Calzaer

Edited to remove personal attacks. You just frustrate the shit out of me. Either believe something, or don't believe something. This "I admit that I'm a liar" business makes rational discussion completely impossible. What is your purpose in posting on these boards if all you're going to do is continue to willingly lie to yourself?

Quantum Ninja

Well said, penumbra. Beautifully put. :notworthy

Eric H

Hello Godless Wonder,

If you have a goal to achieve which you feel is well beyond what you are capable of achieving, the first step may be to believe it is possible and to believe that you can succeed.

The next stage is faith, you want to push yourself well beyond what you have done before and into the unknown, so now you need to turn your beliefs into action. You need to act in ways that show you really believe that you can succeed, and that takes courage.

If you have doubts you may not commit yourself fully and so this may reduce the chances of success.



Or I can sit here writing this and say “I believe it is easy to make a parachute jump” believing is easy because it requires no action, beliefs can only have a meaning if I am prepared to act on them.
The only way I can have faith in parachuting is to put a parachute on go up in a plane and jump.
It involves total trust in some unknown factors, how can I know if the parachute is safe? How can I know if the person who tested it and packed it was not drunk and having a bad day? How can I know if the pilot will drop me of in a safe place? Making a parachute jump is taking a risk some people have suffered a serious injury other people have been killed? If I have any doubts I will not jump by choice.
Partial faith is not enough, how can I partially jump out of a plane? Maybe I have a small amount of faith, would that be just enough to jump off the kitchen table?
Partial faith or a little faith is the same as having no faith at all because we do not take the risk to let our life depend on the parachute. Only by stepping out of a plane and into the unknown will I put all my faith into these unproven factors about parachuting that I can only believe and hope would be sound for me.
If I make one jump I only need faith once, if I make several jumps I need a new faith for each time I jump. If I have a close experience with death while parachuting will I still have enough faith to make another jump?

It is easy to believe in God, believing in God can have no meaning and no value if it is only an academic exercise. How can I have faith in God? It requires total trust, like parachuting we need to jump and put our trust fully in God and hope that he will look after us. But how can I prove that there is a God? How many Gods are there? There are lots of claims for all religions how can I know which religions are acceptable to God? How can I know if there is life after death?

Whilst it must be impossible to prove the existence of God, he either exists totally or there is no God at all. The ‘probably God’ can only exist in a persons mind.

Even though we cannot prove that there is a God and a greater life after death, our actions should show that we trust there is a very real God and that he will look after us when we die. If we are to believe in a God there is a need to believe in a God in the greatest way so that we may act towards each other in the greatest way.
With partial faith or a little faith we will only do the less demanding things that God asks of us, things that we feel comfortable with. Partial faith or a little faith is not enough; to have faith in God once is not enough; faith should be a continuous journey throughout life. Each day we show our faith in God by the way in which we relate and act towards all our neighbours that we come into contact with.
Do I have a real belief that my God created the whole human family including people, who are atheists, Muslims, Jews, and Christians? Do I really love all these people as I love myself? Do my words and actions show that I have faith that we are all related through one God even though they believe differently to me? What kind of a risk am I prepared to take because I have faith in God in this way? If I have a bad experience with other people will I doubt my faith, will I loose my faith? In times of temptation is my faith in God strong enough to do what is right? By my actions do I take the risk to do what is right in threatening circumstances and not follow the crowd because I have faith in God and a greater life after death.
To have faith in God is voluntary, I have the freedom to choose God through any religion I like, or I can reject God by choice.

It is mankind and not God who may impose pressures on me to believe in a certain way.

Peace

Eric

agnawstick

All christians pretend to have faith. I haven't met but a couple in my life who possibly weren't. You can't function if ya really believe God is in the room with ya watching ya do your wife. That is when you aren't doing anything wrong. Try doing that with mom and dad watching you. I think the idea of being accountable for one's actions is an scary for christians as no life after death. There is no way "christians" would act the way they do if they are faking.

You would not step over somebody, lie to them, if you KNEW the big guy was watching you, and you would have to explain yourself when you died. So they have come up with this redemption by faith crap, and still act poorly, claiming all the while that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, and their grandparents are all watching them do the mailman, but it's ok, cause Jesus forgives them in time.

Godless Wonder

No, I am trying to understand what's going on inside a friend's head. I cannot imagine wanting to delude myself. I'm trying to figure out how it can be that someone can answer the question "If you were wrong about your faith, would you want to know it" with a "yes", and at the same time hold on to their faith, seemingly with a death grip claiming to "be able to see how I can think the way I do", yet still be totally convinced they are correct in their beliefs, sustained by nothing but faith. One can say, "just believe, and then God will help you to believe more." but this is indistiguishable from self-delusion.

Bad analogy. I've seen lots of people jump safely with parachutes. And occasionally they die. The safety of parachutes is objectively measurable. You are comparing the safety of parachutes with the accuracy of faith.
The accuracy of faith is not directly measurable, even to those experiencing it. They cannot logically tell the difference between accurate (divinely inspired) faith and effective self-delusion. Further, each person claiming to have divinely inspired faith can point to most of the other humans on the world having some sort of faith and claim their faith is "incorrect" because it is conflicting. (e.g. islam vs. christianity vs. Zuul worship vs. whatever) So it would seem that most faith in this world leads to incorrect beliefs, even when measured by those who have faith. Or the "faithful" can point to the other, different "faithful" and say "that's not real faith."
How do you know it's God that's asking? It is not "easy" to believe in God when nobody can point to a single, real, scrap of worthy evidence and when they try they point to a pile of mutually conflicting and self contradictory books about a multitude of highly improbably gods. Am I to believe that the best God can be bothered to do to convince me he exists is to cause the Bible to be produced? People claim it's great literature. I would dispute even that, but that is purely a matter of opinion, of likes and dislikes, regardless of whether the Bible is "the real deal"
Many of who are constantly warring amongst themselves over conflicting faiths.
This last I'm not sure if I agree or disagree. The freedom to choose a religion (or none): Yes, but I would put it this way: The freedom to evaluate the religions or absence of religions and _find out_ which you end up believing. I can't imagine setting out ahead of time "I'm going to choose Islam" and then set about the task of believing it. (Yet this is what most parents inflict upon their children.)
Now you're making sense. :-)

Doubting Didymus

Does this make anyone else very sad?

Virgil Tibbs

I must admit I find it more scary than sad, due to the phrase: "taking care not to read opposing/sceptical views"

I notice one of the most common theist arguments seems to be that their beliefs fill them with a sense of purpose and make them happy, etc.

But if a statement makes one happy, does that in any way make the statement more or less likely to be true? I can't see how. Personally, I'd much rather know a bleak truth than believe a pleasant lie. The truth (or at least figuring out what is most likely to be true) is an end in and of itself for me.

Oddly enough, one of my favorite quotes on this topic comes from a computer game (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri):

"Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist."

Tibbs

Calzaer

Yes. Exceptionally so.

Godless Wonder

This jives nicely with something I was reading about how the brain works. (In "What makes you tick: how the brain works in plain english" I forget the author)

Anyway, it was talking about how the connections between neurons work, how connections which are "used" or activated, tend to become stronger, while those which are not used tend to become weaker. In a very real sense, apparently, "practice makes perfect." So I suppose if you can manage to start believing something, and continue thinking in a kind of positive way about those beliefs, and running over it in your mind, practicing it in the same way you might practice playing a guitar, you will strengthen those connections in your mind which represent that belief, and so the belief will become stronger and stronger. I suppose religious people often spend a lifetime constructing these connections which represent their beliefs. (well, non-religious people too, for that matter.)

So, if that theory is correct, and you've managed to make yourself believe something which is false (but of course you don't know it's false) how can such a belief be dislodged I wonder? (short of a well aimed gamma knife) I suppose in many cases there is no way, since the person likes their belief and so there isn't any chance for conflicting beliefs to get reinforced. I guess that's what the psych people call cognitive dissonance.

Well, I'm no neurobiologist, (and even if I were, they don't have all the answers just yet.) so that's all speculation.

HelenM

It doesn't make me sad, because I think emotional is wise to guard his emotional health in whatever way works for him.

Even if I were an atheist, I wouldn't try to push a worldview on him that he has already said terrifies him. How could that possibly be of benefit to him?

Anyway, I think it's his business, basically.

Helen