What is Faith?

[mikkel_the_dane]

When we are speaking about Bible and faith, I think we should use the definitions Bible has. Bible has many examples of what fate means. For example Noah was faithful to God, when it was told to him that there will come a flood and he should make the ark. Obviously there were no signs of flood yet, but Noah trusted to God, believed what God had said and was faithful and did the ark, even though it probably looked very weird before the flood.

By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
Heb. 11:7

And when we are speaking of something else that the Bible, we could use another definition of faith.

 

[PureX]

This whole thread exemplifies how profoundly confused people are about what faith is.

Mostly because they fail to recognize the difference between faith, and the objective of that faith. And then their bias toward or against that objective compounds their confusion.

Faith is just the act of choosing to trust in an objective that we hope to be extant when we do not know that it is extant. The objective can be anything, and it does not define or determine the act of our choosing it.

 

[osgart]

We didn't "make up" this definition. The definition accurately depicts the belief-evidence question as it's being used in an epistemic sense.

All belief exists on a spectrum. Some is so well-evidenced that it would be foolish not to accept it. Some, so poorly evidenced that the only reasonable position is to reject it pending further evidence. "Faith" describes the phenomenon of belief despite little or no evidence.
Could such belief not accurately be called be called unjustified?

"Faith" may have various meanings and innuendos in common parlance, but in these religion/evidence/belief discussions we're using it in its epistemic sense.

One sided? Labeling? I don't follow. Avoiding spiritual conversation? When have we done that?

We keep asking for this evidence and proof, but it's not forthcoming. You say yourself that faith's beyond physical explanation, so is the "spiritual evidence" or "evident experience" the faithful stand on physically evidenced and explainable, or just an emotional investment?
Can you see why we see this faith as unfounded?


But you just said that anything spiritual is beyond physical explanation. So how do you have faith that it can be done? This is schizophrenic.

So until these phenomena are scientifically tested and observed physically, why would calling them unevidenced or unjustified not be accurate?

I'm relying on inner experience to tell me that there is substance to abstract phenomena and it needs a separate category that I call spiritual. I know that I have cares, love, character qualities that cannot be described by chemical reactions.

Care, love, virtues cannot be physically observed. Honesty can't be placed under a scope.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'm relying on inner experience to tell me that there is substance to abstract phenomena and it needs a separate category that I call spiritual. I know that I have cares, love, character qualities that cannot be described by chemical reactions.

Care, love, virtues cannot be physically observed. Honesty can't be placed under a scope.

I get you. But I don't call it spiritual and we properly also differ on other aspects of the non-observable.

 

[Colt]

I like that honest concession, "the somehow registered hope".

"There are two basic reasons for believing in a God who fosters human survival:

1. Human experience, personal assurance, the somehow registered hope and trust initiated by the indwelling Thought Adjuster.
2. The revelation of truth, whether by direct personal ministry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world bestowal of divine Sons, or through the revelations of the written word." UB 1955

IMOP

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I like that honest concession, "the somehow registered hope".

"There are two basic reasons for believing in a God who fosters human survival:

1. Human experience, personal assurance, the somehow registered hope and trust initiated by the indwelling Thought Adjuster.
2. The revelation of truth, whether by direct personal ministry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world bestowal of divine Sons, or through the revelations of the written word." UB 1955

IMOP

What does IMOP mean?

 

[Colt]

What does IMOP mean?

Indescribable Moments listening to Oscar Peterson

 

[Nakosis]

I have been having a discussion on another thread with @It Aint Necessarily So, and he claims that the definition of faith is unjustified belief.

@It Aint Necessarily So said: Millions agree with me that belief by faith is unjustified belief whether they use those words or not.

@Trailblazer said: If you are going to try to use that argument, many, many, more millions agree with me that belief by faith is justified belief whether they use those words or not.

Whether faith is justified or unjustified is only a matter of opinion and opinions vary.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, what is the definition of faith?

faith

1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
2. strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

faith means - Google Search

I argue that people have to have faith in anything they cannot prove, and it could be God or something or someone else. Faith is justified by the evidence, so for example if a spouse was always trustworthy and honest that would be evidence and a reason to have faith in that spouse.

I argue that we cannot go through life without faith, even if we do not believe in God. We have to have faith in anything we cannot prove and there are many things that cannot be proven in the course of everyday life. I cannot prove that if I go to college I will graduate, so I have to have faith in my abilities. I cannot prove that if I retire things will go as I planned, because I could suddenly get ill. The list goes on and on.

If faith is necessary for so many things in everyday life what is the problem with having faith in God?

Well, I already know what atheists will say, that there is no evidence for God so belief is unjustified. Atheists say that if only there was sufficient evidence, we would not have to have faith to believe in God, but that is absolutely false because evidence is not proof unless it is verifiable evidence, and since God can never be verified there can never be any proof that God exists.

No matter what kind of evidence we had we could never PROVE that evidence originated from God so we would have to have faith in our evidence.

I don't have complete trust in anything. Seems like a bad idea to me.

The amount of trust one has is built up through experience but I'd personally never let it get to the level of faith.
I have trust in myself but I don't have faith in myself and I know myself better than I know anyone or anything else.

I don't "know" anything about God.

Ok, fine, God is so great and mighty that it is impossible for God to present themselves. That is certainly not a reason to have faith in God.

If it was the God of the Bible, certainly no reason to trust them. The God who decide to flood the entire world. The God who killed all of the first born of Egypt. The God who allowed Satan to Job experience hell on earth. Not sure why anyone would trust such a God let alone have faith in them.

 

[idea]

I could sure use a little of that, since I don't have much faith in myself to effect needed changes.

Journey of 1000 miles starts with 1 small step. Self-care, small steps - celebrate each accomplishment

 

[idea]

Faith in the sunrise is statistically justified. There is objective evidence of a long, uninterrupted sequence of sunrises. There's also an observable, understandable mechanism explaining it. This is faith in both the colloquial and epistemic sense. You could justifiably upgrade it to knowledge.

I used the example of the sun as many beliefs are that strong - mine was. To change faith, change bias/programming/understanding- the equivalent shock of the sun not rising.

When the detective called, they had to repeat themselves over and over again - my mind literally would not process what was being said, like a foreign language. I went into shock. I remember squeezing my arms to try and convince my mind I was still there, to convince my mind there was bones and blood under my skin as I felt completely empty/void/gone inside.
Cognitive dissonance is very real, our minds are programmed - so many things each of us assumes is fact that is not. To change someone's mind, someone's faith - it is evident on this forum, seeing so many entrenched in their views, everyone living inside our own bubble.

 

[idea]

...
I have trust in myself but I don't have faith in myself

Do other people have faith in you?

That's where it gets sticky. Your kids needing your protection, parents, people at work.

Sometimes we think we're not strong enough, but when others need us - synergy

Synergy - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Synergy is an interaction or cooperation giving rise to a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts.

 

[Nakosis]

Do other people have faith in you?

That's where it gets sticky. Your kids needing your protection, parents, people at work.

View attachment 73624

Sometimes we think we're not strong enough, but when others need us - synergy

Synergy - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Synergy is an interaction or cooperation giving rise to a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts.

Trust yes but I tell them not to have faith.
I let them know what I tell them could be wrong so verify for themselves everything I claim.

I generally trust everything I claim as coming from my own personal experience. So I trust that what I claim, they'll be able to verify.

However, since I don't know everything, there is always a possibility that I'll be wrong.

Also, the quote you provided is about trust, not faith. There is a difference imo.

 

[Nakosis]

And when we are speaking of something else that the Bible, we could use another definition of faith.

Yes, there are different definition for words and one should make clear the definition they are using when possible to avoid confusion.

 

[Ella S.]

I think faith is a form of motivated reasoning where someone suspends their disbelief in something they want to be true.

It has nothing to do with whether that belief is or isn't based on evidence, from what I've seen. You use idiosyncratic meanings for "evidence" and "justified belief" when you talk about what you have faith in, but some believers have used these concepts properly when defending their beliefs. Others say they don't need any evidence, or that evidence might be impossible, but they believe because they have faith.

This is not a definition of faith that I have seen anywhere. It's just what it seems to mean based on how I see it being used.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The non religious made up the definition of faith to mean unjustified belief and confidence or belief without evidence; probably to make conversation with religious people more one sided. I suppose another reason they invented that meaning is to label religious people, and deal with them according to that label. Another reason is to avoid spiritual conversations because it might sound like gibberish to them.

Critical thinkers are not motivated by any of that. They don't see themselves as being in a competition with the religious, nor do they need reasons to reject religious claims beyond them being unfounded. In epistemology, one studies the idea of knowledge - what it is and how it is obtained.

Some, like Descartes, say knowledge can be obtained by pure reason, as when he decided that he must exist because he can think about the problem. They are rationalists.

Then there are those who believe that knowledge can be obtained through reason applied to the evidence of the senses and experience. They are the empiricists.

And some consider intuition a source of knowledge, although many do not. They would call it a creative source, a source of new ideas to investigate, but not knowledge. This last group would include the fideists - those who believe without empirical or rational confirmation, which is what is meant by justification when a critical speaker is judging.

faith in the familiar - the sun rises each morning, repetition, we have faith in what we are used to, what we grew up with.

This is empiricism, not fideism as just defined. Belief based in experience as you just described is justified if the experience is properly understood, and is justified belief by the standards of critical thought (academic standard). There is a different word with the same spelling and pronunciation that means the opposite of justified belief, the one employed to believe that gods exist, that the last election was a hoax, that the vaccines were more dangerous than the virus, and that climate change is a hoax. These ideas are all believed the same way - without justification, which is sufficient supporting evidence to justify belief. Isn't that what all of the recounts and other election integrity interventions were about - finding evidence of fraud, without which the claim of fraud was unjustified. Now consider my definition of religious-type faith as unjustified belief again. That's exactly what it is.

What's interesting is how people willing to believe by faith object to that being called unjustified belief. There was a time when people took pride in that. From Wiki:

"Credo quia absurdum is a Latin phrase that means "I believe because it is absurd", originally misattributed to Tertullian in his De Carne Christi. It is believed to be a paraphrasing of Tertullian's "prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est" which means "It is completely credible because it is unsuitable", or "certum est, quia impossibile" which means "It is certain because it is impossible."

"There are two basic reasons for believing in a God who fosters human survival:

1. Human experience, personal assurance, the somehow registered hope and trust initiated by the indwelling Thought Adjuster.
2. The revelation of truth, whether by direct personal ministry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world bestowal of divine Sons, or through the revelations of the written word." UB 1955

Which is just one reason to me - comforting - not two. I don't use the word truth the way this author does. Faith is not a path to truth. It is a path to insufficiently justified belief.

When we are speaking about Bible and faith, I think we should use the definitions Bible has.

An unbeliever wouldn't get his definition from a holy book. The Bible praises faith as a virtue. It has to, since it depends on belief by faith. It's central tenets can only be believed by faith, because the supporting evidence is inadequate to justify belief by the standards of critical analysis.

If we can agree that the meaning of faith is simply "something which is hoped for" then it can be both justified and unjustified.

I can't agree. Faith isn't a thing. It's the name of a method for coming to a belief. And I suspect you are using an informal (lay) definition of justified, which appears to mean the same as "It feels right, so it's true," or what also goes by the name spiritual apprehension. This is intuition, and by itself, is not a path to truth. And hope doesn't require faith. One can learn to eliminate faith from his thinking and still have hope.

if you are talking specifically about religious faith, I would call that unjustified, given that no evidence for the divine has been provided, doesn't mean that it is pointless or meaningless.

Agreed. It is obviously meaningful to the people who engage in faith-based thought, but not to me. I find meaning in nature and life without such beliefs.

What you did was interpret the definition to mean what you already think, that spiritual apprehension rather than proof is unjustified belief.

I explained why the definition you provided was mine rewritten. Spiritual intuition doesn't justify belief by the standards of critical thinking, and that is what the word justified means when a critical thinker uses it. It means something else when you and many others use it. You mean that YOU are satisfied with the evidence, and that is justification enough for you. As I said, that's a different meaning than when others employing the laws of reason and the rules of inference to evidence use it. They are referring to a sharply proscribed process that leads to justification, or sound conclusion, or correct belief - they're all interchangeable.

YOU define faith as unjustified belief because YOU consider it unjustified. I define faith as justified belief because I consider it justified.

Yes, I know. Are you aware that we mean different things when we say justified and unjustified, since we have different criteria for calling a belief justified?

It is laughable as well as completely illogical that anyone would attempt to justify a religious belief by academic standards.

Many have tried. The scholastics came up with a series of arguments that they thought were sound. Pascal's Wager could be called a plea to reason. The ID people tried as well. None have succeeded to date.

The only thing that justifies belief in God is scriptures, since that is all we can ever know about God.

By your standards of justification, not those of academia.

The criteria you use is your own personal opinions and that justifies nothing.

You seem to think that your opinion justifies your beliefs. Now you say that personal opinion justifies nothing, yet, that is what you have. And you keep implying that all opinions are equal. The conclusions of sound arguments derived from the application of valid reason to evidence are different from all other kinds of ideas. You have never understood that what you do is not that, which makes the beliefs you accept faith-based even if faith is sufficient justification for you. That's fine with me if faith is acceptable to you. That's not my objection here. It's that you call what you believe justified. Not by objective standards it's not.

"I argue that people have to have faith in anything they cannot prove."

The question is, so what if they need faith?

Agreed again. For how long have I been telling you that if you will stop claiming that your ideas are justified, based in reason, constitute knowledge, etc. and proudly proclaim that you believe because it feels right, nobody will disagree with you. Why would they? But you seem to want to try to claim that your belief is more than that. Why? Is it embarrassing to say that you believe without sufficient evidentiary support, so you call what you have sufficient anyway?

I get so tired of this ridiculous debate.

Is that why you started this thread and named me in your OP? You love it just like I do. This is endlessly entertaining for you. You love the thrust and parry of discussions like these, which is why you are one of RF's more prolific posters. When I get tired of discourse, I disengage. The RF posters I consider tiresome are on ignore.

The argument that God does not exist because we do not see what some atheists say they would expect to see is completely illogical

But that's not the argument. Critical thinkers (who are often atheists, although an atheist can be an astrologer or a Stalinist, so not synonymous with critical thinker) argue that nothing including the existence of gods should be believed without justification as they define justification.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Somebody else commented on the incoherence of that statement. I agree. To start, faith is not a substance. Like many others, I hope for things, but reject belief by faith. And faith is belief without sufficient evidence, not a substitute for evidence. That phrase is similar to your spiritual apprehension in place of "proof" definition of faith, both of which are equivalent to calling faith insufficiently justified belief. Faith and spiritual apprehension are neither substance nor evidence.

 

[idea]

1 Cor 15:58 firm and steadfast in your faith vs...

"if you still believe the same things at fifty that you believed at twenty-five, you've wasted twenty-five years."

 

[Trailblazer]

We keep asking for this evidence and proof, but it's not forthcoming. You say yourself that faith's beyond physical explanation, so is the "spiritual evidence" or "evident experience" the faithful stand on physically evidenced and explainable, or just an emotional investment?
Can you see why we see this faith as unfounded?

Excuse me for jumping in, but I don't believe that faith is beyond physical explanation since there are physical facts that can lead to faith, and some of us believers consider those important. However, there is no physical evidence for God because God is not physical. As I said in my OP, we can never "see God", and that is the reason there can never be any physical proof of God. The only physical evidence for God are the Messengers of God and if we can have faith in them we can have faith in God.

 

[Nimos]

I can't agree. Faith isn't a thing. It's the name of a method for coming to a belief. And I suspect you are using an informal (lay) definition of justified, which appears to mean the same as "It feels right, so it's true," or what also goes by the name spiritual apprehension. This is intuition, and by itself, is not a path to truth.

It's not about truth.

For instance, you can have faith (hope) in your spouse not cheating on you. Even though you might not know whether that is the case or not for certain. But given that you have never observed your spouse flirting with others, their expression of love for you etc. can justify your faith in them not cheating on you, despite that they might very well do it. But so far, at least, you have been given no reason to assume that they are, and therefore your faith (hope) in them not doing it is justified, it is not grabbed out of thin air.

Agreed. It is obviously meaningful to the people who engage in faith-based thought, but not to me. I find meaning in nature and life without such beliefs.

And so do I, but I wouldn't be ignorant about the fact, that there are lots of things we simply hope for is true. Some are more justified than others, depending on the amount of evidence we have indicating whether something is the case or not.

 

[Nimos]

@Valjean

Okay, here is one example. Look up philosophy of science in Wikipedia. It mentions that there are more than one version of science.
Now I have, among the teaching books I have, a book written by a Danish academic, which states that there are in one sense 7 different versions of science in his academic tradition, for which your science is one as natural science.

So let me explain what is going on. If you accept the following about definitions of words, then it is so, that a definition of a word doesn't make the definition a fact. If that was to the definition of God as the creator of the universe would make it a fact that God is the creator of the universe. I don't accept that, but that is not particular to the word God.
So that applies to science as a word, because all understanding what science is, happen in humans and involve different understandings of what knowledge is.
Now for knowledge is not that everything goes or nothing goes.
Rather it is, that what goes on, in practice depends on, if it involves individual cognition and emotions, common same or it is not controllable alone by cognition and emotions. And for the world that is in practice a combination.
So I can know how I live my life in a limited sense subjectively including that I use faith for me as me as to cope, I use the culture I am in and I use how the objective parts of the world work.
But I don't use one kind of knowledge, proof, evidence, science and so on.

I don't understand what you mean, can you try to explain it differently?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I don't understand what you mean, can you try to explain it differently?

There is more than one version for knowledge that the claim that only the methodology of natural science is knowledge or truth.