Faith

[Lynx]

If faith is a requirement for your belief in God, is it pointless for non-believers to argue against your beliefs? Is it pointless to argue that faith is self-serving?

I recognize that faith may be necessary, as a practical matter, given the lack of evidence regarding God. Oddly enough, when believers are trying to persuade non-believers, they do not often make the case that faith is necessary to believe in God.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

People resent the idea that their beliefs are not logically justified. When I tell someone, I saw myself in the mirror, they believe me. Why? Our senses analyze the world, but we consider our senses accurate. Once enough people "saw" me in the mirror, or such activities are considered normal, it becomes true "by experience." It's self-justifying.

Tell the entire world that what they see is an delusion. They are a brain in a vat. They "could" be such a thing. You have to give someone a logical argument for why they're mistaken. Well, you thought what "was" was everything, but new technologies revealed these atoms.

To convince a society of blind people that the wind blowing is not the environment, that you turned on a fan, would require some appeal to other senses. If you sense something, but you can't "feel it," would you believe you're hallucinating? Some people can't feel in such a way. It might be considerably difficult to convince these people, were they the majority, that they are mistaken.

If there is logical evidence contrary to our senses, it is ultimately based on our other senses. Believers claim that they don't need faith because the conclusion is of belief is evident from facts about the world. We don't observe "99999+9999..." computes a specific answer. We reason it out based on what we already know about numbers. Based on what we know about life, religious individuals claim God exists.

This view is mistaken. That's why some religious people recognize strong counterarguments to their views. They stop believing. So what is faith? How does it remove these criticisms? It doesn't, necessarily.

Pretend you "feel" God. It's a sensory ability some people lack. When our senses conclude something, we evaluate them. We heard a lion roar, but a person is standing in front of us with a sound machine. What precedent we encounter might change our perspective. Had we seen lions only "roar" when attacking us, we might presume the roar and harm are somehow linked. There may be some circumstances where our sense evaluation changes. We build up precedent for how we analyze situations.

Consider someone who exists with a faith sense. All it entails is that "X" is true. Given that our senses, conflict, do we have precedent for favoring faith? When our senses normally conflict, our motivation is interest. Someone who highly values "God" over, say, "nothing," will continue their belief.

Do all people have faith in God? I don't think so. However, consider the "faithful" individual. They will observe that, had a child been raised in X way, they will believe. Valuing sense data over faith, then, is a mistake in reasoning. Of course, there is no evidence for "faith" in all people. That would have to be added to the "faith" category of truths. I think most people could conceive of atheists, such as myself, being the equivalent of a blind person. We can't have "faith" so leave us alone, perhaps. Maybe science can give us some, eh?

I don't really like that faith escapes criticism, or attempts to, by an appeal to "internal sensation" that can't be refuted by definition. You can put anything in that box. It becomes "what I want to be true is true." I'm sympathetic to that view, but I don't know, really, if it's the case. I don't want to believe in God, regardless, so I'm not worried about it. More thinking to do on this.

[Decolonize The Left]

If faith is a requirement for your belief in God, is it pointless for non-believers to argue against your beliefs? Is it pointless to argue that faith is self-serving?

It is never pointless to critique and discuss ideas/ideologies with other - ever. Such dialogue is helpful to absolutely everyone.


I recognize that faith may be necessary, as a practical matter, given the lack of evidence regarding God.

This is a self-fulfilling statement. Faith is never "necessary" unless one already has faith and hence needs to maintain this unjustified belief in the face of history/reason/etc...


Oddly enough, when believers are trying to persuade non-believers, they do not often make the case that faith is necessary to believe in God.

Belief in God is faith.

- August

[Lynx]

This is a self-fulfilling statement. Faith is never "necessary" unless one already has faith and hence needs to maintain this unjustified belief in the face of history/reason/etc...
In order to believe in God I find it necessary to have faith or to undergo a leap of faith. So for me, faith would be necessary. If it is necessary for others as it is for me, I can appreciate others not wanting to let go of their faith - they'd go back to being a Doubting Thomas.

And faith doesn't appear to be something I can turn on at will.
:confused: