generic

Hi, just wondering how any religious people make that giant leap of faith. So the EoG isn't questioned, so that there is no question period.

Or is there any advice to a person who isn't necessarily a believer?

malookiemaloo

Not sure I fully understand the question.

For many Christians there is a long long question period.

However I often wonder how non theists view faith. It it just an absurdity? To a Christian it is another dimension which transcends 'knowledge' understanding' etc


m

braces_for_impact

Well from my non-theist pov, faith is irrational. 'Another dimension which transcends knowledge' seems not to be a satisfactory answer to me, as it doesn't reeally explain what faith is. How does someting transcend knowledge? Faith imho is belief without evidence, and in some cases in spite of it. Seems incredibly unreliable as a means for gathering knowledge and information, and perhaps somewhat foolish.

I often notice that the word faith is equivocated often. People often seem to think they are using faith when actually they mean trust, or chaking a chance. A lot of word games are played around the word faith.

Treacle Worshipper

A lot of people are brought up in a faith, or with a general belief in "something". I know some people grow out of this in the same way they grow out of believing in Santa. In my case, it was made clear that Santa was make believe & god was real.

I can see how someone could change faiths, thinking they have found a better version of god. I can see how someone with a latent god-belief could become more involved in a faith. I have no idea how someone could move from a sceptical position to faith; there are just too many unanswered questions.
I hope some of that helps.
TW

generic

I disagree. Do you personally test every aspect of a car you ride in, or a plane you fly in? I think it takes a little faith to go flying through the air at that velocity or traving in a piece of steel and plastic going 65+ mph.

So I think that's how I wanted to phrase my question. You have the bible, the "word of God." It tells you to believe, but in order to do so you must get there on a bridge of 'Faith'.

Unfortunately my bridge ends halfway.

christ-on-a-stick

generic, Perhaps you missed the second part of braces_for_impact's post: When I fly, I trust that the plane will arrive safely based on the observable fact that thousands of flights take off and arrive safely every day. I am taking a chance that my flight may be one of the few that crashes and burns when something goes wrong.

"Faith" does not figure into it.

"Faith is believing what you know ain't so". ~ Mark Twain

generic

big words and no dictionary

christ-on-a-stick

Heh?

I just edited my post to be more clear, sorry (I quoted you twice on accident).

Lobstrosity

Of course you do. No one ever gets in a plane without knowing what a plane is. You see them fly every day. You know there's a specific branch of the government whose sole purpose exists to enforce safety rules with regards to flying. You know that you'll be told about every plane that crashes just because in the past you've been told about every plane that crashes. This is all empirical data that gives you reasonable predictive powers over future outcomes. Hell, even if you did "personally test" a plane before you flew in it, you'd still wouldn't have complete assurance that you wouldn't crash. What if you missed something? What if physics is wrong. What if the pilot fucks up. The whole point is that you can have varying degrees of certainty with regards to something. It will never be 100%. For example, you don't know for certain that the sun is still there right now. It might have just exploded. You won't know for another eight minutes whether the unthinkable has happened, at which point you'll have to wonder anew whether the sun might have just exploded. Making assumptions based on past experience (this counts as empirical data) and evidence is not the same thing as having religious faith. It kind of pisses me off when people refuse to see this.

Your plane analogy sucks at describing religious faith. The more apt analogy would be getting into a home-made "plane" built by some stranger you just met on the street. This is true faith. You know nothing about this guy's engineering or piloting skills. You very well might die because you have no empirical data with which to make predictions in regard to future outcomes.

Jamie_L

Ditto on equivocating faith. The term "faith" which is so venerated in our culture, is specifically believing without proof. I no longer really understand why people think this kind of faith is such a good thing. If some dietary supplement makes outrageous claims in their commercials, I don't take it on "faith" that it is true. If someone calls me and says they need my social security number to determine if I've won a contest, I don't take it on "faith" that they are not trying to steal my identity.

The many things that I accept as true without verifying myself are things I accept because of my understanding of and trust in the institutions and processes that provide me with information about those things. Depending on my levels of trust/understanding and the importance of the information, I may or may not do some independent checking.

One can use the term "faith" to describe these things, but if so, one is using a different definition of the word, and it is not the same thing as having "faith" in unproven supernatural entities.

Jamie