Similarly, I think a necessary part of belief in God is not knowing sufficiently if God may, say, answer my prayer, but nonetheless believe God has my best interests in mind, or that God exists at all, despite not having sufficient knowledge of His existence. — QuixoticAgnostic
That feels like us testing God, rather than the other way around, and I think belief in God would be diminished if it could simply be proven or shown to be true as a fact. — QuixoticAgnostic
But if I do find myself believing in some God, it will be through reason, not faith. — QuixoticAgnostic
Though Heidegger is the philosopher I tend to read most, you may rest assured I have read far more Nietzsche than the average person. — Arne
Can you say something about what Heidegger thinks about god or theism? — Tom Storm
whose reading of H may not be seen as adequate these days — Tom Storm
I suspect his thinking is too lofty to incorporate a personal god. — Tom Storm
Of course as a good atheist, I have had to deal with a range of apologists and many times had to run through the various well-worn and shop-soiled arguments, which for me come post hoc. — Tom Storm
I suspect his thinking is too lofty to incorporate a personal god.
— Tom Storm
I disagree. Nothing in his thinking precludes a personal God. — Arne
If the but-you-have-faith-too rhetoric targets me, I could accept that and use it as basis of definition of what faith means to the believer. So, when I get on a plane or cross a street, do I think I can never be hit by a car, or that planes never crash? Obviously not. That which I put my faith in is fallible; I know it to be fallible; and that faith is predicated on that fallibility. I need to put my faith in say a pilot or car drivers, precisely because I know they could mess up and harm me (or even deliberately harm me, who knows?). This works for person-faith, too: you commit to your relationships; you don't let go of that trust easily. And in turn you attempt to act trustworthy, too.
But abstract enough, apply it to God, and I, an atheist, am left with... nothing that makes sense. What it looks like to me is this: From early on, you put your trust in God the way you put your trust in your parents. And by the time you differentiate between fallible people and the triple-omni God, that faith is in place and it needs a target. The meaning of the concept is quite literally what you put your faith in. Basically, faith constitutes God by way of the trust-people metaphor. — Dawnstorm
Why is divine hiddenness a thing? Why would gods, who in scripture interact with humans - whether Islam, Judaism or Hindu scriptures - now only be available through faith or some old books or via a priestly caste? — Tom Storm
i didn't mean to argue that his ideas preclude a personal God, just that his thinking had been somewhat too lofty to focus on this narrow subject, given that Heidegger seems to regard the project of being as significant enough to be getting on with. — Tom Storm
Q: Now the question naturally arises: Can the individual man in any way still influence this web of fateful circumstance? Or, indeed, can philosophy influence it? Or can both together influence it, insofar as philosophy guides the individual, or several individuals, to a determined action?
A: If I may answer briefly, and perhaps clumsily, but after long reflection: philosophy will be unable to effect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all purely human reflection and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poetizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god, or for the absence of a god in [our] decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline. — Heidegger, Der Speigel interview
So up until now I've treated faith as trust in a person or person-like entity; but you can actually direct a similar energy towards your habits (like, say, rational thought). It's served you well until now. It's, I think, a variant of putting faith in yourself: when I do this I succeed, and if I don't it's not my problem. (I'm a rational atheist; those are irrational theists... and such.) Come to think of it, this is where "confidence" comes in after all. I have no trouble of thinking of that as some kind of "faith". The difference seems to me mostly... rhetorical? — Dawnstorm
From early on, you put your trust in God the way you put your trust in your parents. — Dawnstorm
When I cross the street I put my faith in the drivers; they will not run me over. When I get on a plane, I put my faith in lots of people: engineers and pilots come to mind. And so on. — Dawnstorm
There was his notorious exclamation in a very late interview in the German media, 'only a God can save us now'. Courtesy of Google, I can now reproduce it, and it's oddly consonant with the remark above: — Wayfarer
Philosophy strikes me as "fools gold" for both the theist and the atheist. And Heidegger's philosophy is no exception. — Arne
I still can't see how you got there. Sorry. — Tom Storm
My question came about because of the use of the word 'confidence', which I had laid out in a different context earlier, as an alternative to faith. — Tom Storm
My focus is primarily on the reality (or not) of the entity (gods), not upon the reasonable confidence. — Tom Storm
I don't see how these relate since we can demonstrate the existence of parents and interact with them and easily assess whether they can be trusted or not. Lots of children don't trust their parents because experience has taught them not to. We can't gauge trust in the same way for any gods I am aware of. We can't even demonstrate if they are real. How are they the same? — Tom Storm
I would focus less on the putting of faith and more on the reality of the physical experience. When I cross a street I am interacting with physical processes which I can demonstrate to be true and which is more or less identically shared with others. I only cross at lights (if at all possible) and I practice vigilance, looking to see if the road is clear. I believe I can have reasonable confidence that empiricism and the fact that I seem to inhabit a physical reality will allow for a safe crossing. — Tom Storm
Faith in God is a habit transfer from faith in people to something that that habit transfer creates in the first place: faith in God is a modified faith in people that creates its own target: faith constitutes God as that which is necessary for the tranferred habit to stick. Of course, I don't expect theists to agree, and thus this isn't a good theory if my goal is understanding. So what am I to do? — Dawnstorm
Which is why, when I read the opening post, about "types of faith", I had no intuition at all. What's the concept we're supposed to subdivide here? Like you, I tend not to use faith outside of the context of religion. — Dawnstorm
Isn't faith certainty? — Tom Storm
your weak ability with understanding — Vaskane
ignorant dumbass — Vaskane
your rashness — Vaskane
you being an idiot — Vaskane
getting your ass handed to you — Vaskane
after I had slapped you around for saying stupid shit. — Vaskane
that worm-like reason — Vaskane
No. I will not shut up.Ty now shut up — Vaskane
Isn't faith certainty?
— Tom Storm
I don't think this is right. — Hanover
Even if my view on faith is peculiar to just me, I still think it responsive to the OP, which was a question generally of what sorts of faith there are. I just reject the idea that faith is best described as what children in Sunday school believe as they just repeat back what they're told. — Hanover
That means faith is a meta concept, not just a list of rules and regulations. It is the idea that belief in something bigger than one's self is what faith is, — Hanover
I didn't think you would know, perhaps it's best to stick with your Cartesian Dualism, eh? — Vaskane
Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, § 10: — Vaskane
This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors. To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one.
where you inadvertently admitted that a person can use infinity as an adjective — Vaskane
we know you resent me — Vaskane
Outside of religion the word is used
metaphorically and IMO wrongly. — Tom Storm
:up: :up:The only time I use the word faith in conversation is to describe someone's religious views. I try to avoid using this word to describe quotidian matters. — Tom Storm
Thanks for this. :mask:
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