Sure, but then neither is faith in all its meanings always equivalent to unquestioning obedience to some authority or else in some authoritative given - this as per the Abraham example as written.

As ↪unenlightened remarked early on, in common speech one and one's spouse are said to be faithful - full of faith - toward one another. Or as another example, having faith in humanity, or else one's fellow man. In neither of these contexts is faith taken to be about blind obedience to authority. Nor is it about mere belief.

I'll venture the notion that faith is about a certain form of trust - a trust in X that can neither be empirically nor logically evidenced. Belief (also closely associated to the notion of trust) can and most always should be justifiable in order to be maintained - as is the case in JTB. But faith eludes this possibility in practice. — javra

You raise a good point about language use which I think is one reason why we get confused about faith. We often use the term "faith" with cavalier imprecision. Sometimes all we mean is that the evidence points in a certain direction. To me, "faith" serves more as a poetic or metaphorical expression than as an accurate description of certainty. Our language abounds with figurative expressions. Just as we say we're "drowning in paperwork" or "surfing the web" to capture a broader meaning, "faith" may also be used to convey a sense of confidence rather than strictly referring to an ineffable religious experience.

There's also the matter of scale. I have a reasonable expectation that my plane won’t crash (although perhaps this expectation has diminished in the U.S. under Trump?). In contrast, using faith to justify the belief that the world was created by a magic sky wizard -the literalist's deity- operates on an entirely different level. How can these two phenomena be meaningfully compared? It’s not merely that faith is a poor analogy for reasonable expectation; it's also about the magnitude of the claim being justified. The assertion that we can know the will and actions of a world-creating entity is significantly different from an empirically grounded confidence that air travel is safe. Perhaps the scale of the claim says something about why faith is a necessary concept for some.

So the stories are indeed preposterous, as you say. The lesson one is supposed to take away is, as ↪praxis says, thoughtless obedience. This is not admirable. — Banno

It's been interpreted to mean that human sacrifice is forbidden. But you're the one looking at the art. See what you will. Speaking of art, I was at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art recently. What do you make of this?

There are those amongst us who see faith, understood as submission, as a virtue. I am questioning that. I suspect you might agree, broadly speaking.

What do you make of this? — Hanover

Someone's made a model of my desk...

In contrast, using faith to justify the belief that the world was created by a magic space wizard -the fundamentalist's deity- operates on an entirely different level. How can these two phenomena be meaningfully compared? It’s not merely that faith is a poor analogy for reasonable expectation; it's also about the magnitude of the claim being justified. — Tom Storm

To me, it again has a lot to do with things such as this:

I'll add that it is not OK to have faith in things that blatantly contradict reality - to have faith that humans once upon a time walked along side dinosaurs, for example. — javra

Genesis II onward is replete with logical contradictions - which one is supposed to blindly overlook so as maintain one's faith in ... precisely what Genesis II onward claims. You've got this "omnipresent" being that is walking the earth. How exactly does that work??? Is the earth walked on part of the walking being, the "Lord"??? The same earth walking being is also said to be "omniscient" but is taken aback by this serpent (who is not yet slithering on earth) entering the picture, then gets pissed of as hell at everyone for not obeying him. Um, not quite rationally valid to then affirm this Lord as being omniscient. This same Lord is also omnipotent ... but had no power over what the serpent, Eve, and Adam did. And so forth.

Faith here isn't about trust in that which one cannot yet prove or soundly justify. Faith here is self-imposed blindness (as metaphors go, not physical blindness but a self-imposed blindness of the soul else intellect). And, just as with a faith in dinosaurs and humans once mingling, its at these junctures that I take faith to become deleterious. As I previously commented in this thread:

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)

There are those amongst us who see faith, understood as submission, as a virtue. I am questioning that. I suspect you might agree, broadly speaking. — Banno

"Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God." - Luther

I get it. You, like many others, have very strong intuitions about how things should be. And when this intuition (moral system?) conflicts with the Bible it must be very frustrating for you.

Or are these comments just designed to mitigate the discomfort of taking the story literally? — Banno

Kierkegaard saw something profound in it. You see nothing. If I see nothing in Guernica, does that say something about the painting? Or about me?

You, like many others, — BitconnectCarlos

So... you think you do not have very strong intuitions about how things should be?

Then why did you respond to my post?

Kierkegaard saw something profound in it. You see nothing. — frank

I saw quite a bit in the story, on which I have been expounding.

It was my reading of Kierkegaard that first brought this line of thinking to me. The Knight of Faith is not someone I would look up to.

I saw quite a bit int he story, on which I have been expounding. — Banno

It was worthwhile then?

So... you think you do not have very strong intuitions about how things should be?

Then why did you respond to my post? — Banno

I have intuitions. I make judgments, for sure.

Consider that only a few pages before this mess with Abraham and Isaac God floods the world and kills countless people. We can start there. What do you think would have been better? I think about this sometimes. Maybe he should have sent angels down and forced those evil men to attend moral philosophy courses. We can go down this rabbit hole. We can rewrite the Bible as we would have done things.

The story of Noah is a garbled version of an episode out of the epic of Gilgamesh.

Perhaps.

I have intuitions. I make judgments, for sure. — BitconnectCarlos

Cool. So it's not that people make judgements that is problematic when you say"

I get it. You, like many others, have very strong intuitions about how things should be. — BitconnectCarlos

So your point remains obscure.

I agree that the flood story is derived from the Gilgamesh story. There are too many parallels to ignore.



You insist that all align to your judgment. I'm the more skeptical one. I acknowledge that much is beyond me. How do you figure God should have handled the flood story? We can begin writing Banno's Bible.

Someone's made a model of my desk... — Banno

:lol: I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the garage today and unfortunately it still resembles a contemporary piece of art.

Then again, for many, “faith” simply boils down to the conviction that the “word” of God is absolute. What exactly God or this very word is remains elusive, save for those who have faith in this very absolute, and very much authoritarian, word of God. This in contrast to all other people out there. Thereby granting these faith-endowed folk the ability to discard any empirical facts, reasoning, or common-sense ethical considerations regarding the good and goodness which in any way stand in the way of their obedience to this very word. Else they get punished by the tyrant (literally, “absolute ruler and dictator”).

No, all this doesn’t make sense to me either. But, yes, it happens.

And while I still maintain that faith as concept and experience has been hijacked by such people to the detriment of what it signifies among humanity at large, I nevertheless wanted to more explicitly acknowledge this darker aspect of “faith” as the term is often employed. (And I say this as one who for my own reasons believes in what it commonly termed “the divine” ... with the notion of the Good taking center stage.)

There are those amongst us who see faith, understood as submission, as a virtue. I am questioning that. I suspect you might agree, broadly speaking. — Banno

Yes, I do agree, and I see others are posting about the varying uses of the term "faith." And that's likely the source of much of the debate. I suppose this thread might have taken a more focused course if objections were phrased as "the sort of faith i disagree with is..." or "biblical passages interpreted as promoting obedience as a virtue are concerning because...," but that would have been less fun probably.

You insist that all align to your judgment. — BitconnectCarlos

Cobbler's awls. No, I hope for a bit of conversation, some intelligent disagreement. I'm not insisting on agreement so much as enjoying disagreement.

A garage, by its very nature, tends toward disorder, for it is in its essence a space of storage and utility, where various objects accumulate over time. No matter how much one may strive to impose order upon it, the garage will inevitably revert to this state, as it is proper to its function. This tendency is not accidental but arises from its very purpose, much like how all things move toward their natural ends. — Aristotle

And to add, just to respond to the critical interpretations of the Isaac story, reference to Jewish law, not because it's the final word, but because it's from the folks who rely most heavily upon the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible):

"Pikuach nefesh (Hebrew: פיקוח נפש), which means "saving a soul" or "saving a life," is the principle in Halakha (Jewish law) that the preservation of human life overrides virtually any other religious rule of Judaism."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikuach_nefesh

I find it funny that you take serious issue with the Isaac story -- a story where no one dies, yet seem to ignore entirely the deluge where countless die painful deaths just a few pages earlier. Surely that should be the bigger matter.

In the Book of Hebrews the writer says Abraham thought God would resurrect Isaac. The command was still to murder

See the topic? See how it is not "Floods"?

It's not the Isaac story either. I don't see how I'm anymore offtopic than you are in mentioning the Isaac story.

Noah also trusts in God.

the Book of Hebrews the writer says Abraham thought God would resurrect Isaac. The command was still to murder — Gregory

NT. Different tradition. The story has many interpretations among Christians even, but certainly compared to Jews.

Noah also trusts in God. — BitconnectCarlos

Noah builds the ark on trust alone, but you'd have thought others would have thought something was up when the polar bears and penguins and koala bears all converged in the middle east. They'd have thought maybe Noah was on to something. Literalism demands such questions, right?

:meh:

My point is that faith is a poor way to arrive at truth because there is nothing it can't justify. Which is why I've generally said if you have good reasons for believing in something, you don't need faith. For me faith is best understood as the excuse people give for a belief when they don't have good reasons. — Tom Storm

:100: :up:

The gathering of the animals onto the ark also happens in Gilgamesh iirc.



Is your issue with God or Abraham?

The Binding of Isaac and the Trials of Job speak of acts of cruelty, where unjustified suffering is inflicted in the name of faith.

How do you know that it's unjustified? Like I said earlier, you're more certain than I am. The only suffering here is Abraham's inferred psychological suffering which you seem to be extremely concerned with.

Unparalleled profundity.

I don't think nationalism is functionally all that different from religion.
— ChatteringMonkey

That was my point. — Banno

I don't think it is a bad thing to be clear.

Well at least now you are beginning to address what I actually argued rather than what folk expect or want to think I argued.

Faith, understood as belief without or even despite the evidence, is not a virtue.

Faith, understood as trust, might foster commitment or dedication and these are (perhaps) virtues.

The Binding of Isaac and the Trials of Job speak of acts of cruelty, where unjustified suffering is inflicted in the name of faith. Moreover these are held up as admirable, to be emulated.

I don't agree. I hope other also disagree. — Banno

I don't think you really understand what faith is if you believe that you should evaluate what faith asks you to do by yet another standard. Faith is the standard, there's nothing besides. That is I think precisely the point of the binding of Isaac, that you sacrifice what may be in your personal interest for the greater good.

Why is faith the greater good? Because it is what preserves the social order, and that is a prerequisite without which individuals can't attain their interests to begin with.

If you believe inflicting suffering is the standard to measure behaviours to, then that is your faith.