Do We Need Faith?

[nPeace]

But how would you find your way to church?

GPS - God's powerful spirit.
Whom was it that led the Israelites through the wilderness and brought them to the promised land... in his own time.

 

[nPeace]

People require faith if they are desperate to hold onto a belief but have no good evidence to do so or even when faced with good evidence of the contrary. People who have good evidence for their beliefs require no faith. .

...and you make this claim based on...?

 

[nPeace]

Was it here? Could you link me?
I'd like to respond directly.

Even if it was said here, you know you are asking me to break a rule of RF, right?
See here.

No need to capitalise atheism. And I'm sure you're not suggesting one atheist speaks for all atheists are you?
If you are, why give such power to this particular atheist? Why not me, for example?

I capitalize Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Zionist, Satanist, Methodist... Atheist.
They are all proper nouns.
Proper nouns refer to a specific person, place, or thing and are always capitalized. Common nouns refer to a general concept or thing and are only capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.

Happy to discuss the good and bad of religion or science with you at any time. But not via a false dichotomy, nor whilst you're telling me what atheists think.

Can you forget what I think Atheists think. Or is that very important to you?
There are more important things to discuss, like the good and bad of religion or science... unless you have more to clear up on Atheists.

 

[QuestioningMind]

...and you make this claim based on...?

Because that's where lack of verifiable evidence inevitably leads when people refuse to accept that I Don't Know is the only appropriate answer.

 

[MixedMartialArts]

I was moved to make this thread in response to a question raised by an Atheist.
"Since there is so much confliction [contradictions] in religion, why not get rid of all religion?"
That's an interesting question in more ways than one.
First, it reminds me of the foretold attack by the collation of nations, on all religion... starting with Babylon the Great - the World Empire of false religion.
Second, it highlights the flawed thinking Atheism promotes.

My response to the question though, is this.
Since there are so many conflicting ideas.... not to mention, unknown, and wrong conclusions in science, why not get rid of science?
Of course, I don't think that is a reasonable proposal, but just showing the flaw in the reasoning.

I'm sure that Atheist would argue, "...but we need science. We don't need religion."
Really? We need both. well, at least in the understanding of religion in the context promoted in the question.
Then he will go on to mention all the "good science has done"... leaving out all the bad, of course.

Religion hasn't done any good right? It's good for nothing, right?
Even bad religion has done some good. ... but good religion has done much good... perhaps, I dare say, more good than science.
However, good science and good religion has done quite a lot of good. So both are needed. Though, it is evident to me that if good science were to go, good religion would still be a force for good.... lasting forever, but take away good religion, and...

The reality is this.
Faith is literally part of our makeup.

When we wake up we don’t know that our front door is closed. We have many reason to think it will be, namely we shut it last night, our dog never barked etc…

When we drop little sally off at school, we have a reasonably strong belief she’ll be ok in the hands of the adults at school. Zero certainty or proof.

to be human is to have faith in many things.
But when it comes to spirituality we seem to get weird about faith in this realm.

ultimately, religion or philosophy or ideologies give humans a guiding post to attach their desire to know right from wrong on.

we seem to really want to understand right and wrong and are perfectly willing to trust, have faith, believe our version of right and wrong makes the most sense? At least to ourselves.

but then we realize 7 billion people have perhaps slightly different ideas.

faith surrounds us and if used decently can lead to great things.
If used badly it can cause great harm (see cults)

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

From 1:42:20

Ah - so you stripped it of its context. Got it.

Edit: and it wasn't a direct quote.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Faith is literally part of our makeup.

I don't wear makeup.

 

[gnostic]

The reality is this.
Faith is literally part of our makeup.

When we wake up we don’t know that our front door is closed. We have many reason to think it will be, namely we shut it last night, our dog never barked etc…

When we drop little sally off at school, we have a reasonably strong belief she’ll be ok in the hands of the adults at school. Zero certainty or proof.

to be human is to have faith in many things.
But when it comes to spirituality we seem to get weird about faith in this realm.

The examples you’ve given - the front door & the kids being safe at school - are non-supernatural scenarios.

Religions and spirituality required -

1. beliefs in supernatural phenomena like supernatural entities, eg spirits, gods, angels, demons, jinns, Deva & Devi, fairies, ghosts, etc,
2. or beliefs in supernatural events, miracles, creation myths, reincarnation, resurrection, immortality, magic, superpower, psychic powers, etc,
3. or beliefs in supernatural places, eg heavens, paradise, hell, Olympus, Tartarus, Field of Reeds, Duat, Asgard, Valhalla, etc.

Faith are required to accept these beliefs in the supernatural.

To date, there have no evidence to support any one belief or claim of the supernatural.

All these supernatural don’t exist in natural reality, existing only in imagination of people, on hearsay or in deluded fantasies.

You only gave examples of non-supernatural scenarios. TRY SHOWING EXAMPLES of supernatural scenarios of where the supernatural are real.

Can you show even one “supernatural” to be “real” and “verifiable”?

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Even if it was said here, you know you are asking me to break a rule of RF, right?
See here.

Nope...no rule breaking required. I'm merely asking for a direction to whatever the other thread was (if here). I'm not adverse to pushing back on other atheists when I disagree with them.

Thanks for the link, I see it's a video. I'll check it out later (currently sipping coffee in a public cafe...lol)

I capitalize Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Zionist, Satanist, Methodist... Atheist.
They are all proper nouns.

Except they're not. All the religions you mentioned are indeed proper nouns. But atheism isn't a religion and is not a proper noun, much like theist, or agnostic.

Proper nouns refer to a specific person, place, or thing and are always capitalized. Common nouns refer to a general concept or thing and are only capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.

Exactly. Atheism is just a general concept.

Can you forget what I think Atheists think. Or is that very important to you?
There are more important things to discuss, like the good and bad of religion or science... unless you have more to clear up on Atheists.

I can't forget it, but I'm happy to put it aside for the purpose of discussion. I'm not sure if we'll have similar or different points if view on science and religion, but I guess the main divergence I had with the OP (apart from anything related to the concept of atheism) is that I'd see both religion AND science as unnecessary, in the truest sense of the word.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The reality is this.
Faith is literally part of our makeup.

When we wake up we don’t know that our front door is closed. We have many reason to think it will be, namely we shut it last night, our dog never barked etc…

When we drop little sally off at school, we have a reasonably strong belief she’ll be ok in the hands of the adults at school. Zero certainty or proof.

Well, no. Not zero certainty. A track record of our beliefs about these sorts of things being confirmed provides us with a good - albeit not perfect - level of certainty.

 

[Trailblazer]

Sufficient for a justified belief in a god.

What ‘justifies’ a belief in God? What justifies a belief in God for one person does not necessarily justify a belief on God for another person.

I might agree…in that the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence should be?
Unfortunately for many religious adherents, they tend to start with the presumption that a god exists, and accept less vigorously stringent evidence in order to acquiesce to that presumption.

I fully agree that the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence should be. I never presumed that God existed without a reason to believe so. I never even thought about God before I became a Baha’i and believed in Baha'u'llah.

You previously said: (post #218)

Trailblazer said: ↑
“Bahá’ís reject the notion that there is an inherent conflict between science and religion, a notion that became prevalent in intellectual discourse at a time when the very conception of each system of knowledge was far from adequate.​

Which I took to mean that neither religion or science were up to the task of explaining an understanding of reality.
Did I misunderstand your meaning?

Science is up to the task of explaining the physical reality as far as it has discovered it, whereas religion is up to the task of explaining spiritual reality as well as the purpose of life, values and morals, and the particular message that God wants us to have in every age.

When I asked: (post #238)

Dao Hao Now said: ↑
Would you say that since that time (when was this?), the conception of either system has become adequate?
Would it be one, the other, both or neither, and in what way?​

To which you responded: (post #241)

Trailblazer said: ↑
The time that is being referred to in the quote is the time before the modern age of science, the ages that preceded the new age we are living in. I think the quote is saying that in the previous ages people believed that there was an inherent conflict between science and religion, but in those ages religion and science were far from adequate.​

Which I replied: (post #289)

Dao Hao Now said: ↑I’m still curious though….
Would you say that since that time, the conception of either system has become adequate?
Would it be one, the other, both or neither, and in what way?​

I believe that science is constantly evolving, and it can only be as adequate as exists at the time. I believe that religion also evolves over time, but the latest religion, which I believe s the Bahai Faith, is adequate for the times we live in. In the future, when a new religion becomes necessary, God will send a new Messenger to reveal a new religion.

By saying “the time that is being referred to in the quote is the time before the modern age of science, the ages that preceded the new age we are living in.”
Would that be before the scientific revolution and age of enlightenment….say mid 1500’s to mid 1800’s?

Yes, it would be before the mid-1800s. I believe that the coming of the Bab and Baha’u’llah ushered in a new age of science, the likes of which humanity had ever before witnessed.

What hath God Wrought? 24 May 1844

We live in the most remarkable of times. The transformation of the material conditions of humanity has a cause. Do we really believe that the human beings who came before us were incapable of what we see in the world today? Great civilizations have come before in history – yet none of them broke out of the same reality that has existed since the dawn of agriculture.

It is only in this time that humanity has passed into an entirely new reality. It has a cause. A cause larger than humanity itself.

In 1844, in Shiraz, the Bab, Baha’u’llah’s immediate forerunner, spoke these words:

The secret of the Day that is to come is now concealed. It can neither be divulged nor estimated. The newly born babe of that Day excels the wisest and most venerable men of this time, and the lowliest and most unlearned of that period shall surpass in understanding the most erudite and accomplished divines of this age.[1]

A short time before, on the other side of the planet on 24 May 1844, within a day of the Bab’s declaration of his mission, Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph sent its first message from Washington to Baltimore. The message read as follows: What hath God Wrought? , citing a passage from the Bible.

Of course science has learned a great deal since Copernicus (mid 1500’s) and now.
Of course the scientific understanding we have today will be dwarfed by our likely understanding in the future.
I’m not sure the same can be said of religions….
The overwhelming majority of religious people belong to one of the major world religions
(we’re talking like 98+%) all of which predate the 1500’s with the possible exception of Sikhism which originated in the late 1500’s.
Granted there has been evolution within each of these religions through the years, but non which served to coalesce towards a better understanding, but rather schisms and splintering into differing sects and denominations thus seemingly diluting understanding to more and more selective individual understandings many of which are ardently opposed to the understandings in other sects which have on several occasions resulted in bloodshed as a means of “reconciliation”.

Religion has evolved but as you said, the overwhelming majority of religious people belong to one of the major world religions which predate the 1500’s. Most people cling to those older religions because that is all they know about and/or they were raised to believe that are the only true religions.

From my perspective as a Baha’i, time has marched on and the world has changed but the adherents to these older religions are stuck in the past, trying to apply a religion that was intended for past ages to the present age, as if stuck in a time warp.

In science the exact opposite has occurred.
Once opposing points of view tend to coalesce into more unified understandings that become even more universally accepted.

Thus my answer to the question I posed to you:
Would you say that since that time, the conception of either system has become adequate?
Would it be one, the other, both or neither, and in what way?
My answer would be that science has become more adequate and shows every indication that the trend will continue….
While religions have become increasingly inadequate and show every indication that the trend will continue.

I agree with that if you are referring to the older religions. However, I believe the Baha’i Faith is the exception since it was revealed during the modern age of science. The older religions have become increasingly inadequate to meet the needs of modern times and show every indication that the trend will continue. Why would any logical person believe that a religion that was revealed hundreds or even thousands of years ago would be adequate to meet humanity’s needs forever? Yet that is what most religious people believe.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I capitalize Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Zionist, Satanist, Methodist... Atheist.
They are all proper nouns.
Proper nouns refer to a specific person, place, or thing and are always capitalized. Common nouns refer to a general concept or thing and are only capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.

"Atheist" isn't a proper noun.

 

[Watchmen]

The phony conflict between religion and science needs to die.

It’s not a phony conflict when you have rural conservative school boards promoting intelligent design and banning evolution in education.

It’s not a phony conflict when you have the religious killing people who disagree with them.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Science is up to the task of explaining the physical reality as far as it has discovered it, whereas religion is up to the task of explaining spiritual reality as well as the purpose of life, values and morals, and the particular message that God wants us to have in every age.

Science is up to the task of explaining anything that has empirical evidence for it.

 

[nPeace]

I’m just wondering, what would you call a “good” religion?
And, if religion were a force for good, then, so sorry, but I seem to be missing the “good” part.
I must be living in the wrong country. Where do you live?
I would love to go somewhere to see some real, true, “good”.

Good religion promotes

1. brotherly love - When nations go to war, good religion does not compromise that loving brotherhood, by taking sides in the wars of the nations. John 13:35
2. unity - Therefore are not divided internationally by race, nationality, or teachings, etc. 1 Corinthians 1:10
3. God's high moral standards - This results in a clean people, and also saves lives. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 4:11-16

There is more, but I will stop there, since the others are not given consideration in other religions, but Christianity.

You have not seen this have you.
That's because it's unique to only one group on earth.

 

[Rival]

It’s not a phony conflict when you have rural conservative school boards promoting intelligent design and banning evolution in education.

It’s not a phony conflict when you have the religious killing people who disagree with them.

These people believe there is a conflict.

They are wrong, imo.

You are talking here about a conflict some religious people have with various scientific ideas. It doesn't mean such a conflict actually exists.

 

[gnostic]

GPS - God's powerful spirit.
Whom was it that led the Israelites through the wilderness and brought them to the promised land... in his own time.

There have been no scrolls, no tablets, no books dating contemporarily to the events described in the Exodus narratives.

The oldest date-able “biblical” sources are the silver amulets with inscriptions of the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6), which were found in a cave at Ketef Himmon, dated to some times between the late 7th century or early 6th century BCE.

There are no Late Bronze Age (c 1550 - c 1050 BCE) original texts of the Genesis, Exodus, Numbers or Leviticus.

There are also no 15th century BCE “outside” sources (eg Egyptian sources) to even support the existence of Moses or the Israelites living in Egypt during the early 18th dynasty, nor 14th century sources from the Canaanites of Joshua and the invasion of Canaan in this period.

During the mid to late 15th century BCE, Egypt was ruled by the 18th dynasty king, Thutmose III (reign 1479 - 1425 BCE), where both Canaan and portion of Syria were parts of his empire. Thutmose was succeeded by his son Amenhotep II (1427 - 1401 BCE).

Garrisons and Egyptian army in either reigns have never reported never any encounter with Israelites. Both father and son were at war with the Mitanni empire in northern Syria, during the 15th century BCE. Both Egypt and Mitanni (known as Naharin in Egyptian texts) have been vying for control over Canaan for decades.

If Joshua took over the leadership of the Israelites in 1407 BCE, then the so-called battle of Jericho would have taken place either 1407 or 1406 BCE.

If Israelites invaded the rest of Canaan after Jericho, don’t you think Amenhotep would have responded to the threat of Israelites encroaching on his territory?

I think the story of Exodus was most likely started by the reign of King Josiah of Judah in the late 7th century BCE, but the oldest fragments of the Exodus are only found in the 6th century BCE (eg during the exile in Babylon and their return) and later (eg translation in Greek, the Septuagint, during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE).

There are no texts contemporary to either Moses and Joshua, probably because they were invented characters.

 

[Dao Hao Now]

I fully agree that the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence should be. I never presumed that God existed without a reason to believe so. I never even thought about God before I became a Baha’i and believed in Baha'u'llah.

May I ask what your point of view was before you became a Baha’i, and at what point in your life you “converted” to the Baha’i Faith?

I never presumed that God existed without a reason to believe so.

What was the reason to believe?
Was there evidence involved?

What ‘justifies’ a belief in God?

In my opinion, evidence sufficiently justifying beyond a reasonable doubt in an objective manner.
I consider the claim “a god exists” in the real sense of actually existing, and not just as a construct of a human mind, to be an extraordinary claim since there has never been any objective evidence to indicate any merit to it and all the objective evidence suggests none is necessary in reality as we know it.
So, in my opinion it would require extraordinary evidence, or at the very least evidence that conforms to the rigorous standards that any claim of it’s consequence should require.

What justifies a belief in God for one person does not necessarily justify a belief on God for another person.

Obviously….thus my original observation that where we are likely to disagree is what evidence is sufficient.

I believe that the coming of the Bab and Baha’u’llah ushered in a new age of science, the likes of which humanity had ever before witnessed.

How would the arrival of a religious leader or two usher in a new age of science?
Are you suggesting that science is dependent on religion to expand it’s knowledge?

 

[MixedMartialArts]

Well, no. Not zero certainty. A track record of our beliefs about these sorts of things being confirmed provides us with a good - albeit not perfect - level of certainty.

Yea of course, and as humans we’ve gotten decent at making these judgements about everyday items.

Whichever way you slice it, it’s a gamble and humans do it all the time.

it turns out faith in religion also has many recurring good things which trains us to trust it, just as each time we show up to get Sally it works great. No?

 

[MixedMartialArts]

The examples you’ve given - the front door & the kids being safe at school - are non-supernatural scenarios.

Religions and spirituality required -

1. beliefs in supernatural phenomena like supernatural entities, eg spirits, gods, angels, demons, jinns, Deva & Devi, fairies, ghosts, etc,
2. or beliefs in supernatural events, miracles, creation myths, reincarnation, resurrection, immortality, magic, superpower, psychic powers, etc,
3. or beliefs in supernatural places, eg heavens, paradise, hell, Olympus, Tartarus, Field of Reeds, Duat, Asgard, Valhalla, etc.

Faith are required to accept these beliefs in the supernatural.

To date, there have no evidence to support any one belief or claim of the supernatural.

All these supernatural don’t exist in natural reality, existing only in imagination of people, on hearsay or in deluded fantasies.

You only gave examples of non-supernatural scenarios. TRY SHOWING EXAMPLES of supernatural scenarios of where the supernatural are real.

Can you show even one “supernatural” to be “real” and “verifiable”?

Faith in an ancient text can certainly be delusion. I’ve no illusions about that.

All I’m saying is, there are depths of knowledge in some ancient texts that still shape millions of repackaged self help, psychological books worth millions today.

there’s something about the knowledge in those texts of old that cut deep to human nature and experience.

it is when these teachings become transformative in a real way and a positive way, the connection of faith is formed.

At this point supernatural isn’t needed entirely, for these positive effects to be experienced.

it seems though, when a person accepts as well on faith the supernatural aspect, it can go different ways. Sideways, negative, positive etc

you’re too smart to think I’m going to produce simple proof of supernatural. I never made that claim.

I explained that faith is simply an integral part of human beings, in many aspects of life…
and in regard to spirituality it becomes Uber murky. No disagreements there.