Whats faith? Is it something like a soul or objective ehtics? You guys use it alot, can you explain it to me...
LOL Easy cowboy I really didn't know what you were saying. That last sentence sucked the little bit of brain I have left in me smack out. LOL Faith is unwavering belief in something. Faith is when give opposition to your point of view it actually strengthens your belief system. That's just my answer.
The Bible says faith is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1) Faith is a channel of living trust-an assurance-that stretches from man to God.
I'd say that faith is putting your strength in something unseen, (or maybe it has already been seen,) but it is not fully realized yet. It is believing in something that has not yet been fully realized or attained, and the assurance you have that it will come about gives you strength.
I don't think she's talking about blind faith, Fed. It's more like trust in something, a willingness to not know 100% and still somehow be comfortable with that, to find strength in that. It's less of an intellectual position ("i believe this and this") and more of a relationship sort of thing, where you've given up some control or power (in this case, assurance of knowledge), and have to trust that this other entity or aspect won't let you down. That's the way I see it anyways. Faith is about letting go of the need to KNOW. Faith is only alive when there is doubt; this is why blind faith is hardly faith at all, and mainly just accepted fact in the mind of the believer.
Through my own journy through christianity the term 'faith' was thrown in whenever something couldn't be explained, like why if Jesus was a Jew and we should all try to be like him (as the bible says) are we christians? We must have faith in the bible and the new teachings fromthe new testament. Or why does this proverb from the bible contradict another proverb - we just have to accept in faith that God put it there for a reason. How do we know God exists;? faith. Why is it wrong to masturbate? You must have faith that there is a reason. Why did God call upon abraham to kill his son? to prove faith. It is a fucking excuse! Faith in christianity means nothing, it is an empty word used to manipulate. Why did my wife miscarry? We must have faith in God's intentions. Bullshit! Try looking at other religion's concept of faith, you'll find a lot more meaningful and accurate descriptions.
Faith in Christianity does not mean nothing. It is trust in God. Faith is only as good as the object in which it is placed.
Faith, as I see it, is a belief in something without proof or evidence. When you speak to god, it is faith that keeps you from thinking your schitzotypal or something. It is when you say you know something, when all logic and reason says you don't. You just think it. In my humble opinion, faith is the folly of religion. Religious people have faith that there is a god in the first place, and most religious people have faith that god is as described in their book or by their leader. They have faith that god believes this that or the other. Faith in god and the books and gods beliefs leads to persecution of gays, led to segregation and slavery, and all sorts of wars of conversion. It is faith that a person's idea of god is true and others are false that spawns religious-based hate. Radical muslims, radical christians, etc. Faith puts people on the pedestal of "bound for heaven," and leads to a dichotomy of "saved" and "unsaved" and sometimes "heathens." There is so much strife, so much violence, hostility, and so many negative categorizations and stereotypes that wouldn't be there without faith. George Bush had faith that god wanted war in Iraq, and he said so. Who is he to say he knows what god wants? Who are you to say you know what god wants? How he wants us to behave? What he wants us to think? Who are you to say that you know anything at all about the nature of god? Just faithful.
First off George W. Bush didn't have faith God wanted him at war. He had faith the OIL COMPANY his dad works for had him at war. It had little to do with religion and a LOT to do with greed. If you actually read the words of Christ there's no way you can merit segregation, slavery, wars of conversion or persecution of gays. These were evil men bent on doing things for their own self will. They used the scriptures to scare uneducated and entice other evil men into following them by misquotes and slandering. Again that's man. Not Christ. The Communists have done some wicked things. Read the story of Stalin sometime. He was a murderer. Plain and simple. It had nothing to do with a God. It had to do with power. Even if you're a Christian who is against homosexuality, pro choice etc. We're commanded to love these people by Christ. Plain and simple. Anybody who tells you we're to hate such people is not being truthful and misquoting Christ.
Faith is the belief in things that you cannot see....I am proud to say I have a verry strong faith in our Father
Well, you have faith in the future, else you wouldn't make any plans. You have faith that that future will be a good one, else you'd probably kill yourself. You have faith in your friends and family, even though any one of them could turn their back on you in a second. You have faith that our government won't collapse, else you'd be building a bunker somewhere and stocking it with food and guns. It's the same with faith in God. It seems more extreme in that case, but it's the same principle. Trust. Substitute the word trust for faith and it amounts to the same thing, in my opinion. Though, you're right, faith can lead to the things you mentioned there, war and strife. But war and strife doesn't depend on religion, so can you really blame religion? I say, ultimately, no. You have to place the blame on man. Humans, not religion, are what cause wars. On the upside, it's also humans who stop them, and who can create peace. Often religion plays a role on both ends.
Trust is usually based on past experience, though. The sun has come up every day, and it would take something amazing to make that stop. The chance of tomorrow not happening is so small that it's not worth considering. Based on past experience, even if the future sucks, I'll be ok. But seeing as I can't know what the future brings, that's also not worth worrying about. My friends and family remain my friends and family because they don't have back-stabbing tendencies. If they did, they wouldn't be my friends, and if that changes, so will their status. My government isn't in danger of collapse. Corruption, sure, but I'm not worried about mass chaos quite yet. Some of these things I can say I place trust in, but it's based on past experience, and doesn't just come out of the air. There's a logical reason to say that past and present tendencies will continue until signs appear that that's not the case. My point about war is that it is mostly perpetrated by people with faith. The generals, the foot soldiers, the commander-in-chief, and most of the rest often place faith in one god or another. Hence the prayers before battle, the crucifixes, the god bless america, and Bush using people's faith to guide them into war. Same with Osama, the Ayotollah, all the Isreal-Palestine conflict, wars with "godless communism," and nazis (and the kkk) believing they are god's chosen race. I'm not blaming god. I'm blaming people and faith. I'm not saying that it's the sole cause of wars, but it's a large part. And the reason faith is bad, in my opinion, is because it's not as in the bible. You can create your own idea of god, make him hate jews or gays or blacks or hippies, and if god hates them, doesn't that give you license to hate them? I actually like the idea Chris Rock put forward in Dogma, that people should not have beliefs, they should have ideas.
All wars are based in faith. Objective reality is based in faith. We have faith that other sentient beings other than ourselves exist -- we can't directly experience any existence but our own. We all pretty much assume that objective reality exists, but the point is you can't prove it exists. Do you have evidence for the existence of an objective reality? People communicating with you is not enough. In NDEs, for example, many people report communicating with dead relatives and they truly believe the experience to be as real as waking reality. That's either a hallucination or it's not, and so is this.
^exactly right and, FreakerSoup, tomorrow can easily never come. You could die in your sleep or something. But you're right, that it's not really worth worrying about. I might argue the same is true about worrying about God. But then, maybe that's the whole point of faith. Oh, and maybe many, or at least some, people have had experience with/of God, such that they can have faith/trust in him.
Ok. I think believing reality to be objective is just a tad different than believing that there's someone in the sky that you can't see and can't hear, but who's all-powerful and judges you when you die. There is no point to believing objective reality is not what you we commonly experience. If I talk you you, and you talk to whomever, and we agree that this that and the other are all real, there's no point in disputing that. What other option is there? Even if you believe you are nothing but a brain in a jar, you still have to live your life in the same world as everyone else. In reality, if you don't eat you die. There's evidence for its realism. If you ignore objective reality, you die. I would even posit that you can't ignore objective reality unless you are a schitzophrenic or something similar. However, life is just fine without faith in god. You don't need faith in god to survive. I agree that it is not worth worrying about, but because given a loving god, you should be able to live a good life and reap his/her/its rewards. I would say, and this is all very semantic, that a person who has an "experience with god" to support their belief has faith that their experience was indeed god, and not an illusion, a hallucination, schitzophrenia, or some similar misleading happening. Then with that faith, they can trust, based on experience that their faith tells them is accurate, that god exists.
this would be idolatry according to the Bible. But, everyone has beliefs don't they. it can't be denied. everyone believes something.
