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
In other words, it's hard to generalize about all faith, all prophecy, all scripture, all religion, etc. — BC
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
That incidentally is fideism.
— Wayfarer
AKA faith. — Vera Mont
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
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
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
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. — BC
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 — BC
Okay. Most faith, then is dependent on reason? How?No, fideism is not the same as faith. Fideism is the belief that faith is independent of reason, — Wayfarer
But not the other way around. The faith came first; rationalization a distant second. (And rarely convincing.)But even so, there are Prostestant philosophers of religion (such as Alvin Plantinga) who scrupulously deploy rational arguments in defense of their faith
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 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 "reason" has almost nothing to do with it. — T Clark
Most faith, then is dependent on reason? — Vera Mont
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:I know as much as I will ever need to know about your pathological aversion to all things religious, 180. — 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.In many religious discourses, they are seen as complementary rather than antagonistic. — Wayfarer
I know.Aquinas is an example. — Wayfarer
(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.)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.
i.e. Faith is a belief largely or wholly unsupported by 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”
Religion is an act of fear. Faith is act of liberation. — Raef Kandil
Faith is a belief largely or wholly unsupported by empirical evidence. — Vera Mont
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
The intuition that there's an invisible 'magic' creator thing... — Tom Storm
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
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
If there is a transcendent ultimate concern, it will take care of itself and doesn't need us. — Tom Storm
... from an old thread post.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
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 ..."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
Same here. :100: :up: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
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.