I feel like a significant part of belief in God, particularly a personal God like in Christianity, is having faith: believing without sufficient reason to believe, or trusting without sufficient reason to trust. And I mean this from the perspective of the believer, not any objective basis for sufficient reason. For example, I may not trust my friend enough to sufficiently believe that they will pay me back, but I nonetheless put my trust in them to do so. 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.

My point is, I don't agree with the sentiment that one must know God exists, or prove the existence of God, or even have sufficient evidence to warrant belief in God to believe. 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. Personally, I simply can't put faith in something without reasoning my way towards it as I feel faith in God requires, so I don't think I'll ever follow a religion. That said, I am agnostic and have been able to reason my way to the potential existence of some God-like being. But if I do find myself believing in some God, it will be through reason, not faith.

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

But why do we require faith? Why aren't gods simply present in our lives and why this:

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

This seems crazy to me. Why would gods be invisible and why would testing gods not be ok?

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?

But if I do find myself believing in some God, it will be through reason, not faith. — QuixoticAgnostic

I am an atheist by feel or intuition. The god hypothesis never helped me to make sense of anything and the idea of a deity felt absurd to me from the age of 7 or 8. 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. As I've often said, I think belief in gods is often similar to a sexual preference - you are either attracted or not.

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

I find both dull and unreadable, but that's on me. Can you say something about what Heidegger thinks about god or theism?

Can you say something about what Heidegger thinks about god or theism? — Tom Storm

Philosophically, Heidegger had little to say regarding God or theism. He was born a Catholic and much of his higher education was financed by the Catholic church in one manner or another. He converted to Protestantism following his marriage. It is my understanding that he took more than a passing interest in pantheism in his later years. Despite what some may say, Heidegger was absolutely not an atheist. And unless something else comes to mind, I believe that is all I can say about Heidegger on this matter. I hope it helps.

I've read something of his history and some essays on his thought and some work by Dreyfus (whose reading of H may not be seen as adequate these days) but this seems a hard matter to get perspective on. I suspect his thinking is too lofty to incorporate a personal god.

whose reading of H may not be seen as adequate these days — Tom Storm

Interesting. Sometimes I think it is "fashionable" to diss on Dreyfus. When it came to American Heidegger scholars, there was a time when he was essentially a lone voice in the wilderness. It is nonsensical to hold any person under such circumstances to contemporary standards of adequacy. I suspect there is no philosopher who did more to mainstream Heidegger to American universities.

And many of the most pre-eminent Heidegger scholars of the 21st century studied under Dreyfus, including Mark Wrathall now at Oxford, Sean Kelly now at Harvard, William Blattner now at Georgetown and the late John Haugland who spent most of his teaching career at Pittsburgh. And every one of them loved Dreyfus. I defer to them on the issue of adequacy.

I suspect his thinking is too lofty to incorporate a personal god. — Tom Storm

I disagree. Nothing in his thinking precludes a personal God. Though he was far from being a humble man per se, it would not surprise me if he considered no philosophy to be lofty enough on the issue. And I am confident the least he would say is that it is an issue for theology rather than philosophy. But more than anything, I have come across nothing in his history or in his work to suggest he ever had any significant philosophical interest in the issue.

And my experience is not that Heidegger is difficult to understand because his thinking is lofty (which I don't think it is). Instead, I find it extremely dense and jargon dependent. And my solution is to just keep reading it over and over again.

All the Dreyfus class lectures (N=28) on Division One of Being and Time can be downloaded at:
https://archive.org/details/Philosophy_185_Fall_2007_UC_Berkeley

I believe I also found, downloaded, and still have copies of the syllabus for the Dreyfus lectures and it does list the pages that one is expected to read prior to the lecture. It was pretty cool being able to read Being and Time in sections and then listen to the Dreyfus lecture on that section. I still listen to the lectures from time to time but generally as background while I wander around the house or around the yard tending to matters.

Sean Kelly's class lectures were once available for download on Harvard's website but I do not think that is still the case. I am glad I downloaded them when I did. But they were recorded early in his career at Harvard and so his approach is recognizably and understandably modeled on Dreyfus. Still, the audio quality of his lectures is superior.

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

We have similar experiences. As a good non-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. It can be exhausting. But I am just too lazy to stop. :-)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I have a copy of some Sean Kelly lectures on the subject which have been interesting. But it leaves me none the wiser.

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

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. If I had paid attention to philosophy 40 years ago, then perhaps I might have developed some useful understanding of H's critique of onto-theology and more fully apprehended how we are situated in the reality we experience and how being might take us beyond notions of god. Or something like that.

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

Fascinating. Faith in entities you know to be fallible and faith in entities you believe to be infallible. If these are different varieties of faith, then the non-believer would subscribe to the former while the believer would subscribe to both? That in and of itself strikes me as a sufficient response to the idea that "you have faith too."

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 might chip in here to say that in some contexts, or in some respects, what you can see depends on the kind of person you are, or perhaps the kind of life or experiences you have had. People will see things differently, in a loose sense, depending on the kind of sensibility we bring to it. In the case of religion(s) there are the factors of prophecy and of revealed truths. They would claim that the prophet sees things that we don't see. Obviously a contestable claim and not one that I'm actually defending, but in the context, I think it's relevant. Perhaps there is a real meaning to the old word 'seer'. But our culture has no criteria to judge those kinds of utterances other than the scientific or empirical (although bear in mind, that is the subject matter of the tradition of hermenuetics). I have noticed in my reading of early Greek philosophy, that the very early philosophers, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Pythagoras, were all said in some sense to have had a kind of 'vision of the Gods' or to 'see as Gods', in other words, to see beyond what us mortals are able to see (which presumably has something to do with the fact that their names are still known to us after millenia.)

Customarily, in religious traditions, the idea of the salvation is linked to the belief that the ordinary human, the hoi polloi, the common man, will be generally precluded from reaching that plateau of understanding, so we are forced to rely on the grace of God or another supreme being (depending on cultural context.) But in some cases, especially early Buddhism, 'faith' was taken as a kind of quality of confidence in the Buddha, but that it would eventually be supplanted by certain knowledge (Jñāna) when the conditions were fulfilled and liberating insight acheived. But then, that general understanding is also conveyed in the Apostle Paul's 'we see through a glass, darkly', the implication being that in the fullness of time, we will see clearly. Faith is, in that context, eventually vindicated by knowledge, not by our narrowly-defined 'falsifiable hypotheses'.

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

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:

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

I don't know what commentators have made of that, but it is a telling comment.

how being might take us beyond notion of god. Or something like that. — Tom Storm

Philosophy strikes me as "fools gold" for both the theist and the atheist. And Heidegger's philosophy is no exception.

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

I still can't see how you got there. Sorry.

My focus is primarily on the reality (or not) of the entity (gods), not upon the reasonable confidence.

From early on, you put your trust in God the way you put your trust in your parents. — Dawnstorm

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?

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

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.

I don't see quite how putting faith in an invisible being, which is likely unknowable and about which there is not much agreement or good evidence can compare to the physical process of crossing a road or catching a plane.

What am I missing in your analysis?

I don't know what commentators have made of that, but it is a telling comment. — Wayfarer

And consistent with his notions of technology as the cat that has been let out of the bag or the genie that has been let out of the bottle. Control is an illusion.

Agree, but I think Pandora's Box would be the better analogy ;-)

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

Interesting. I've heard a number of atheists make the same point. Mainly that only magic can get us out of the shitstorm we seem to have created for ourselves.

Hard to know what he meant, the old enigmatic devil...

Philosophy strikes me as "fools gold" for both the theist and the atheist. And Heidegger's philosophy is no exception. — Arne

Say some more on this.

I think Pandora's Box would be the better analogy — Wayfarer

Agreed.

I still can't see how you got there. Sorry. — Tom Storm

It's partly because I misread you. For some reason, I thought you suggested "confidence" instead of "faith", when you just had a question because someone else suggested it. This is the paragraph I misread:

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

I don't know how or why. It's clear enough on a re-read.

My focus is primarily on the reality (or not) of the entity (gods), not upon the reasonable confidence. — Tom Storm

This, though, is a very real difference between us. My focus is on understanding what people do (in their heads) when they "believe in God". It's not easy when the concept is not native to your world view. Many of my intuitions will work against me.

Whether or not God exists is a topic that, I think, mostly comes up when theists and atheists cross paths. But the existence of God is usually something of a background assumption for theists, when it comes to having faith in God. Their "relationship with God" is the focus. If you focus on the background assumptions, you might miss the core.

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.

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

They're not the same. I've said (or implied) multiple times that I see the relationship between "faith in person" and "faith in God" as metaphoric (or figurative in some other way), meaning that the cognitive/emotional behaviour will be the same in some, but different in others. I don't have the details.

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

That's not something I disagree with, but again my focus is different. I think most social behaviour is habitual, but open to modification to adapt to situations. Questions of confidence tend to be relevant in exceptional situations only.

If I cross at a traffic light and zebra crossing, I mostly do so out habit. Questions of confidence seem to come into it when I'm, say, in a hurry: it's late at night, the traffic light's not green yet, but the traffic lights for the cars in both directions are already red, so I'm fairly confident in starting to walk a little early. That's a show of confidence a step above the usual habit; it's a recurring situation so it's also prone to habit, but at the very least I need to gauge if it's the sort of situation that allows for the less common habitual sequence.

Atheists and theists have very different thought habits when it comes to God, which is why - when they clash - both of them tend to be in fringe situations. That complicates mutual understanding, but it's hard to get around this.

Based on all this I might summarise my position as the following? 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?

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

I watched a recording of a recent lecture and discussion session featuring a US anthropologist called Tanya Lurmann (mentioned in another thread). She's done a lot of anthropological work among American evangelicals, asking them questions, surveys, etc. Her book on it is How God becomes Real. It's worth reading the jacket copy as it actually is quite close to what you've suggested here. Important to emphasise she's not an evangelical herself, she says she's an open-minded agnostic on the actual question. But she presents a vivid case and is quite a persuasive.

Her book on it is How God becomes Real. It's worth reading the jacket copy as it actually is quite close to what you've suggested here. — Wayfarer

That's an interesting book. "How God Becomes Real," sounds like a great title to describe what I'm interested in, too. Thanks for that.

Thanks for clarifying. :up:

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

Understand. I generally highlight faith in this way just to make a point. When it comes to Christian traditions, I do consider the various categories of believer and their faith, from the literalists to the sophisticated theologians - who inhabit totally different worlds.

I grew up in the Baptist tradition, so god stuff is not alien to me. But we were taught that the Bible is allegorical. The stories were understood as ways to teach people, they are not to be taken as (forgive the pun) gospel. I was soon aware of Paul Tillich's more mystical notion of God as ground of being and have read a fair bit of Christian thinking. Nevertheless, I still hold the idea of gods to be an unnecessary fiction and can't find any way to make use of the idea of a deity or the notion of faith as a pathway to truth.

Faith is really a complex word. Faith be it religious or ideological is kind of a blind belief. One of the important features of it is probably how it's followers add adhoc hypothesis to support their belief. It is accustomed by fear when it comes to most theistic religion and bounded by rules when it comes to athesitic one. If it is a philosophy or ideology it is ethical need to follow it without questioning it. Faith is trust with a twist.

Isn't faith certainty? — Tom Storm

I don't think this is right. People have their faith challenged all the time, and there are times when one has higher or lesser degrees of faith. Perhaps the ideal is that one would walk with absolute certainty in whatever their foundational beliefs are, but I don't think describes most people who think things through. What I'm saying need not be limited to a religious context either, but I'd assume that whatever secular beliefs you hold foundational are occassionally self-questioned. I would also suppose that the committed atheist might have times in the foxhole where they question their previously held beliefs.

I also think this discussion misses an important sort of faith related to deciding to believe not based upon empirical evidence, but upon the consequences the belief tends towards your conduct and success. This pragmatic basis for faith might not be what some mean by faith because it offers a justification for the belief, and some take faith to be just blind acceptance that nothing could shatter.

What I hear from the many accounts here is that a good number have stories of loss of faith, where they began in childhood with a rigid form of faith that amounted to subservience to parents and other adult religious authority, to finally be freed from it in adulthood, finding comfort in sites like this where reverence to such beliefs is not expected.

What might have held those folks closer to their faith was some evidence of its purpose, meaning, or at least utility. It is a type of faith to believe whole heartedly that faith will lead one in the right direction, but it's important too to realize you have to have faith in the correct thing. 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, with the goal in looking for that, but in being able to abandon the particulars if they don't meet that objective.

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.

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

Ty now shut up — Vaskane

No. I will not shut up.


I wish you nothing but the best.

that teaches me nothing — Vaskane

But it does reveal the truth of you.

I wish you nothing but the best.

Isn't faith certainty?
— Tom Storm

I don't think this is right. — Hanover

Fair enough. I'm no expert on degrees of faith, since I've never had the experience in any form. Nevertheless, most of the Muslims and Christians I have explored this with describe it that way.

But I generally don't raise certainty as an aspect of faith and your response is useful. I usually define faith as the reason people give for believing when they don't have a good reason. And only then when faith is presented to me as the same thing as that the plane they will catch will not crash. And of course believers challenge the 'no good reasons' as you would expect.

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

Those with 'certainty' are not always naive fundamentalists - they may not be any kind of literalist and accept science and do not have a cartoon god in their sights. And I'm not sure it is fair to describe this type of faith an unthinking, child like Sunday school style faith (Islam aside) but I get what you mean.

I also suspect that some people's faith is performative and not deeply held. Having worked in palliative and end of life care, I have met many dying people (including priests) for whom the faith vanished as they discovered they were dying. God provided no comfort and heaven receded the moment mortality presented. The opposite of a deathbed conversion is also a thing.

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 think this is a useful point. Faith can be complicated and I wouldn't associate it with rules as such. Even if rules are justified by using appeals to faith. I would imagine that faith is more of a 'non-rational' foundation.

But 'bigger than one's self' seems super vague and rather pointless to me. I have no doubt that there are trillions of things bigger and more important than me (depending upon the perspective), but I've never been able to get from this to any varieties of theistic meaning, no matter how sophisticated.

I wish you nothing but the best.

and that teaches me nothing other than you want me to feel shame for not adhering to your objective slave morality — Vaskane

It is always this "slave morality" talk from people who faithfully follow a man :rofl:

11 hours later ... Damn dude, that's a lot of time to Google for an answer. — Vaskane

It took you that and one more hour to do your own diligence instead of asking rhetorical questions when you have no business doing so.

/

I didn't think you would know, perhaps it's best to stick with your Cartesian Dualism, eh? — Vaskane

Yeah, one has no connection with the other, nice display of philosophical literacy.

Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, § 10: — Vaskane

That is very cute. If I am going to read Nietzsche, it is not going to be some English translation. You don't speak German, know that you have not read Nietzsche, but an academic's rendition of him. Your understanding of Nietzsche does not come from he said but from what someone thinks he has said:

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.

You are putting more spheres between you and your "mentor" by not being bothered to learn German.

where you inadvertently admitted that a person can use infinity as an adjective — Vaskane

No because I am not illiterate. It is funny that the thread is still on the back of your mind though.

we know you resent me — Vaskane

Yeah, I am the one remembering stuff from months ago :mask: Don't be calling other people ugly when your best angle is nothing beyond it.

In sum, "faith" is trust in magical thinking (that too many adults never outgrow re: ) in stark contrast to fallibilistic "belief" based on trust in defeasible reasoning (that is cultivated in too few children).

Outside of religion the word is used
metaphorically and IMO wrongly. — Tom Storm

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

:up: :up:

:up:

How God becomes Real — Wayfarer

Thanks for this. :mask: