You gotta look at the situation from the Grecoan Ideal... not yours. — DifferentiatingEgg

I referenced the Greek myth. Let's see what the Brittanica has to say:

Sisyphus was, in fact, like Autolycus and Prometheus, a widely popular figure of folklore—the trickster, or master thief. Clearly, he is everlastingly punished in Hades as the penalty for cheating Death, but why he is set to roll a great stone incessantly is a puzzle to which no convincing answer has yet been given. It appears to belong with other Greek imaginings of the world of the dead as the scene of fruitless labours.

'The scene of fruitless labors'. And how, precisely, does this map against 'happiness'?

Okay so you think Santa Clause is big in Iran...

No? Why? Different Values? Ah...

Apply here...

Sisyphus was, in fact, like Autolycus and Prometheus, a widely popular figure of folklore—the trickster, or master thief.

He was popular for his excellence. Weird that a thief and trickerster would be popular vs infamous... because those were virtues then.

You're making lliterally sense. The Greek myth of Sisyphus is that of a legendary or mythical king who was sentenced to punishment in Hades by having to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity only to have it roll back down every time. This is a factual statement. What you're going on about, I have no idea, but let's leave it that, as this exchange is becoming Sisyphean.

its like that train game whisper in one ear the story is morphed to the next passing... eventually after 3000 or so years of Christian handling of the story Sisyphus has become tied to meaningless action because the Sabbath is Holy... In Sisyphus's day Eu Prattein was holy (Vita Activa). Vita Contemplativa was for the shameful.

Hannah Arendt discusses this at great length (Vita Activa and the reversal of its value). Through that ancient lens, we know Sisyphus was happy. There was no punishment. Instead of languishing in the underworld to rot away in stagnant contemplation, he got to live Eu Prattein/Vita Activa for eternity. Not sure if "living your ideal" for eternity is "punishment." Seems like the winning proposal from Nietzsche's Heaviest Burden...

Doing what you love over and over again.

"The human condition of labor is life itself." Hannah Arendt on the ancient perspective of Vita Activa (Human Condition). So Sisyphus was "punished" with life it self...

let’s collapse the dualism. Mind IS body. We live inside the illlusion. — Fire Ologist

:up: no dualism to collapse. The Mind part is fleeting No thing.

reality is illusion — Fire Ologist

Not dualism though it sounds like one. Not monism either, though ultimately it is. You're saying it yourself, dualism. When you concede that its not just reality, but illusion too. I know you're saying they're the same thing. But then why do we refer to the illusion. The illusion isn't reality, it's a fleeting appearance, which, like code, affects reality. Inconceivable oneness and difference; only the difference is an illusion. At best described as a qualified dualism: the duality is fictional projections.

As for knowledge and belief, they are the same thing. Belief is the last link in the dialectical chain that ends in knowledge. It doesn't always surface with knowledge, but its the settlement necessary to project knowledge. Whether it's 1+1 or e=mc² or there is a God, It is believed and known as one complete structure. In body, the real settled feeling is triggered by belief, giving it its only truth; which true feeling, in turn allows for the, always temporary, adoption of knowledge. But the knowledge for humans is not really, the settled feeling alone is real. The knowledge is a super sophisticated, super complex, highly evolved fleeting system of constructions and projections. And that's where we both experience time, (constructions and projections evolved to surface in the Narrative, linear form), and spend it.

And this, to me, ties in with the OP. For the sake of demonstrating, assume what we're after when we apply reason to seek God, is the ultimate Truth, the Reality of the Universe, in whatever format from Lord to God head to Nature. Then that Truth has to be "found" as a physiological feeling, and, reason can at best be a stimulus of the feeling. We call the feeling, among other things, faith. As for God, like the orgasm, no disrespect intended, and all real things; if it's real, use as much fantasy as you need to get you there, but know that it's fantasy, and truth is necessarily not in the fantasy, but in what the real organism feels.

Seek God etc. [in your hearts] all else is talk

Belief is holding that something is true. One can believe that something is true for all sorts of reasons, or for no reason at all. Rational folk will try to believe stuff that is true, and so will use arguments and evidence and such, and ground their beliefs.

Faith is more than just holding that something is true. Faith requires that one believe even in the face of adversity. Greater faith is had by those who believe despite the arguments and the evidence.

So those with the greatest faith would be the ones convinced by logical arguments that god does not exist, and yet who believe despite this.

The most faithful will be seeking to disprove that god exists. — Banno

There is one point in the OP, reflected in the above, on which I have agreed from the start. Anselm and Aquinas were trying to be logical and create knowledge; they were NOT doing a lot of other things, like they were not being poetic creating verses (unless we all abuse some tacit definition of poetry), or they were not giving a eulogy for a friend, or providing a news bulletin, or preaching an article of faith.
They were building syllogisms, arguments.

Their arguments, in my logical estimation, failed for various reasons (but that is another conversation, on which we might agree as well). If you asked Anselm "why do you believe God exists?" he should say, "I don't believe God exists, I know God exists and I can prove it to you." He should say this, because he was trying to convince others of, in his estimation, a logical conclusion based on evidence.

So, hopefully recognizing my general spirit of agreement with the basic point of the OP, I think you guys are throwing the baby of belief out with the bathwater of faith, or at least Banno is more expressly. And to all of our detriment.

We have to be more careful to protect "belief" and about where we find reasoning.

Or faith is the antithesis of rationality. — Banno

These polar oppositions are distorting both sides, weakening the perfectly reasonable basic point of the OP.

If I put a square on one pole and circle on the other, and say all things in between are square-circles and circle-squares, depending on how far towards one or the other pole one goes, have I said anything at all? The instant you move off the square towards the circle, you have something other than a square, AND other than a circle, something nothing at all like either one. And in fact, nothing at all, because what the hell is a square-circle?

Pitting faith as a circle and reasoning as the square does the same thing. They aren't opposites. Just two different things. (that you rightly point out Anselm and Aquinas were squarely in on the reason side of things, not talking about faith at all, and therefore failing at both!)

But in the process you say things that make it seem like there is no room in the reasonable world for people to believe in things they do not yet know are true through reason. Action in the real world between the poles of knowledge and ignorance, reason and chaos, is impossible.

We need to take all of these terms off of the simple polarizing measuring sticks. There are many more things besides faith and reason to hold in tension to see any of them. Faith is not the opposite of reason, any more than poetry is the opposite of reason, or eulogies are the opposite of reason.

So let's quickly redefine our terms a bit.

If X, then Y.
If Y, then Z.
So if X, then Z.

Roll with me, you know what I mean. This is a syllogism.

What should we make of the first "if" in this syllogism? Can we say instead:

Believing X is the case, Y must follow.
Now holding Y to be necessary, Z must follow.
So once believing X, Z must follow.

I'm trying to breath some life into the "if" in the first form of the argument. In order for the possibility of a logical syllogism to begin, when we say "if X..", in a more naive but just as productive way, we can say "in order for you to follow my logic, take as true, X." Or just, "believe X with me and let's see what logically follows."

Belief is holding that something is true. — Banno

100%. Important for my argument. Important to make a first premise.

How about we clarify "holding that something is.." a bit: Let's say that, what is held, the something we are holding when we are holding a belief true, is knowledge. I'm NOT saying all beliefs are knowledge; I'm saying a belief is a bit of knowledge that we also hold true, I'm just clarifying "something" in "holding that something is" part of Banno's perfectly reasonable assessment of belief.

So the board pieces (which we should resist from placing as polar opposites a bit longer), so far, are at least belief and knowledge. Now let's find what we mean by "reason" in the mix.

Reasoning lies within the syllogism, not before its premises or after its conclusions.

Saying "If X" isn't giving an argument, It isn't reasoning. It's right at the start of the syllogism; it's needed to start it, but no reasoning is yet applied. It's just positing "X". "If X..." or "If you believe X exists..."

We need to set that pole "X" to launch into "then...."
"Then", which refers back to X also compels one to "Y" (if soundly referred and validly compelled). This referring back and compelling forward from X to Y is where the reasoning lives. If Anselm and Aquinas had been a little more careful with their reasoning, their logical steps referring and compelling this X (perfection) with that Y (God), they would have seen that the ontological proof makes a category error, and so their conclusion is not compelled, there is no necessity to thinking "God exists", and the argument collapses.

That is reasoning - something like that. The motivating engine of the syllogism. It lives inside the argument.

Then there is faith.

We don't even need to talk about faith or define it for the OP point to be made. Anselm and Aquinas were trying logical reasoning, did it poorly, and so built nothing of the sort. They did NOT build something to believe in (like a faith), or something to recite as poetry or at a funeral - they built a bad syllogism.

So again, that specific point of the OP as regards whether a person trying to prove God exists was refuting the need for faith in God, if the only article of faith was "God exists", then yes, knowledge (not reason, but knowledge as the result of a reasoned argument), is the anti-thesis of faith.But is faith only about the existence of God? If you know for sure God exists, will you never need faith again for anything? No, there is way more to it, like poetry has more to it than a simple antithesis: "not-syllogistic argument".
What is faith?

To simplify this, let's look at faith as believing. Like we can look at reason more clearly as the motivating engine in the argument called "reasoning", we should look at faith more as another type of engine called "believing".

You are standing on the edge of a cliff wearing a newly designed parachute. Someone wearing the same parachute says "look it's safe" and jumps off the cliff and safely floats to the gorge floor below. Then another person says "look, we've done the math, tested this 1,000 times before, and here, I have a parachute, I'll give you some more assurance" and jumps landing safely. You look at all of the calculations and tolerances and wind conditions, etc., and look at all the test results with 1,000 samples, and you can see with your own eyes and common senses the two jumpers and say "understanding that knowledge isn't perfect, I know enough to say 'I know I will be safe when I jump.'"

What does what you know matter anymore in the instant you jump? Do you actually jump because of what you know? Or what you believe?

To jump, in the moment one acts, it is because you believe your own knowledge. Faith is the engine of action. You might make other people jump to demonstrate all that you know from your calculations and test results, and say "I know you will be safe so you should jump" but when it comes your turn to actually jump, when you take that leap, it is only because of what you believe is true that you act; If you don't want to die, only because you believe you will make it safely, would you yourself, jump. Never because you can know the calculations and test results are sound and validly ordered.

We act out of belief in something true. We act out of belief that something we know is true. When knowing, knowing is complete in the knowledge. When believing, the belief is complete in the truth, and the bridge between the belief and the truth is how one acts. We make the bridge to the truth by acting on the belief, and believing is bridging. Believing is holding something over there as true here in me. It's what I believe as is testified to in words and deeds.

When we act, we may be wrong in our knowledge, or we may be right in our knowledge. That occurs during reasoning after positing the "If....then...therefore..." There is where reasoned knowledge sits.

Every time we honestly mean the statement "therefore..x" we are saying "we believe X." We believe the reasoning is done, and we believe we know our conclusion can be called knowledge. If someone believes the argument is false, we would either look to the premises and conclusions to re-support the conclusion, or we could simply say "Prove it then, because I believe my proof is done." We can call upon them to prove our conclusion again, but the act of "concluding" is a judgment that "the argument is over, it needs no more or less" and in that moment we "are knowing" we call this knowledge because we are believing there is no more need for argument.

Once it is time to act, (even the act of knowing) all the reasoning and knowledge is literally placed behind you and you are now believing it is true because you are acting on that belief. Your reasoning and knowledge support and uphold the moment of action, but that act is not taken unless you also believe something to be true. How else could you aim a gun and hit a target unless you believed that what you know was true?

Faith is tied up with that. We all have faith in our beliefs that we all have, and believe some of the things we know are true. If we didn't, every act would either be compelled by necessity, or utterly random (again another can of worms for another conversation.)

Believing isn't just about whether something exists. It most fully arrives in this mix somewhere outside of the reasoning (again, agreement with the OP), but so close, it is tied to the "If X..." at the beginning, and more completely just after the conclusion, when one acts on that conclusion, and in the acting, the believing enough reasons exist to leap into the unknowable (until the experiment is over and the shoot failed and we all get to know his calculations missed a few variables, he should not have believed they were true, and should not have jumped...)

So...

...faith is the antithesis of rationality. — Banno

...is just not the dialectical picture you needed to draw, or should draw, to draw what I agree with in the OP, namely and to paraphrase, "proof God exists precludes the ability to call the phrase "God exists" an article of faith." This is because, as I would add: faith (believing something as an act of consent) has nothing to do with proof (proving, reasoning)."

And besides, do you mean to say anyone who believes in God should try not to use reason and when they talk about God they are unable to be reasoning? That's the gist of some of this. That's silly rubbish.

It actually reminds me of debates in esoterica. Anyone who disagrees cannot possibly have truly fathomed it, and of course it will prove near impossible to show what "truly fathoming" the doctrines entails. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Even though the central "destructions" in the critique have been elaborated in secondary and tertiary literature for years. I want to say as the only people perpetuating the critiqued doctrine {ontologies of presence} at this point are its critics, but then you occasionally meet a scientist who tells you that tells you every state a human can occupy is an informational state in its brain... But humans have legs and arms. Which isn't to say that this scientist is an ontologist of presence as stereotyped in the critique, they just say some things which have some of that stereotyped perspective's framing.

There's definitely a lot of good that comes out of the critique, it's just articulated in terms that make it borderline impossible for its continued target audience to grasp. And it's also not that hard to grasp for the philosophically inclined given how much effort has been spent explaining it.

Forced translation exercises out of its technical vocabulary tend to show its worst excesses as the trivialities they are.

@DifferentiatingEgg, from where I sit the argument owes more to David Lewis, mentioned in one of my earlier threads.

But you will see it through your own window.

Seek God etc. [in your hearts] all else is talk — ENOAH

"In the depths of our hearts the light of God is shining on a soundless sea with no shore.". --Rumi

7k
Not all of this vitriol is aimed at you Joshs, I've just been reading this for over a decade and I'm sick of having it explained to me like I've never read post-phenomenological — fdrake

Sokal read post-phenomenological work, as did Jordan Peterson. Reading and understanding are not the same thing. Understanding a philosophical approach means being capable of summarizing its fundamental concepts in a way that is recognizable to those who support it. If you were to ask me to sum up the positions of your favorite philosophers, I am confident that I would be able to do it to your satisfaction. Before you can adequately critique a set of ideas, you have to accomplish that first step. You have mentioned Deleuze seemingly approvingly in other posts. Do you think he would consider my depiction of postmodern thinking ‘utterly stultifying and totalizing’? How would you summarize the key aspects of his work?

It's utterly stultifying. The particularising nature of the methodology, in practice, just reminds you to do mediation analysis, then tells you you can't isolate causal variables in the wild. Everyone knows this — fdrake

Does everyone know that there are alternative ways of thinking about motivation than what is implied in concepts like ‘causal variables’? Can you list any of these alternatives and the nature of their critique of causation as it is utilized by your favorite philosophies?

The proof is in the pudding, the stranglehold these soft realisms {really, discursive irrealisms} have on academic perspectives in social sciences makes it prohibitively difficult to do research requiring methodological innovation. It ends up totally isolating the disciplines that use this methodology and creating fiefdoms. People default back to broadly structuralist flavoured constructivism when they actually need to get shit done policy wise, because you can actually interpret operational variables and talk about causes {yes, unqualified causes, not mediated causes} with caveats in that framework. — fdrake

It seems to me that you’re advocating for conventional standards for ‘getting shit done’. Methodological innovation in applied fields will mean something different than in purely speculative philosophy and psychology. What areas do you work in such that ‘policy’ that ‘everyone can understand’ and ‘getting shit done’ are key goals for you, and do you think it is reasonable to expect cutting edge thinking in philosophy to be instantly translatable into practical ‘policy’ without an intermediate period of innovators who bridge the divide between the purely theoretical and the applied, and a wider culture which has had time to catch up with the new thinking?

Isnt it this gap between the widely accepted and the bleeding edge that causes the isolated fiefdoms in the social sciences? Wasn’t cognitive science an isolated fiefdom in the early 1960’s when behaviorism still had an ironclad grip on academic research in psychology? Is 4EA enactivism now beginning to transition from isolated fiefdom to a more widely shared method of ‘getting shit done’, a method which seems to be starting to absorb its largest rival, active inference) into its framework? And who is working at the leading edge of enactivism? Have you followed the work of Evan Thompson and Hanne De Jaegher? Stick around for another 20 years and you may be surprised to find that what appears to you as isolated , stultifying and no -operationalizable is developed into the new standard methodology for getting things done policy -wise.

But frankly I think your expressed desire for widely shared standards is a red herring. Your main gripe isn't about application but theory. If you were enthusiastic about the fundamental concepts of what you call discursive irrealisms and their ethical implications you would be among those calling for patience in operationalizing those approaches. Years after cognitive science developed firmly established research methods , B.F. Skinner continued to accuse the program of resting on illegitimate methods. It wasn't its applicability that prevented him from embracing cognitive psychology, it was his inability to grasp its concepts.

Dude, do you honestly know how much thought I even put behind my OP? This isn't some big issue to me. I started as a way to shit on people constantly defending their bloated fallacies and delusions, without budging due to a style of intellectual obstinance...

Hit me with your link. Do you know how often I even think about faith? Pretty much 0 because when it's something I have faith in, I have faith in it. I don't ever have a need to ever justify my faith to anyone. Not even myself.

I don't understand how you can construe the post-phenomenological heritage a minor paradigm when it's quite hegemonic. It isn't hegemonic everywhere it touches, but it's a pernicious orthodoxy in social studies.

It's also a heritage that lets people do discourse analysis with no fieldwork while still getting papers published. People write 30 page papers whose principal argument is based on homophones {both meanings of site, cite...} and it gets through peer review because it apparently cleverly references the differential nature of the signifying chain.

You are incredibly well read, surely you've seen even worse excesses.

:up:

I don't understand how you can construe the post-phenomenological heritage a minor paradigm when it's quite hegemonic. It isn't hegemonic everywhere it touches, but it's a pernicious orthodoxy in social studies.

It's also a heritage that lets people do discourse analysis with no fieldwork while still getting papers published. People write 30 page papers whose principal argument is based on homophones {both meanings of site, cite...} and it gets through peer review because it apparently cleverly references the differential nature of the signifying chain.

You are incredibly well read, surely you've seen even worse excesses. — fdrake

I’m disconnected from these institutional structures. What you say may be true; I have no way of knowing. I have found that there tends to be a substantial distance between the work of the ‘oracles’ of post-phenomenological thought and the interpretation and application of it by legions lesser lights, to the point where it is often almost unrecognizable. You may wonder if I apply my own thinking to real world situations. The answer is yes , every day, as both an ethical and psychological guide. It maintains its validity for me through its effectiveness at making of sense of my world.

I’m disconnected from these institutional structures. — Joshs

Ah right. I hear rage along the grapevine these days, no longer involved in research. My recent exposure to it {in person} has been in addiction studies, in which you can lose your academic prestige for saying heroin causes addiction. These are people receiving research funding from medicine grants.

I started reading a lot of masculinity studies last year - the feminist anthropology version of it rather than the reactionary bullshit on Youtube -. There's a fairly in depth review of how it becomes practically impossible to integrate anthropology and social studies about men with mainstream feminist analysis because the latter's methodologically hogtied to these philosophies of indefinite mediation - actor network theory, discourse analysis, deconstruction. And they don't tend to do fieldwork. The former research tends to be done in constructivist and experiment heavy terms.

Of course the rejoinder is that people who didn't adopt some flavour of postmodern methodology are behind the times. I also find it ironic that this is indeed the rejoinder from a group of academics who have rejected the idea of linear progress narratives.

I have found that there tends to be a substantial distance between the work of the ‘oracles’ of post-phenomenological thought and the interpretation and application of it by legions lesser lights, to the point where it is often almost unrecognizable — Joshs

Yeah I think we agree there. The original texts, and good secondary literature, was revolutionary. There's a lot of ossification over the years. I think the continued emphasis on contingency and mediation is a bit of a fetish at this point. There's a lot of disavowed generalisation despite using these methodologies to champion the singularity of everything. I have a particularly egregious paper in mind for the latter.

I've often found that theists place faith in arguments that "prove" God, instead of directly in God. When I've challenged their premises, they reverse the burden of proof- implying the premises should be considered true, unless proven false.

proselytizing on this platform by "believers" runs rampant in the constant defense of fallacious arguments. — DifferentiatingEgg

In many cases, the arguments aren't fallacious, per se. They are usually possibly sound, but as I pointed out to someone recently- God's existence is possible (not provably impossible) even without an argument. A possibly sound argument doesn't make it any more plausible, or epistemically probable.

As distressingly anti-philosophical as it is, the ultimate truth is a feeling. — ENOAH

Nevertheless, i do think everything we think, departs from the feeling, and in its departure alienates the truth of god as a
human feeling. — ENOAH

This seems exactly right to me. It's basically what I've been arguing on these forums for years. Experiences of any kind which are not simply observational are feelings. When we base beliefs on those feelings, we enter the realm of interpretation and judgement and have already moves away from the living experience.

, What?

In this discussion we see people who don't believe that faith is a valid way to know anything. — T Clark

Faith or intuition are valid ways of knowing—simply because inhabiting a faith or intution is a knowing. It is a knowing of a certain kind of experience. It is not, however, a propositional knowing—although it might lead to propositional beliefs, those beliefs cannot be verified by the faith or intuition. And note, this is not to say that the faith or intution cannot be convincing to the one inhabiting it, it is just to say that it cannot provide sufficient grounds for an argument intended to convince others.

If others are convinced by your intution-based conviction then it will be on account of their being convinced by your charisma, or they are sufficiently lacking in critical judgement to buy an under-determined argument, or they can relate to the experience you describe because they have had similar experiences and feel the same way. In other words, they are being convinced on the basis of rhetoric or identification, not reason.

... beliefs cannot be verified by the faith or intuition. And note, this is not to say that the faith or intution cannot be convincing to the one inhabiting it, it is just to say that it cannot provide sufficient grounds for an argument intended to convince others. — Janus

:100:

Too complex to detail here, but...
even empiricism is neglecting something. Feeling, is no less an organic sensation than seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, hearing.

Just as my mind displaces the raw visual sensation of round red object into the perception of "round" > "red" > until it settles on the belief, "apple" projected as knowledge; my mind displaces the raw feeling sensation of X into the perception of "y"> "z">until it settles on the belief, "god" projected as faith, a particular shape of knowledge.

If you asked Anselm "why do you believe God exists?" he should say, "I don't believe God exists, I know God exists and I can prove it to you." He should say this, because he was trying to convince others of, in his estimation, a logical conclusion based on evidence.

So, hopefully recognizing my general spirit of agreement with the basic point of the OP, I think you guys are throwing the baby of belief out with the bathwater of faith, or at least Banno is more expressly. And to all of our detriment. — Fire Ologist

Anselm, and everyone else who believes they can prove God's existence, "prove" only a generic sort of deity (in Anselm's case, based on "greatness"). None "prove" the Triune God of Christianity, which is the object of their faith. Still, I agree it's more rational than groundless faith (William Lane Craig coined the phrase "reasonable faith"). Where I think amateurs (i.e. people on forums like this one, but more so on apologetic forums) go wrong is to treat their arguments as unarguably sound, and are resistant to understanding why those arguments are unpersuasive.

Too complex to detail here, but...
even empiricism is neglecting something. Feeling, is no less an organic sensation than seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, hearing. — ENOAH

You may be interested in this discussion of "feeling" written by Shaviro on Whitehead
Whitehead on Feeling
In fact "feeling", "lure", ,"satisfaction": "attraction" and "prehension" are all terms used to describe forms of non conscious, non sense organ dependent experience.
"The jellyfish advances and withdraws" a quote from ANW. Even this relatively simply creature to which we would not usually attribute anything like human consciousness or human awareness of our feelings exhibits a primitive form of awareness of its surroundings and responds to its environment with attraction or avoidance .. Feeling is universal for Whitehead and human consciousness depends on underlying non conscious experience. Even in humans most mental processing and activity never rises to the level of human conscious awareness. Mind in the form of feeling is the basis for all higher forms of experience the pinacle of which is human consciousness.

they built a bad syllogism. — Fire Ologist

What? — Banno

Willful ignorance maybe? Does that have any place in this thread?

Anselm and Aquinas weren’t doing the faith thing. They weren’t talking about their faith anymore, and instead, they built bad syllogisms.

when it's something I have faith in, I have faith in it. I don't ever have a need to ever justify….. — DifferentiatingEgg

That’s closer to doing the faith thing. It comes pre-justified, or sits supra- or extra-justification.

. I started as a way to shit on people — DifferentiatingEgg

And in the process he, and you, took for granted that believing (faith) had something to do with reason (which it occurs to me Anselm and Aquinas might agree with you about, which is another mistake they made). Namely you keep leaning on faith is the polar opposite of reason, so by making faith non-reasonable, to shit in people, he shit on his very own “when it’s something I have faith in (that I am doing) I don’t ever have a need to ever justify…”

So you are shitting on using the will, on acting, just to say faithful people are contradicting themselves if they try to use reason.

Total mess.

We all act on faith all the time. No one knows anything 100%. That doesn’t mean they are mixing some faith in with their logic. If they wanted to act on their 70% certainty in their logic, when they act, they act because they believe in their action enough to live it 100%, and act.

So according to you, if anyone ever asks about, or someone wants to talk about, something they are doing that they are doing based on faith, they should all be trying to show how unreasonable such acts are, and shouldn’t try to be reasonable, there is nothing to say, so piss off if you want to reason about it.

What? — Banno

So Diff Egg, “when it's something [you] have faith in, … [and] don't ever have a need to ever justify,” and someone asks you anyway “what the hell are you doing that for?” do you feel any compulsion to try to prove how unreasonable you are, because

to review what one takes on faith is to breech that faith — Banno

So my question to you both is, What the hell are you saying faith is anyway?

Banno, that’s how I ask “what” with a bit of respect.

DiffEgg, “just to shit on people?” Come on man.

When you use "you" after addressing both Egg and I, it is unclear who "you" refers to.

The interesting bit in your post was the hint that we might treat faith as relating to action - but that would need filling out.

Otherwise, there are two differing uses for "faith" - roughly, strong belief and complete trust. The complete trust use is the one relating to actions, the strong belief sense is that used in the OP, and in my reply. (Hence the stock theistic retort that faith is not about belief but trust... trading on an ambiguity, and seen already in this thread.)

Can you differentiate these in your reply to me?

Interesting, thank you.

And in the process he, and you, took for granted that believing (faith) had something to do with reason — Fire Ologist

No, faith still has nothing to do with knowledge and rationalism or reasonable reason. Faith is belief nothing more. It is a gap in knowledge filled by belief.

DiffEgg, “just to shit on people?” Come on man. — Fire Ologist

Shit on, critique, who gives a f "oh the word Critique is good, but shit one, come on man!"

As for Anslem and Aquinas, they're both people who clearly have a need to justify their faith. It's like he would need to justify to himself why his wife loves him ... or why he loves his wife...

Kinda dumb imo... the fuck do I need to justify my love for my wife to anyone?

"SEE SEE SHE DOES LOVE ME!" Sounds a lot like doubt...

"SEE SEE, GOD DOES EXIST! YOU SEE MY FALLACIOUS ARGUMENT, PRAISE BEFORE GOD HE DOES EXIST!" Pretty much a desperate desire imo.

Noone of real faith needs to do that... just saying.

And the fact that they would publish fallacies as logical arguments shows the desperation imo.

Regardless of how much faith they had, their desire to turn it into logic was greater.

I'm sure there were Nazi that had faith in their reasoning too... saying faith is reason because of bad reasoning is just saying faith is faith... cause that's what poor reasoning is: faith.

An educated guess is a mix of knowledge and faith, faith being the gap in knowledge behind the educated guess. If you got faith the educated guess will work its because you can perhaps visual and bridge the gap of knowledge. You never know until you're capable of demonstrating said thing multiple times with accuracy.

Quine actually has something pertinent to say about this... I'll have to go through the pursuit of truth again, I'll find it and post it. But it was something about evaluating where you went wrong in experimentation...

My post last night was too long.

See if this is friendlier:

1.

Belief is holding that something is true.
— Banno — Fire Ologist

Right. Without intending to lose any of your meaning here, I would say the same thing:

Believing is holding that some thing is true.

“Believing” is more like a “holding”, both acting, so “beleiving is holding” just flows better to me, annd avoids positing a rigid “belief”, but again, no real sense should be changed here.

“Some thing”, as two words, meaning, something in particular. This is where something.rigid creeps back in a bit, but really, again, is meant to clarify how I say what you said, and not really saying anything new:

Believing is holding that some thing is true.

2.
“Is true”.

The OP is talking about Anselm holding that “God exists” is true. “God exists” is the “something” that the one who is believing “is holding”. The question the OP asks is, Can the sound believer hold “god exists” as a conclusion in a logical syllogism while holding it as a belief? OP says no way, that’s dumb and Anselm was dumb to try faith or reason, or both.

So it seems to me, since we are talking about what to make of “whether ‘God exists’ is true or not,” ‘true’ existence is really just any existence at all. We mean the same thing if we just say:

Believing is holding that some thing is. Believing is holding something truly exists. (Truly is now superfluous).

(We can revisit the rabbit hole epistemological reasons to distinguish between “holding that ‘God exists’” and “holding that ‘God exists’ is true,” with terms like “knowledge” and “justification” also in need of being addressed here later. And we can revisit the issues between the ontological status of concepts/objects like “holding that God exists is true” versus “holding that God exists” versus God actually existing or not. But let’s try to finish one thought.)

All we need to understand really what was meant in your original statement in the context of the case of the unbelieving bad-reasoning Anselm, is this:

Believing is holding that something truly exists, or just, some thing is.

3.

those with the greatest faith would be the ones convinced by logical arguments that god does not exist, and yet who believe despite this.

The most faithful will be seeking to disprove that god exists. — Banno

4.
Therefore, the faithful ones who hold a belief, because believing is holding that something exists, must know that this same thing does not exist in order to believe it exists.

So since I kept re-writing 1, here is a renumbering of my question based in really, only your words:

1. Believing is holding some thing exists.
2. The greatest believers would find the most convincing argument about what they believe would demonstrate that what they hold, does NOT exist, to be the greatest believers.
3. Therefore, they must believe that something does not exist (not-exist is true) in order to believe it does exist (exist is true).

Maybe you still don’t get me, maybe there is a better way to say it, but you get my gist.

Something’s off here.

Added:
What do you mean by “belief” or “believing”, OR, what do you mean by “believing that “God exists” is true”? Because the above argument, basically yours, seems off to me.

Just as my mind displaces the raw visual sensation of round red object into the perception of "round" > "red" > until it settles on the belief, "apple" projected as knowledge; my mind displaces the raw feeling sensation of X into the perception of "y"> "z">until it settles on the belief, "god" projected as faith, a particular shape of knowledge. — ENOAH

The two are different, though, insofar as everyone sees the apple but no one sees god..

Still very unclear.

What is believed is expressed by a proposition, rather than a "thing", an object.

The other two of your three bolded sentences are indecipherable.