Faith - A divine attribute...

Zillah

PDN wrote:

Maybe you should read my post again?

I did not state that the positive outcome constituted my 'grounds' for faith. I listed 3 other factors that were the 'grounds' for our faith. You ignored these and proceeded to immediately try to debunk the positive outcome. That is revealing.

You mean this section?

"1. Our faith was supported by our past experiences. Our entire married life has been a succession of God blessing us wonderfully and proving the truth of his promises.
2. Our faith was also supported by the experiences of others. We have heard other Christians testify how they continued to tithe under pressure and how God provided in unusual or unexpected ways.
3. Our faith was supported by our understanding of tithing as a biblical principle. We have discovered that obeying other biblical principles and teachings (following sensible hermeneutical principles to ensure we are interpreting the Bible correctly rather than indulging in wishful thinking) has benefited us greatly. Therefore we had added confidence that the Bible would also prove beneficial in this area."

Because they're all the same reason rephrased: Nice things happen when we indulge our faith, therefore our faith has grounds.


The crucial problem here is, and both myself and Scofflaw have mentioned it already, that your reasoning can be used to support any ridiculous belief.

Bob Smith lives according to visions he gets from aliens from Deneb IV.
Omar the Muslim follows the Qur'an and Allah.
You and your wife follow the Bible.
A Buddhist takes guidance from the four noble truths and the Kharmic cycle.


All these people are lucky enough to have nice lives where everything usually works out. If you want us to accept your place in this list as grounds for your faith, then you have to accept that it is grounds for any sort of faith. Which means its not actually grounds for any particular faith at all.

Zombrex

Talliesin wrote:

Of course one of your examples - the big bang - was postulated by a committed theist, indeed he was a Jesuit priest. Clear counter-example right there.

A counter example of what?

Talliesin wrote:

Of course people want comforting answers, but that doesn't explain all religious faith by a long shot.

What area does it not explain?

Talliesin wrote:

Nor are atheists immune from seeking them.

I wouldn't presume to claim they are. As you say people want comforting answers. That is the nature of human emotion such as fear and guilt.

Talliesin wrote:

Personally, I'm happier if they sit around waiting for God to do it

That was my point. People don't see the "faith" that God has commanded someone to blow up a bus as a particularly good virtue. Which suggests that it isn't actually faith itself that people see has good

PDN

Scofflaw wrote:

Why? I have my disagreements with some of what is written in the Bible, and I think it's utter foolishness to treat it as the word of God, but as a manual for "positive living" the NT is no worse than most of the others. That you try and live life positively, and that this makes life a positive experience for you, is hardly a surprise, and I'm afraid that if you want to use it as evidence for your God, you'll have to accept it evidence for a lot of other Gods too.

slightly perplexed,
Scofflaw

If I was citing my faith as evidence for God, then this may be relevant. However, that is not what I was doing. I shared an incident from my experience as an example of how faith is supported by past experiences, by the testimony of others, and by the testimony of God's Word. This was not to present some kind of evidence for the existence of God, but rather to argue against the parody of religious faith as being something that is totally unsupported and therefore only equates to wishful thinking.

PDN

Scofflaw wrote:

Ooh - didn't see that analysis coming.



What, like wars, famines, rapes, murders, that kind of thing? Are you seriously suggesting, PDN, that I should honestly weigh these little "evidences" of divine goodness against the mountains of evidence for God's malevolence, callousness or absence? That your €922 balances the Congo?

Oh, I forgot. Those are Man's fault, the fault of his fallen condition and sinful nature. What is bad is us, what is good is God. Silly of me to neglect that important piece of psychology.

No, PDN, your €922 doesn't "shake my faith".

regards,
Scofflaw

If you feel the weight of evidence against God's existence is so overwhelming then I would have thought that a little matter of 922 euro on the other side of the scale would hardly merit the necessary effort to try to debunk it. However, when people feel they have a faith standpoint to defend I guess they become intolerant of anything that might suggest an alternative point of view.

CerebralCortex

You know what grinds my gears is Bishop Brady saying the answer to why exist and how to be happy can only come from the church and not astrology.

IMHO

Church teachings/doctrine = mere fairy tales.
Astrology = mere fairy tales.

CerebralCortex

Sangre wrote:

I guess so. Making ignorance something to be proud of was a great marketing ploy.

Most quotable line ever.

PDN

Zillah wrote:

You mean this section?

"1. Our faith was supported by our past experiences. Our entire married life has been a succession of God blessing us wonderfully and proving the truth of his promises.
2. Our faith was also supported by the experiences of others. We have heard other Christians testify how they continued to tithe under pressure and how God provided in unusual or unexpected ways.
3. Our faith was supported by our understanding of tithing as a biblical principle. We have discovered that obeying other biblical principles and teachings (following sensible hermeneutical principles to ensure we are interpreting the Bible correctly rather than indulging in wishful thinking) has benefited us greatly. Therefore we had added confidence that the Bible would also prove beneficial in this area."

Because they're all the same reason rephrased: Nice things happen when we indulge our faith, therefore our faith has grounds.


The crucial problem here is, and both myself and Scofflaw have mentioned it already, that your reasoning can be used to support any ridiculous belief.

Bob Smith lives according to visions he gets from aliens from Deneb IV.
Omar the Muslim follows the Qur'an and Allah.
You and your wife follow the Bible.
A Buddhist takes guidance from the four noble truths and the Kharmic cycle.


All these people are lucky enough to have nice lives where everything usually works out. If you want us to accept your place in this list as grounds for your faith, then you have to accept that it is grounds for any sort of faith. Which means its not actually grounds for any particular faith at all.

And that is why, if an atheist chose to misrepresent the Buddhist, Omar, and even Bob the friend of aliens by accusing them of making a virtue out of unsupported faith, I would defend these people. They have grounds for their faith. I might consider those grounds to be insufficient, or even erroneous, but I would not want to falsely accuse them of having no grounds for their faith. However, as I occasionally find on these boards, my tolerance and generosity of spirit is not always shared by others.

Tim Robbins

PDN wrote:

That Sunday we had a guest preacher in our church. I'd never met this guy (an American) but he had preached the previous year when I had been away in Africa and everyone had enjoyed his ministry. I was amazed when, half way through his sermon, this guy announced that God had spoken to him back home in the US and instructed him to get everyone to give in a special offering to bless the senior pastor (me). However, this 'word from God' had actually come to him a full year earlier, but he had refrained from acting upon it last year because, contrary to his expectations, I had not been present the previous time he had preached. Now he wanted to be obedient. He also stressed that he had never done anything like this before in any church where he had preached.

PDN you're a legend. 1st up great to hear you got through a stressful time.
Second: I can't think of too many Christian who would come into A&A forum and go into such detail about their own life and their own faith. I'd admire your bravery.
Third:
Anyway, I've heard plenty of these stories and I don't adjust my atheist position. If something happened that can't happen by the natural lawas of the universe, for example you or your friend grew wings and flew up in the sky, then I would think what I have just heard is more than a statistical co-incidence.

In another thread, I noticed when you try to make s-coffl-aw into straw, you have to swap -coffl- with "tr" which are my initials. There's no secret message there, it's just a co-incidence.

Zillah

PDN wrote:

And that is why, if an atheist chose to misrepresent the Buddhist, Omar, and even Bob the friend of aliens by accusing them of making a virtue out of unsupported faith, I would defend these people. They have grounds for their faith. I might consider those grounds to be insufficient, or even erroneous, but I would not want to falsely accuse them of having no grounds for their faith.

So, the grounds for their faith could be insufficient and erroneous in your opinion, but would still count as grounds? Does the degree of error matter? If Tommy here believes he will live for all eternity in his physical body as a powerful immortal, and he cites a talking frog in his dreams as the grounds for his faith...does that still count as grounds? At what degree of errancy do you stop considering the belief grounded? Obviously every human being save the very mad have some sort of reason for believing something. When we discuss whether something is supported or not we have to mean it in the sense of "well supported by the evidence", otherwise the term becomes entirely meaningless.


By your argument, is there any way a person can have faith and claim they have support for it, while in fact they do not?

To explain a little further: I would consider grounds that are erroneous to be no grounds at all.

If I was citing my faith as evidence for God, then this may be relevant. However, that is not what I was doing. I shared an incident from my experience as an example of how faith is supported by past experiences, by the testimony of others, and by the testimony of God's Word.

You have faith in God. If you cite something as supporting your faith then you are citing something that supports the existence of God; the two things are mutually inclusive. If you cite something that supports your faith but not God then I suspect that that thing is wishy washy nonesense. Though to be honest that was becoming clear anyway.

PDN

Zillah wrote:

So, the grounds for their faith could be insufficient and erroneous in your opinion, but would still count as grounds? Does the degree of error matter? If Tommy here believes he will live for all eternity in his physical body as a powerful immortal, and he cites a talking frog in his dreams as the grounds for his faith...does that still count as grounds? At what degree of errancy do you stop considering the belief grounded? Obviously every human being save the very mad have some sort of reason for believing something. When we discuss whether something is supported or not we have to mean it in the sense of "well supported by the evidence", otherwise the term becomes entirely meaningless.

There is a difference between basing a belief on false grounds and basing it on no grounds at all. For example, the inhabitants of Riga once burned their city to the ground because they thought the dust raised by a hungry herd of cattle was the approach of a French army. That was unfortunate and a source of amusement for me, but is understandable. However, if they had burned their city down for no reason at all, then that would be an example of obvious lunacy.

Atheists are free to try to demonstrate that theists' grounds for belief are erroneous. However, that is a very different issue from accusing theists of exalting the concept of faith as a virtue with no supporting grounds at all. I'm sorry if you are unable to see the distinction.

By your argument, is there any way a person can have faith and claim they have support for it, while in fact they do not?

Well, obviously if they were lying. If I acted again in faith based on my 922 euro experience, but had actually invented the whole episode, then I would be claiming support for my faith while not actually possessing said support.

You have faith in God. If you cite something as supporting your faith then you are citing something that supports the existence of God; the two things are mutually inclusive. If you cite something that supports your faith but not God then I suspect that that thing is wishy washy nonesense. Though to be honest that was becoming clear anyway.

This conflating of separate issues is increasingly common. My faith in our country's education system is declining by the hour.

Tim Robbins

PDN wrote:

There is a difference between basing a belief on false grounds and basing it on no grounds at all.

Would you see an difference betwen faith in Christianity and faith in Tarot cards? Interesting letter in the IT today:

Madam, - Archbishop Seán Brady berates the Irish people for "consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, tarot cards. . .".
The scientific evidence for any supernatural hypothesis from any of these pastimes is equivalent to the evidence for any of the large number of supernatural hypotheses proposed by various religions and faiths.
In all cases scientific evidence is categorically non-existent and "a leap of faith" is required.
Any supernatural dogma, be it someone disappearing from a tomb or messages from tarot cards, just seems irrational to people who are uncomfortable making the required leap of faith.
The words "glasshouses" and "stones" come to mind. - Yours, etc,
ALEX STAVELEY, Norseman Court, Stoneybatter, Dublin 7.

Zillah

PDN wrote:

Atheists are free to try to demonstrate that theists' grounds for belief are erroneous. However, that is a very different issue from accusing theists of exalting the concept of faith as a virtue with no supporting grounds at all. I'm sorry if you are unable to see the distinction.

Ah! I don't think they are knowingly doing so, but they are doing so none the less. To me the grounds you use for your faith are no better than, and in some ways more harmful than, no grounds at all.

If you encourage someone to have faith in God because of a situation such as the 922 euro, I consider that to be encouraging a belief that has no basis, if not encouraging the concept of belief with no basis.

Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

If you feel the weight of evidence against God's existence is so overwhelming then I would have thought that a little matter of 922 euro on the other side of the scale would hardly merit the necessary effort to try to debunk it. However, when people feel they have a faith standpoint to defend I guess they become intolerant of anything that might suggest an alternative point of view.

Well, no, I just can't help wanting to share the "Bad News" with you. It's a character flaw, but you can think of it as the atheist version of witnessing, if you like. After all, it presumably isn't doubt that makes you want to share with people what you regard as the truth - why assume different of others?

reflectively,
Scofflaw