The real problem with faith is that that it is possible to justify anything using an appeal to faith, from the Christian apartheid of South Africa, to anti-gay activists who hold their bigotries on faith

@Tom Storm, the degree of faith in such movements is very little. Such movements can be blamed more on religion more than faith. I don't think that someone will have faith that "gay people are bad". This seems to personal and involved. Faith tends to be more timeless. A person with faith is less likely to change his faith anywhere, anytime. A person with faith allows for recurring images in his head or un-repressed thoughts with the intention to find himself which he realises as his own safety haven.

Even though faith is not supported so much by empirical evidence. Beliefs based on faith seem very wierd as everything needs to be very carefully measured for truthfulness. However, this faith craziness is in our biological and psychological makeup and it is a very powerful survival tool. Life itself is very crazy and not realising that we are equally if not more crazy means that would not be able to achieve our balance. There is no rational way to deal with life.

@Ø implies everything I am not sure I follow with what you are saying. Please, go back and read what I have said carefully as you seem to be seeking an explanation to what has already been well-explained.

In other words, it's hard to generalize about all faith, all prophecy, all scripture, all religion, etc. — BC

I agree that these concepts do not have clear boundaries. There is no such a thing as a perfect person with faith. People with faith tend to be more religious when the situation becomes so fearful. And there is no such a thing as a perfectly religious person. A religious person tends to act with faith when the situation is very safe. There are various grades and degrees of courage and faith. An infinite number of them. However, we need these concepts to understand some behaviours. Some people have more faith tendencies and some other people have more religious tendencies. But, the boundaries are not that clear in real life.

Religions are not all formed in the same way. Social situations and people interaction tend to be more complex than that. And generalisation is not what I attempted to do People are very complex beings and multi-faceted.

You can say that some people tend to more jealous than others. But jealous people when treated very fairly, they tend to be less jealous. That doesn't stop us from studying jealousy as a concept.

Tom Storm, the degree of faith in such movements is very little. Such movements can be blamed more on religion more than faith. I don't think that someone will have faith that "gay people are bad". — Raef Kandil

Faith is always about something - it doesn't stop at god, it incorporates what god wants. Having spent time discussing belief with South African Christians, I can tell you that they were people of sincere faith. Their faith told them that gays were anathema, that women were second class citizens and that racism was god's will. The problem with faith is that it can justify anything and if your belief in god comes to you without evidence, then what that god wants you to do and think comes equally unfounded.

But I have also seen this in action in some elements of the Baptist church (the tradition I grew up in) and in the conservative arms of Catholic faith.

You can't isolate faith as stopping once you decide god is real - almost always included in the leap of faith is the particular god with its commands and requirements.

That incidentally is fideism.
— Wayfarer
AKA faith. — Vera Mont

No, fideism is not the same as faith. Fideism is the belief that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and that faith is superior to reason. You see that in many religious cultures, but it's not uniform across any of them. It's relevant to Protestantism due to its emphasis on salvation by faith. But even so, there are Prostestant philosophers of religion (such as Alvin Plantinga) who scrupulously deploy rational arguments in defense of their faith. (Not to mention Thomas Aquinas.)

Religions are not all formed in the same way. Social situations and people interaction tend to be more complex than that. And generalisation is not what I attempted to do People are very complex beings and multi-faceted. — Raef Kandil

:up: That's the sense in which many atheist critics of religion hold to their own type of fundamentalism.

If you define faith as belief that comes from certain acceptable sources, how then do you determine whether a belief is faith or non-faith? Can you really know the full extent of the sources that feed into your beliefs? If so, do you then deny the existence of the sub-conscious? — Ø implies everything

That's something I'd like to chip in on. It's pretty clear that secular culture generally accepts that science is the sole source of valid knowledge, the 'umpire of reality', so to speak. But there are many open questions and conundrums, both within science itself (like the various knowledge gaps in physics and cosmology, the hard problem of consciousness, and so on) and in respect of the limitations of scientific method itself (with its basic reliance on objectivity and quantification). So we might be willing to acknowledge that science can't answer every question, but at the same time declare that as religion is grounded in the supernatural (whatever that is!) then it, too, is off the table. Leading to something like a kind of agnostic relativism, which I'm sure is the default for a lot of people.

As much as I respect Karen Armstrong's writings on religion, I find their revisionary departures from scholarship undermine her credibility as a scholar (who pretends not to be latter day apologist). — 180 Proof

Her point, in that OP and elaborated in her book The Case for God, is that in modern culture, religious faith has too often become a matter of commitment to abstract propositions, rather than a way of enacting the truths of faith through service and way of life. And that there are forms of understanding and dimensions of being that can only be 'learned by doing', so to speak (opening up to which is the role of 'mythos', in her account). But then on internet fora, everything that transpires is simply a clash between abstract propositions. :roll:

the degree of faith in such movements is very little. Such movements can be blamed more on religion more than faith. I don't think that someone will have faith that "gay people are bad". This seems to personal and involved. Faith tends to be more timeless. A person with faith is less likely to change his faith anywhere, anytime. A person with faith allows for recurring images in his head or un-repressed thoughts with the intention to find himself which he realises as his own safety haven. — Raef Kandil

Is parsing out the difference between faith and religion in this way a kind of special pleading? You like faith, and dislike religion, so religion is responsible for bad things but not faith.

In my gay experience (76 years) I have found that people of faith--even family members of faith--are quite capable of being anti-gay. People of faith, good will, etc. have engaged in slave trading, slave ownership, genocide, imperialism, war--the gamut. How can they do this? Is it because "they really do not have faith"?

If we could reliably sort people of faith/no faith by their mere actions, life would be soooo much simpler, Unfortunately, it doesn't work. We have bad people of faith, good people of faith, bad people with no faith, and good people of no faith.

In general, people are neither very very good nor very very bad. Most are a mixed bag; wishy washy; lukewarm--neither hot nor cold -- AND a lot of them are people of wishy washy, lukewarm religion and faith,

And my point is that Ms Armstrong's critique is misplaced for blaming "modern culture" (i.e. Enlightenment rationality) when the culprit, in fact, is the documented tenets of Pauline Christianity itself, beginning with Paul's letters (NT), then centuries of Patristic apologia which culminated in the Nicene Creed (381 CE). In this way, as she points out, Christianity is an aberration of dogmatic orthodoxy (re: pre-modern scholasticism, Eastern Orthodox theology, Thomism ... and then Reformed Protestantism, etc) among other Abrahamic as well as Dharmic religions (and most pagan / pantheonic cults).

Indeed. Had some of the gnostics prevailed, it might have been a very different story. But let's not throw the baby of gnosis out with the bathwater of dogmatic belief systems.

Is parsing out the difference between faith and religion in this way a kind of special pleading? You like faith, and dislike religion, so religion is responsible for bad things but not faith. — BC

Do I want a special status because I am a person with faith and a true believer in God? No. Am I holding myself on a pedestal and asking everyone to do thr same? No

But, being a person with faith in God is not something I should be ashamed of and I do think that faith is good. I do think that everyone of us, as hierarchical organisms have this tendency to test each other's powers and I do think that God or power at the top of the hierarchy is important to maintain peace of the mind and heart.

I do think that God is not essentially bad but it could be if we allow it to be so. And I do think that religion and dogmas are the problem and not faith.

Remember, I am a person with faith but I am also human and if you attach supernatural powers to me just because I say God exists, I wouldn't really mind it. But, my faith in itself is harmless. It is my faith compounded with people's fears and their seeking refugee of their troubles that can be very destructive.

Is parsing out the difference between faith and religion in this way a kind of special pleading? You like faith, and dislike religion, so religion is responsible for bad things but not faith. — BC

:up: :up:

Agreed. :eyes:

if you attach supernatural powers to me just because I say God exists, I wouldn't really mind it. — Raef Kandil

Well, that's not going to happen so don't get your hopes up .

Well, that's not going to happen so don't get your hopes up — BC

I thought I was clear I was NOT waiting for this. Can you tell me what you are responding to exactly? I am saying and my point is clear: corruption is not linked to faith in God only. And I do admit that with God the temptation is high. Military rulings experience higher corruption levels than God I believe. But God is the black sheep for some reason as if all the problems happen because of Him. Well, guess what? As much as you hate it, I am not going to cut a part of me just to be accepted. And God is in my physical and psychological making and I would claim, we are all very similar but we have different self-awareness levels. So, when you tell me: "don't get your hopes so high up", my response would be, "only blame yourself if you do and go find your true faith whether it is God or something else because otherwise you are not living life to the fullest."

When you go to discover yourself, you don't tell yourself what to discover. You don't put boundaries. You could find anything. You could even find God and then be so shamed for life!

No, fideism is not the same as faith. Fideism is the belief that faith is independent of reason, — Wayfarer

Okay. Most faith, then is dependent on reason? How?

But even so, there are Prostestant philosophers of religion (such as Alvin Plantinga) who scrupulously deploy rational arguments in defense of their faith

But not the other way around. The faith came first; rationalization a distant second. (And rarely convincing.)

What is that internal model built from, if not experience and learning of real facts, things and events in the real world? At some points during that construction, reason must have been involved in assessing which bits to keep and discard, which bits go where in the model. — Vera Mont

I think "reason" has almost nothing to do with it. Most of it is non-verbal, unconscious. It happens while we're not trying to do anything. Children don't learn language using any kind of reason, certainly not before they start going to school, by which time they are already fluent. Maybe parents tell children to say "please" and not to fight with their siblings, but that's not where they really learn about the rules and skills of social interaction. The same is true of the physical world. We learn about gravity by falling. We learn it with out bodies. People pay attention to what's going on and take it into themselves to build their picture of the world. To me, that's the foundation of knowledge, intuition, and faith, which are all the same thing.

I came to recognize my initial understanding of a problem came from a mostly unconscious processing of the information I have studied, my understanding of my professional body of knowledge, and my general knowledge of life. In short, it was ultimately founded on an empirical but not rational basis.
— T Clark
I don't see this is as a contradiction to
Faith is a belief largely or wholly unsupported by empirical evidence.
— Vera Mont — Vera Mont

I think it is a contradiction. As I've tried to describe it, knowledge, intuition, faith is ultimately founded on direct experience of the world supplemented as we get older by intentional learning and contemplation.

I think "reason" has almost nothing to do with it. — T Clark

Fine. I never discussed reason, except as a proposed component of sorting information. I think I do use reason as part of the process whereby I arrive at conclusions and decisions, and I suspect you do too, but if you don't believe that, you don't. It's not a critical difference between faith, based in little or no evidence, and trust or belief based on empirical experience.

No, fideism is not the same as faith. — Wayfarer

Only, I think, in this regard: in practice, "faith" is a-rational (i.e. unsound) whereas "fideism" is ir-rational (i.e. invalid).

Most faith, then is dependent on reason? — Vera Mont

In many religious discourses, they are seen as complementary rather than antagonistic. Aquinas is an example. His articles are nearly always given in terms of reasoned arguments for and against the subject of the discussion.

I know as much as I will ever need to know about your pathological aversion to all things religious, 180. You can really spare me the ongoing explanation. I'm trying to steer this particular OP towards a mode of discourse which is understandable in the context of philosophy of religion.

I know as much as I will ever need to know about your pathological aversion to all things religious, 180. — Wayfarer

Yes, Wayf, my mind is highly allergic to pathogens such as the "religious" (aka the superstitious, the mystifying (stupifying), the anti-naturalist, the merely anecdotal, the inexplicable (unintelligible), the eschatological, the totalitarian ...) and, as a matter of intellectual integrity and metacognitive hygiene, it's my (our) duty, whenever possible, to proffer public reminders of alternative discursive practices which encourage existential fitness and lucidity. :mask:

In many religious discourses, they are seen as complementary rather than antagonistic. — Wayfarer

That's not quite the same thing as dependence. Faith being dependent on reason would mean that the reason came first and led by deduction to faith. Which is contrary to the testament of mystics and prophets, who come by their faith through revelation or an epiphany of some kind.
Reason being used to explain faith is a quite different matter.

Aquinas is an example. — Wayfarer

I know.

In the wider context of his philosophy, Aquinas held that human reason, without supernatural aid, can establish the existence of God and the immortality of the soul; for those who cannot or do not engage in such strenuous intellectual activity, however, these matters are also revealed and can be known by faith. Faith, though, extends beyond the findings of reason in accepting further truths such as the triune nature of God and the divinity of Christ. From reason, we can know that there is a God and that there is only one God; these truths about God are accessible to anyone by experience and logic alone, apart from any special revelation from God.

(A skeptic might wonder how come there was not one single reasoning person in all of Asia or Africa or the Americas to come to these self-evident realizations.)
His definition of reason is different from mine.
But even he doesn't claim that faith is based on empirical evidence.

From the side of the subject, it is the mind's assent to what is not seen: “Faith is the evidence of things that appear not”

i.e. Faith is a belief largely or wholly unsupported by empirical evidence.
And then reason can be twisted and pummelled into its service.

I would expect so!

Religion is an act of fear. Faith is act of liberation. — Raef Kandil

Are you defining religious belief as an act of fear, or describing it as such? Are you defining faith as an act of liberation, or describing it as so?

In mathematics, we have notation to separate definition from description. It is not always used, but it is nice when it is.

$i =: \sqrt -1, \quad i =_{\text{def}} \sqrt -1 \tag1$.

The above is not a derived identity, it is a defined identity. We define i to mean the square root of minus one, because i is a more practical symbol to use than $\sqrt -1$. Now, compare that to the normal equality sign:

$i = (\sqrt -1)^{4n+1}, \ n \in \Bbb N_0 \tag2$

If we define i to be the square root of one, the above identity follows from the description, with the help of external definitions and rules (see exponentiation). Thus, (1) is a definition, and (2) is a description.

Now, in mathematics, $=$ is sometimes used as $=:$. For this part however, assume that the normal equality sign is always a description of a previously defined quantity/object:

$a =: 5^2$

Okay, now, what can I do?

$a = 26$

Nope, that would contradict my definition. How about:

$a =: 26$

Sure; that would make a and a homographs of each other, in that a refers to 25, and a refers to 26. This happens all the time; plane refers to both aeroplane and an infinite, two-dimensional, flat manifold.

Now, faith and religious belief are symbols, just like a. And like a in my example, these two words have pre-established definitions. Many, in fact. If you were to decide on some measure of representativity, one definition would be the most descriptively correct. Now, when you start speaking of faith and religious belief, like in the paragraph I quoted at the top, are you redefining them here (1)? Or, are you describing these words, following some extra-textual definition, one perhaps previously established or assumed to exist in most people's heads (2)?

To be extra clear, when you say faith is an act of liberation, are you saying:

Faith $=:$ Act of liberation, and ... (1)

Or, are you saying:

Faith $=$ Act of liberation, and ... (2)

The former is your definition, which you can follow up with descriptions thereof. The latter is a claim about someone else's definitions(s) and the consequences thereof.

Faith is a belief largely or wholly unsupported by empirical evidence. — Vera Mont

You edited your answer after my previous response.

You seem to be arguing that just because something is lacking in empirical evidence, then there are no grounds to believe it. But empirical evidence is limited in scope by our own sensory apparatus and by the way we categorise experience - the structures we hold in terms of which things are interpreted. But there are many things to which empiricism doesn't apply. Consider mathematical axioms: certain mathematical truths, such as the axioms of arithmetic or geometry, must be accepted as true without empirical evidence. They are considered to be self-evident and can be derived from logic alone. Many hold that at least some moral principles, such as the belief that it is wrong to kill or harm others, even in the absence of empirical evidence, based on intuition, reason, or philosophical arguments. We can often deduce the truth of certain propositions from other propositions that we already accept as true without empirical evidence, or arrive at knowledge through a priori reasoning, which is reasoning that does not rely on empirical evidence.

I think it's more the case that modern culture has abandoned the structures and forms through which religious intuitions were previously expressed. There are whole classes of ideas which are then automatically flagged as being associated with religion - typically, as opposed to science - which are then designated as being the subject of faith and challenged on those grounds. It happens continuously in any threads here about philosophy of religion simply as an expression of the zeitgeist.

The way I see it, the problem with faith is located in its instantiation. Faith in what? In Yahweh and the associated scriptures? In Allah and sharia? Is this kind of faith an intuition? It seems a lot more than this. The intuition always seems to run away with itself.

I wonder if relgious faith is comparable to moral intuitions. We have no choice but to live in community with others, having moral intuitions are practical and unavoidable (unless you are a sociopath). The intuition that there's an invisible 'magic' creator thing, versus an intuition located in community behaviour seem quite different. Can you say more about the similarity to make the connection for me?

Faith is almost never left merely at, 'I intuit there is some kind of deity and I will leave it there'. It is mostly faith in a particular god with a particular set of instructions. And that's where the problem begins when that faith is foundational to mysogyny, homophobia, racism, anti-abortion and anti-birth control, etc.

And that's where the problem begins when that faith is foundational to mysogyny, homophobia, racism, anti-abortion and anti-birth control, etc. — Tom Storm

Agree that religion is often incompatible with liberalism, and also that religious fundamentalism and fanaticism, and the politicisation of faith that we see in e.g. the American Christian Right, are deeply problematical. And also that we have to live in a pluralistic society which has to acomodate many different perspectives.

The intuition that there's an invisible 'magic' creator thing... — Tom Storm

It's often the case that everyone understands something different by the name of God. There sure are a lot of religious believers I wouldn't have any truck with. In fact there's probably quite a few to whom I would come across as atheist, and I wouldn't even try to persuade them otherwise.

But I also believe there is a fact of existence that is over our limited cognitive horizons, which religions, at least sometimes, represent. I mean, not all religion is evil, although if your sole experience of it was through internet fora, you might be inclined to think so.

:up:

I suppose to try and articulate my own stance a little better, I think the higher religious traditions - by that I'm referring to Christian Platonism, and what I know of Vedanta and Buddhism - are grounded in an insight into a genuine higher truth. Not just as a matter of belief or faith, although they may be instrumental in coming to understand it. But that in some sense, humanity is part of the unfolding of the cosmos - the way I put it is, that through sentient beings, the Universe comes to understand itself. That is an intuition that is even shared by at least some scientists. So I allow that any one of them might be valid pathway to coming to know those higher truths, which is why I too am pluralist. But these things are very deep, hard to fathom, so they're expressed in the language of signs and symbols - you can't simply spell them out or describe them, as they require a complete re-organisation of the personality in order to understand - hence my earlier reference to 'realisation' or 'self-realisation'. Those ideas are much better explained in Hindu and Buddhist schools than in mainstream Christianity, although they're also there if you know where to look. Faith is part of that, but ultimately it is something to be known directly, although that kind of understanding is not part of the lingua franca of today's culture.

I do undertand your position and believe I have, if you'll forgive me, a reasonable, intuitive grasp of your perspective.

But I have no personal intuitions of any of what you describe, despite years of exposure to everything from Alan Watts, Suzuki, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Krishnamurti, Jung and Gnosticism and many other old favourites.

But these things are very deep, hard to fathom, so they're expressed in the language of signs and symbols - you can't simply spell them out or describe them, as they require a complete re-organisation of the personality in order to understand - hence my earlier reference to 'realisation' or 'self-realisation' — Wayfarer

There's no question that such esoterica is vague and lends itself to multiple interpretive expressions. I'm not crazy about following such signs and symbols around the world, like some mystical equivalent to a storm chaser.

I guess I take the view that this material appeals to some and not to others. And it doesn't much matter, except in academia or amongst the cognoscenti and in some corners of places like this. If there is a transcendent ultimate concern, it will take care of itself and doesn't need us.

But I've said before I think your position has aesthetic foundations. You appear to have a view that there has been a kind of fall (paradise lost?) - that the numinous and integrated has been displaced by an ugly, modernist, secular, scientistic worldview, which has led us to nihilism and disenchantment. The evidence being our current, divided world and the coarseness of public discourse. I would argue the world was coarse and divided and broken even when spiritual traditions meant life and the numinous was not scoffed at, and before modernism was a glint in TS Elliot's eye. My take is that traditions of higher awareness may lead us to the crass and the ugly, every bit as swiftly as any other type of belief system.

We stand on either sides of the river making similar arguments, but for opposite reasons.

That said - I love your contributions and the focus and scholarship you bring to the discussions. :up:

You appear to have a view that there has been a kind of fall (paradise lost?) - that the numinous and integrated has been displaced by an ugly, modernist, secular, scientistic worldview, which has led us to nihilism and disenchantment. The evidence being our current, divided world and the coarseness of public discourse. — Tom Storm

Thanks, kind of you to say so. I guess that is a fair description, although not all there is to it.

If there is a transcendent ultimate concern, it will take care of itself and doesn't need us. — Tom Storm

Wouldn't be too sure of that.

Following Wayfarer's lead, I'll put my Zener cards on the Ouija board ...

I'm a (modern) Gnostic in the following sense:

"I don't want to believe. I want to know."
— Carl Sagan

"I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone."
— Albert Camus

Deus, sive natura naturans
— Benedict Spinoza — 180 Proof

... from an old thread post.

I suppose to try and articulate my own stance a little better [ ... ] Not just as a matter of belief or faith, although they may be instrumental in coming to understand it. But that in some sense, humanity is part of the unfolding of the cosmos - the way I put it is, that through sentient beings, the Universe comes to understand itself. — Wayfarer

And so the eye says to the brain, "I see things and you understand yourself in part by me seeing them, but I cannot see you or myself so you cannot understand yourself completely and, like me, brain, you have to make up X-of-the-gaps fantasies about me and yourself. Of course, we cannot honestly believe those fantasies are true no matter what we tell ourselves ..."

But I have no personal intuitions of any of what you describe, despite years of exposure to everything from Alan Watts, Suzuki, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Krishnamurti, Jung and Gnosticism and many other old favourites. — Tom Storm

Same here. :100: :up:

Besides, to paraphrase Camus: what can 'Perennialism' mean to – what existential role can (the) 'ultimate unity' play in – the ephemeral lives of discrete metacognitives like us, Wayfarer? Just give up metacognition as much as possible (aka "one hand clapping" & "mantras")? Become, in effect, satisfied swine rather than sad Socratics (or, more likely, stupified sophists/apologists)?