what you consented to. Once you believe something, it’s as deep as it gets and you are willing to act on it.

We can KNOW it is safe to cross the street by looking both ways, but the moment we step off the curb it’s because we ARE BELIEVING what we know; we gather the knowledge, CONSENT OR BELIEVE, and only then act.

Intuition is like a parallel process to reasoning, to gathering the knowledge. Intuition is like when you can’t explain your reasoning, but you know it is reasonable. Believing is more of an act of consenting to whatever you know, be it known from reasoning or from intuition.

That said, I can see why you place intuition more closely to believing. Both are distinct from knowing and reasoning (qua knowing and reasoning).

It’s like anything we do - we get all the knowledge, we train, we check our equipment and then it comes time to act. If we didn’t believe we were ready, we wouldn’t act. Believing gathers what we know, what is reasonable, where the holes in the reasoning are, where the questions still exist, and then, we decide, we consent, we either believe or not - so belief is the springboard for action.

So religious faith and religious beliefs are a particular subset of this otherwise human process of knowing, reasoning, believing and acting.

Religious faith is about the same process, just the objects of knowledge are fantastical, impossible, non-empirical.

People who mock religious people, think believing is just skipping the reasoning part. Which it can be, so I don’t blame them for the mockery (most religious people should expect mockery cause there are some whacky beliefs in most religions). A religious belief is just another type of belief, similar to a belief we might have that it is safe to cross the street, that my own eyes are not deceiving me and there are no unaccounted demons in the sewer!

it struck me that what is called "faith" is the same thing as what I call "intuition." It is not a fundamentally religious mental process - it's applied to everything we do and everything we know every day. — T Clark

It will be interesting to explore this. I think the connecting between faith and intuition is only partially successful. The intuitions which work tend to be those which are derived from experience of similar scenarios. We accumulate wisdom in this way. That said, a lot of people's intuitions are based on erroneous feelings and biases. We might need to determine just when an intuition is justified and when it is not. Which returns us to reasoning. I trust my intuitions about some things based on evidence I have acquired over time. In some areas I don't trust my intuitions since I have no experience or expertise. Not sure where gods fit in all this.

My intuitions tells me the idea of god is without meaning. My friend Father John, a Catholic priest, has an intuition God is meaningful and real. How does one assess the faith of one person against the faith of another? Given all we have on this subject is a feeling without reason - would it not seem that faith is a weak foundation? I'm not crazy about having people proudly justify bigotries or even violent Jihad based on faith, as many seem to do. This is one area where reasoning may have a more significant role.

A religious belief is just another type of belief, similar to a belief we might have that it is safe to cross the street, that my own eyes are not deceiving me and there are no unaccounted demons in the sewer! — Fire Ologist

I think they are very different.

Crossing the road safely relies upon lived experience of knowing how to check for traffic and knowing the safe speed one can walk at. It is an act based on empirical evidence and learning. Faith does not share this. That's the precise point of faith - "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." Hebrews 11 NIV.

To use faith to cross a road would be to hope there is no traffic and feel assured that nothing is coming when we blindly leap out into the traffic.

To suggest that one needs faith to trust one's eyes is incorrect. One is never sure about anything in life but one can have a measured expectation based on empirical measures that we can safely cross roads and not get killed if we look carefully.

is faith an emotion or a thought? What if it is neither — Gregory

What if it is both?

are the purpose of koans to bring out faith? — Gregory

By this measure, it sounds like you understand what faith is.

when Muslim scholars of old had the two-truth position, is this a dialectical form of faith? — Gregory

I think I know what you are saying but please provide your favorite example of such a thing.

is creativity faith? — Gregory

Or is it doubt?

) is courage faith? — Gregory

It can be described that way. But most of us experience it as a willingness to fight in bad circumstances. Perhaps you are referring to the willingness to suffer harm rather than fight. That decision is pretty darn courageous. I will give you that.

Finally, why do Christians argue whether faith must have hope and love in order to cause salvation? Are not those three things always intertwined together? — Gregory

Some views of love are based upon actually doing stuff rather than having an opinion about doing stuff.

While responding to a comment in the "Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith" thread, it struck me that what is called "faith" is the same thing as what I call "intuition." It is not a fundamentally religious mental process - it's applied to everything we do and everything we know every day. That doesn't address the question of whether it is a valid way of knowing, — T Clark

I got similar responses to this from @Tom Storm and @Fire Ologist. I also had an exchange with @Janus on the Logical Arguments thread that also addressed similar issues. I previously promised him a better response but haven't gotten back to him yet. I'm going to respond to all of you here. Here's what you said:

Faith or intuition are valid ways of knowing—simply because inhabiting a faith or intution is a knowing. It is a knowing of a certain kind of experience. It is not, however, a propositional knowing—although it might lead to propositional beliefs, those beliefs cannot be verified by the faith or intuition. And note, this is not to say that the faith or intution cannot be convincing to the one inhabiting it, it is just to say that it cannot provide sufficient grounds for an argument intended to convince others. — Janus

Intuition is like a parallel process to reasoning, to gathering the knowledge. Intuition is like when you can’t explain your reasoning, but you know it is reasonable. Believing is more of an act of consenting to whatever you know, be it known from reasoning or from intuition.

That said, I can see why you place intuition more closely to believing. Both are distinct from knowing and reasoning (qua knowing and reasoning).

It’s like anything we do - we get all the knowledge, we train, we check our equipment and then it comes time to act. If we didn’t believe we were ready, we wouldn’t act. Believing gathers what we know, what is reasonable, where the holes in the reasoning are, where the questions still exist, and then, we decide, we consent, we either believe or not - so belief is the springboard for action. — Fire Ologist

It will be interesting to explore this. I think the connecting between faith and intuition is only partially successful. The intuitions which work tend to be those which are derived from experience of similar scenarios. We accumulate wisdom in this way. That said, a lot of people's intuitions are based on erroneous feelings and biases. We might need to determine just when an intuition is justified and when it is not. Which returns us to reasoning. I trust my intuitions about some things based on evidence I have acquired over time. In some areas I don't trust my intuitions since I have no experience or expertise. Not sure where gods fit in all this. — Tom Storm

And now here is my completely unsatisfactory response. After the exchange I had with Janus in the previous thread I planned to start a new thread discussing the two major issues I raised with him, i.e. 1) Are faith and intuition the same mental process and 2) Are they valid ways of knowing. I tried to write the OP for that proposed thread. I wrote it and rewrote it three times but I couldn't get it to come together. That's because my own thinking on the subject is muddled. I have lots of ideas but I can't get them to come together.

I agree with much of what all three of you have said, although I disagree with you on the relative importance of intuition and reason in knowing. I think intuition is the foundation of knowledge - it does about 80% of the work - and reason comes along to take the credit. I acknowledge I need to provide arguments to support that position, but, as I noted, I've been struggling to put it into words. This is an important issue for me, so I plan to continue working on it. I'll come back when I have something more coherent to offer.

I think I know what you are saying but please provide your favorite example of such a thing — Paine

https://www.britannica.com/topic/double-truth-theory

22. The deep waters of faith seem turbulent when we peer into them too curiously; but when contemplated in a spirit of simplicity, they are calm. The depths of faith are like the waters of Lethe, making us forget all evil; they will not reveal themselves to the scrutiny of meddlesome reasoning. Let us therefore sail these waters with simplicity of mind, and so reach the harbor of God's will.

Saint Diadochos of Photiki
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination - One Hundred Texts

"Sublime and Living Will! named by no name, compassed by no thought! I may well raise my soul to Thee, for Thou and I are not divided."
J.G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man

Orthodoxy frowns on intuition more often than reason because it is seen as esoteric — Gregory

I think this is right, I also think they see it as mystical.

My position is that absolute truth is Freedom, Will. — Gregory

What do you mean by this?

That can be the answer to the problem of pain. If God is sitting up there infinitely happy as we suffer, trying to perfect ourselves, how does that reflect a beautiful world? — Gregory

How do you know that God is infinitely happy while we are suffering?

I think we make the world what it is in some sense, "positing" everything and each other, as Fichte said.. Why is there pain? There is no reason really. — Gregory

Perhaps there is a reason. Without pain, we could not possibly evolve.

It's just free. — Gregory

What do you mean by "it" here?

So the Ideas guide the Will, but the Will is in charge. — Gregory

What do you mean by "Ideas" and "Will" with capital letters?

After the exchange I had with Janus in the previous thread I planned to start a new thread discussing the two major issues I raised with him, i.e. 1) Are faith and intuition the same mental process and 2) Are they valid ways of knowing. I tried to write the OP for that proposed thread. I wrote it and rewrote it three times but I couldn't get it to come together. That's because my own thinking on the subject is muddled. I have lots of ideas but I can't get them to come together. — T Clark

Intuition to me is an unprocessed reaction to an immediate set of circumstances that arises from ingrained experience and probably some genetic survival instincts. Particularly with social interaction, which is incredibly complex and nuanced, but which is a fundamental part of what it is to be human, requires that we immediately assess and respond. It's that feeling when we don't fully believe someone, we sense kindness, we sense danger, we feel an incompatibility, yet we are unable to know what has caused that feeling.

So when you're thinking should I take that job, marry that person, walk into that bar, or even type that post, your intuition tells you to stop or to go. We then stop and intellectualize, think of the pros and cons and then we arrive at a solution, oftentimes inconsistent with our intuition and convince ourselves (with the intellectual self debating with the instinctive self) to go in the opposite direction. We often make the wrong choice when we just should have trusted our gut because we overrode that powerful intuitive evaluative tool. For some matters we are designed to react, not to deliberate.

I knew a woman once who I would never describe as tempered, deeply thoughtful, and certainly not deliberative, but she ran circles around me picking up on every cue, knowing every motive, and navigating social interaction precisely as if it was as clear as day to her.

Faith to me has a religious context. It's the belief there is a higher power in charge of the world not supported necessarily by empirical or rational grounds, but it might entirely be a choice. My intuition doesn't tell me there is a higher power. It's not that I believe in God but I'm just having trouble putting my finger on why (as with intuition), but it's something wholly different. It's a foundational element required for making sense of the world.

Orthodoxy frowns on intuition more often than reason because it is seen as esoteric — Gregory

Why is intuition esoteric? In what sense? Do you think it makes sense?

This is a thoughtful response and it helped me clarify for myself some things I've been thinking about. I think the first three paragraphs are a good description of how I think about intuition. The last paragraph set me thinking.

Faith to me has a religious context. It's the belief there is a higher power in charge of the world not supported necessarily by empirical or rational grounds, but it might entirely be a choice. My intuition doesn't tell me there is a higher power. It's not that I believe in God but I'm just having trouble putting my finger on why (as with intuition), but it's something wholly different. It's a foundational element required for making sense of the world. — Hanover

The claim that faith is not a valid way of knowing the world and is somehow outside the normal bounds of reasonable argument is used as a knee-jerk argument against religion. The reason for my post was to make a counterclaim that faith is actually a normal, common way of understanding the world and can be a valid motivation for action. I realize that intuition also causes eye-rolling among the illuminati here on the forum and elsewhere, but I don't think it's as virulent. It's now up to me to make the case for intuition, and thus faith, are mainstream and reasonable ways of thinking.

It was the last line that really struck me - "It's a foundational element required for making sense of the world." Reading that, I realized that it describes my personal experience of intuition. It's not just knowledge that "arises from ingrained experience and probably some genetic survival instincts," although I agree it is that. I also think it reflects our broad understanding of how the world works and how it fits together, what you call a "foundational element."

Also, I don't understand why substituting mini marshmallows for chick peas would be considered ridiculous.

1) is faith an emotion or a thought? What if it is neither — Gregory

It's a word with various shades of meaning depending on the language and the context.

It's the Greek πίστις (pistis) - to have trust or confidence in something, could be towards God or towards another person among other things. I may have faith e.g. that a mechanic will drive out to repair my car which has broken down in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps he has done so 5x prior so my faith can be said to have some grounds or evidence. Christianity, at least Pauline Christianity, seems to be heavily, if not entirely, based on pistis in the resurrection.

Faith is also the Hebrew אֱמוּנָה (emunah) which is a dynamic and fluid concept that's also multi-directional. A popular Jewish prayer said in the morning is Modeh Ani which ends with "raba emunatech" - "great is your faithfuless" - that is, great is God's faithfulness towards us. Through restoring our souls to our bodies each morning and giving us another day God shows his faithfulness towards us.

1) is faith an emotion or a thought? What if it is neither — Gregory

God almighty came down from heaven to save us from his own wrath by allowing himself to be tortured to death. This strategy worked, even though he didn't actually die and most people weren't saved. Faith is a bamboozle.

It's the Greek πίστις (pistis) - to have trust or confidence in something, could be towards God or towards another person among other things. — BitconnectCarlos

And then you say:

Faith is also the Hebrew אֱמוּנָה (emunah) which is a dynamic and fluid concept that's also multi-directional — BitconnectCarlos

This collapses the two concepts of faith and trust (emunah and bitachon), which are obviously related, but I see them as differing, although faith is required for trust. I have no doubt that these arise from free choice, meaning you can choose to have faith and choose to have trust, but I don't think the choice of faith is non-rational. It's a matter of what you want to believe and the repercussions of that choice. From my perspective, there is no greater positivity that flows from bitachon, and I wonder how people navigate the world with a belief that all is random and meaningless and subject to a sudden collapse at any time.

I'd argue that it's just as rational to ignore the Humean rejections of causation (i.e. every event has a cause) as it is to reject scientific rejections of purpose (i.e. every event has a purpose). I impose my faith and trust in the latter, and that leaves me with the position that we're not just a random dropping of dominoes, but we're a purposeful movement toward meaning. I trust that my conversation with you right now is exactly as it should be, even including any reservations I might have with it. The comfort of every crisis is that it is there for a reason.

So, to the OP, faith is a perspective, valid as its opposite.

You ask "what is faith?"

There's no objectively correct answer. It would make more sense to ask what someone means when they use the term. Here's an article on a Christian Apologist website. That guy provides 3 definitions:

Leap of Faith

The first usage is summarized quite nicely by Mark Twain. He said that faith is “believing what you know ain’t true”. This is where we get the phrase “leap of faith”; it really means something like a leap in the dark. A mother might have faith that her son is still alive even though all of the evidence suggests otherwise. She certainly believes that her son is alive, yet she can’t be said to know he is. The mother lacks evidence and knowledge, nevertheless has faith – or strongly believes – he is still alive. She takes a leap of faith.

Faith as Trust

The second usage is also very common. Here faith would be something like “trust”. One can have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow. That isn’t a leap in the dark, one can have good reason to believe it will rise (given past experience). So faith in this sense is being used as synonymous with trust or confidence. It should be noted here that the first two senses can be had by Christians and non-Christians. An atheist could have faith that science will eventually reveal all there is to know. Now, I don’t believe science could possibly do such a thing [1], but the point is that anyone can have faith in the first two senses.

Christian Faith

The third usage, by contrast, is exclusive to Christianity. One can have faith in this sense if and only if Christianity is true. On this account, faith is knowledge of the Gospel produced in us by the work of the Holy Spirit. Modern thinkers will want to reject the idea that faith is actually knowledge. However, if Christianity is true and the Holy Spirit does instigate belief in the Gospel, then what we would have is knowledge, not merely a confidence or trust. Also notice it wouldn’t be anything like a blind leap of faith. It would be more akin to beliefs produced through memory or sensory organs. These beliefs aren’t blind leaps in the dark. They are produced by some sort of mechanism.

His third definition is contingent upon Christianity being true. If it's not true, then it would imply that Christian faith is delusion. More generously, I'd say that faith (to a believer) is an attitude of certainty toward a belief.

Faith is a style of guiding principle, a phenomenological structure that paves a path forward, a bridge over an abyss...

@Fire Ologist

I'd like you to add your perspective to that, as I'm quite interested in it. I have a sort of faith that you may see what I did there...

Why is intuition esoteric? In what sense? Do you think it makes sense — Corvus

In the history of Christianity, for example, the orthodoxy emphasized using reason to prove God's existence while the mystics spoke of intuition and being one with God. See the article on intuition in the Catholic encyclopedia (new advent website) for more information. I am not against reason, but there are higher levels i believe. Nous is higher than logos, dialectic above understanding

Will and Ideas refer to the metaphysical realities which our psychology comes from. In classical theism, God does not suffer. But classical freedom is refuted in that God would change if he created the world from nothing. His knowledge of himself creating would produce a change in him sunce he is one with his thoughts. If we ourselves are the ground of being, it's just will that makes the world what it is. Will guided by thoughts, but will nevertheless

God almighty came down from heaven to save us from his own wrath by allowing himself to be tortured to death. This strategy worked, — frank

This does not work because it is against karma and justice to substitute atonment. Get your theology right

Through restoring our souls to our bodies each morning and giving us another day God shows his faithfulness towards us — BitconnectCarlos

That's a beautiful sentiment

k
God almighty came down from heaven to save us from his own wrath by allowing himself to be tortured to death. This strategy worked,
— frank

This does not work because it is against karma and justice to substitute atonment. Get your theology right — Gregory

It gets points for sanity though.

What is faith? — Gregory

Afaik, faith is "devotional" make-believe (i.e. suspension of disbelief in superstitions, fairytales and/or myths) and, in extremis, delusion (i.e. "leap of faith" (e.g.) faith healing, willing martyrdom, jihadism, religious zionism ... denialism), and thereby usually incompatible with discursive reasoning, or rationality – in other words, a path of least cognitive effort that's universally accessible, especially to pre-school children and even cretins.

It gets points for sanity though — frank

Sometimes and it gets points for reforming sinners. But for all you know Jesus will come back someday and say "i felt no pain on the cross and i give you no merits. Be damned for the sins you confessed to". Christians have no evidence that won't happen

usually incompatible — 180 Proof

Why do you say "usually"? Just curious

Why do you say "usually"? Just curious — Gregory

I find that irrationality isn't always incompatible with rationality (e.g. conative/desirous, sublime, absurd, tragicomic ... feelings)