Do all people exhibit faith? Or only religious people
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Faith is not just about on a certain deity. It can be about faith to yourself, to your dreams or to people important to you. It has nothing to do with the existence of god.
I only ask because I've heard the subject of faith is almost offensive to atheists. Although from your answer it seems you think everyone has some sort of faith. If that is so, then i would agree. I think we all have faith.
Faith is the reason people give for believing something when they don't have evidence.
Blind faith without evidence is not legitimate. Theists that fail to provide demonstrable evidence their god exists enforce atheist’s disbelief in deities, which is not a problem intellectually or morally.
My faith is not blind, and i see evidence of Gods existence in many different contexts. What sort of evidence would you like to hear about?
You will have to tell me what context you are using faith in, the colloquial or religious context, before I can answer your query.
Colloquial OR religious
Everyone has faith in the colloquial sense(having a conviction based on evidence) while only the religious generally have faith in the religious sense(belief without evidence, held against evidence in many cases).
No guarantee, but this old thread may reveal some of the dynamics involved in this question:
http://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/faith-and-reasonable-e...
I can prove to all of you that you each of you has to have at least as much faith and probably much more then me to believe what you believe about the existence, or lack therof, of a god
yes, I would like to see that proof. Please lay it out formally.
You wanna talk about a fairytale, go read On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
This is just plain childish argumentation, and should be beneath you.
Darwin observed and collected specimens for more than 20 years, before publishing his theory.
It is a serious and meticulous scientific publication. Have you actually read it?
Faith is the confident belief that something is true, despite having no evidence, or in spite of evidence to the contrary. If there is evidence that leads you to think something is likely true, no faith is required. I certainly don't hae faith in anything. I don't need to have faith. I hold reasonable expectation based on evidence and past experience, and if I lean one way or the other on what I think might happen, it is not a confident assurance that I am correct. I may very likely be wrong. This is not at all like the faith religious people have, especially not the kind of faith described in the bible.
Faith is absolutely useless in every aspect. It's wishing, plain and simple Faith does not accomplish anything. Sure, day dreaming about butterflies and rainbows is nice from time to time, but they will not get you anywhere. One can have "faith" that one day they will be a great surgeon, but it takes work, not faith, to get there. As for wishful thinking of God(s). You can wish, hope, and pray all day every day, but you will still have the same odds as the man of a different god or lack there of. There is an old saying,"Do you know what works? Work, works.", and also,"Wish in one hand and spit in the other to see which one fills up first." I for one belive faith is irrelevant. Sometimes you just have to man up, walk the line, and stop asking daddy for guidance. As far as Darwin goes, evidence does not require faith. I don't believe anyone sits around hoping evolution is true. If so, then they really need to date more. Its just a simple conclusion based off of great evidence. End of story. Hey, that's cool, is about the extent of it.
I have faith. Faith is simply confidence in someone; I suppose it could also apply to an inanimate object as well ..... I have faith that when I need my husband, he'll be there. I have faith that I am able to prepare dinner this evening. I have faith when there is a reason for it. i.e., my husband is reliable, has proven to be reliable, thus, I have faith that he will continue to be reliable. So faith in the colloquial sense - yes I do have. Faith takes on an entirely different meaning when religion is brought into the discussion, however. That type of blind faith without evidence, to me, is just asinine.
Side note, The Origin of Species is a phenomenal read, and one that every human should read with an open mind. And the fact that you managed to liken Drawin's life work to a fairy tale is laughable.
Just can't help saying it...
I have faith in the 12th man.
I have faith in The Legion of Boom.
I have faith in Beast Mode (yah).
I have faith in Marshawn Lynch
I have faith in Kam Chancellor.
I have faith in Richard Sherman.
I have faith in Russell Wilson.
I have faith in Pete Carroll.
I have faith in the Seahawks.
And the Seahawks are about the only entity I come anywhere near worshiping.
In addition to this faith, I have evidence. ;-)
Faith in the Bible is more often used to refer to a way of living, not just a mental state thing like trust or belief. Like staying faithful to my wife isn't just an intellectual thing - it's a holistic way of marriage, mentally and also lived out in thousands of practical ways every day. Or how I believe that God wants to bring healing and testoration to the world, so I work hard to do the same things myself, helping charities, mentoring foster kids, speaking up against my country's awful current decisions to send away any asylum seekers who arrive by boat, sponsoring a child, helping my elderly neighbours etc
As always, religion keeps changing the meaning of words to suit its purposes, in this case faith is being changed to mean a nice friendly person.
Beneames, seriously, you cannot convince any sane individual with this kind of reasoning.
You are a good person because you were born this way and you have been thought by good people regardless of their faith not because of it.
Their morality changed their religion to fit their reason and not the other way round.
That is why your version of religion is so different from the majority.
Cherry picking the good parts in a particular text will not make it more true will only make a different religion.
I can make a better religion myself but that is not the point is it.
Nope, that's actually how it is used in the Bible. Look it up. I am referring you back to the text. Yes, people change the meaning of words all the time. And words can mean many different things in many different situations. That's why you have to look at the context. Yes I know I'm sounding like a broken record.
"Faith in the Bible is more often used to refer to a way of living"
"Nope, that's actually how it is used in the Bible."
NO, in the bible is not used like that, Jesus exaggerates every time when he talks about the way of living.
After all those exaggerations then he says that if you believe in him then all your sins are forgiven anyway.
So it really does not matter how you live but if you believe or not.
The gospel of Thomas was removed from the bible because it postulated the idea of living the way of Jesus to get to heaven instead of believing in him.
So NO Beneames, demonstrate where does Jesus show you a way of living?
Does he show it when;
He tells the slaves to obey their master no matter how unjust or unreasonable the order is?
Or when he tells you to leave everything behind you, family and what not and follow him?
Or when he tells you to give everything to the poor?
Or when he tells you to give the other cheek?
These are all exaggerations that cannot be achieved in practice and no christian really follows these to the letter,
They just cherry pick and twist what he said to make it more practical or possible.
The idea of way of living you got, comes from Gnostic idea that predates Jesus, it is a pagan belief system that was copied wholesale to to create Christianity.
You can find the same messages in many pagan beliefs of the roman period except the most stupid that the Romans inserted as jokes for their sick sens of humor like the exaggerations I listed above.
Faith is most explicitly defined in the Bible in Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (ESV). The word assurance in the original greek is "hypostasis" which is also translated as (an underlying) confidence, or substance. Faith is literally, according to the bible, a confidence that something which you hope to be true, despite this thing being otherwise unseen, is indeed true.
I suppose you could think of it as a lifestyle if your lifestyle is primarily having confidence that wishful thinking is true or that things without evidence are true despite the fact that there is no evidence. But do you know anybody whose lifestyle reflects biblical faith? I don't. I don't think you could actually function if thats how you lived your entire life. With most aspect of life, and in most scenarios, people don't rely on faith as it is described on the Bible.
You guys love to quote single verses. I was wondering when someone would quote this one. But this one is technically true but only describes part of it. It's like saying "Love is paired beach chairs and martinis...." True, but not the whole story. You have to look at how it's used. Read the rest of the chapter and you see it's a catalogue of faithful people and what they did because of their belief.
We use the word to describe much more than belief today as well. Christians say stuff to each other like "How's your faith going?" We don't mean "How's your confidence in your belief in God"; we're asking about the whole thing - praying, reading the Bible, learning about God, living out the ideas of Jesus and so on. The faith of a Muslim would include the daily prayers, giving to charity etc
Sorry not just "you guys." I mean basically everyone on here ;)
Just thought of another example. If we have faith in a chair it doesn't just mean we believe it can hold us up. Faith is the willingness to stick our butt on it.
I would argue that willingness to stick our but on a chair is not faith, but rather reasonable expectation, based mostly on our prior experience with similar furniture, but also on our knowledge of materials, our awareness of our weight and the effects of gravity, and so on. We have evidence-based reasons to expect a chair to hold us. Contrast this with the faith required to believe in an extraordinary deity, given no past experience or knowledge of what makes up this deity other than hearsay. Comparing those "faiths" constitutes a category error, IMO.
"We use the word to describe much more than belief today as well."
We were discussing your claim that Faith IN THE BIBLE refers to the way of life and that is simply not true.
There is a clear distinction that faith means to believe in Jesus in the bible.
An entire Gospel was excluded from the bible because of this reason, faith in Jesus was one of the most important doctrines of the early church fathers.
The entire Gnostic Christians and their text were wiped out from the face of the earth for this reason.
Yes more then half the Christians were killed for such a reason.
Your claim about faith meaning the way of life in the bible is an outright insult to those that have been killed for having such an idea.
Their text was destroyed, what we have left in the bible are the ones that do not mention the way of life but faith in the existence and divinity of Jesus.
What Christianity has turned today has nothing to do with what is written in the same text that the Litteralists Christians chose to be part of the bible.
There is no point in attacking the word "faith" itself.
In the context "I have faith in myself", anyone can have faith.
In the context "I have faith in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent creator of the universe, that dictates the rules of all our sex lifes and promotes the sacrifice of children so much that he has his own son killed in public. But he loves me, listens in on my thoughts and helped me get a brand-new iPad.", only those who have been deceived (or wishes to be deceived) can have faith.
Faith in the bible directly lays out in Mathews I think, that faith is accepting premises without evidence. Yes, the religious concept of faith should be critiqued and ridiculed.