If being a Christian mean "I accept this as a path with good teachings to follow," etc. ... that's one thing. If it means all of its supernatural claims are true and Jesus created the quantum field ... then its BS plainly on its face and stands in the way of understanding.

No.

Yeah well, once you take the virgin birth, the miracles, the supernaturalism out of it, you have just another earthly code to live by ... some kind of neo-Christian code that concedes that the formal religion was comprised of tall tales all along.

Only the most cogent sentences start this way.

Example: "I have faith that it is snowing in the Sahara Desert." Why would this devious appeal to faith be employed? Because there is no other way to become convinced of the claim.

Speaking of "you just have to belief" type arguments, they are employed by con men every day. Always have been.

Where one stands on this understanding of faith determines their world view in large part. These truths about faith do not prove that religion is a con, but it does mean that for some reason it is appealing to the same dubious type of standard.

I can only believe it is snowing in the Sahara by faith. I can believe anything at all by faith. Therefore, if I am trying to map my world view to something real and true, faith is not a reasonable standard. But if they sell faith as the ultimate virtue, it traps people between being reasonable and being immoral/unfaithful. That's a very devious trick and hard to see your way out of.

We are left with perhaps god actually decided to use faith in this way like con jobs do, or faith based religion is a con. That's a legitimate point of contention. You can come down on either side. But surrendering to a peer pressure/culture pressure faith standard isn't moral. That's just the hook.

A sane person can't *think* anything, but he can *believe* anything; even that he can spiritually jump on a passing asteroid by committing suicide.

Faith is the turning off of one's critical thinking skills and judgement and the adoption of a position for no good reason(meaning: rational reason). It's like seeing hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete burst into dust before your eyes, but after hearing a stern sounding man say, hmm airplane strike, hmm fire, hmm terrorist act; instead of saying, demolished by explosives, we say, hmm airplane strike, hmm fire, hmm terrorist act. And who could blame us? If we have a home, a family, a place in the community and are conscientious citizens, believing our eyes and rationality and judgement may cost us everything. It's so much easier and safer to *believe* the stern sounding men.

And.......?

The point was the only way you can believe it's snowing in the Sahara is by faith. The reason you have to have faith is that IT ISN'T TRUE. And that seems to expose the faith gimmick for what it is. Not some kind of divine virtue -- which is the ploy -- but a devious manipulation of truth and truth standards in the form of Koolaid ... if you take it literally, that is. Religion isn't Koolaid per se, but dismissing reality under the sway of doctrine is, replacing reason with faith is, and swallowing wildly irrational and immoral things because they are in a thousands of years old book , when superstition and magic reigned supreme, is.

Two things; First, there are a number of reasons for holding beliefs, something doesn't have to be true for you to believe it, you might believe it because it's useful to you, that's a type of Pragmatism. Second, you don't know that "it's snowing in the Sahara" isn't true, it's a Contingent truth.


I wouldn't disgree that 'faith' is a way to believe something without necessarily requiring evidence, but you're wrong that it can't be rational, and your examples are awful.

Faith as a truth standard is irrational. That's not exactly controversial. You have to change that formulation and get slippery to feign a rebuke to that.

How do you determine what is 'true'?

But truth can never become man's possession without the exercise of faith. This is true because man's thoughts, wisdom, ethics, and ideals will never rise higher than his faith, his sublime hope. And all such true faith is predicated on profound reflection, sincere self-criticism, and uncompromising moral consciousness. Faith is the inspiration of the spiritized creative imagination. ~ The Urantia Book, (132:3.5)

faith, if we define faith as "believing in something without evidence" is by definition not rational.

if you have some evidence, then its not faith, since you are basing your belief on that evidence(perhaps correctly, perhaps incorrectly)

This would be accurate if rationality were 100% reliable. Have you ever had a thought or made a judgment that turned out to be false?

The idea that rationality is the driving force that always leads to truth and faith never leads to truth is just a religious confession of someone who has made a god of rationality.

I just saw this quote

This is a good discussion point. If you are trying to make your map more detailed, then I agree you want to use rationality. When you realize that you need to go beyond what you can map, then you want to use faith.

Further, if we are primarily motivated by the security and familiarity of staying within our mapped, psychological territory, then we are in the domain of rationality and propositional truth. If we are primarily motivated by an unfulfilled desire for sustained meaning, fulfillment, etc, then we are in the domain of faith and moral truth.

The best way to understand faith is as a desire rather than the beliefs and stories that support the desire.

Would you agree that anyone claiming their faith provides accurate and detailed maps should be challenged, and especially anyone selling such maps (literally selling)?

Because I don't think anyone cares how someone uses faith in their private lives as long as no real harm is done.

Depends on what you mean by “should be challenged”. Legally, I fully support freedom of religion.

Culturally, I think it is healthy for people to challenge ideas and try to persuade others of what they believe in. I default towards trying to beat inferior ideas with better ideas through persuasion. However, in extreme cases of exploitation, perhaps there are scenarios in which people need to be protected.

As I was saying, you can't make a defense without horrendously straw-manning the position. No one on earth holds the position emboldened except those trying to wiggle out of the trap that a faith-based doctrine puts them in.

Based on your posts here, you seem dumbfounded of how a religious person can truthfully hold a faith based belief that you deem irrational. Am I mistaken?

The usual reason why a religious person will cling to an “irrational” belief is because it is supporting and satisfying a deeper, intuitive desire + metaphysical belief.

what does this mean? truthfully hold a faith based belief?

If a belief is supported by evidence, it isnt faith

There is no belief that you could not use faith to justify. This makes it a very bad way of determining what is true or false.

Ultimately, I don’t believe that humans can escape their subjectivity and objectively assess the best way to determine truth. I see it as a deception.

Initially, truth is dependent on each person’s in-group or tribe. People believe what they are raised to believe and rationalize it after already believing it. Once someone becomes more of an individual and rejects their inherited truths, they become less dependent on the tribe and often more dependent on rationality.

For the person at this rationality stage, they will inevitably believe that rationality is the best way to determine truth just like the child inevitably believes that mirroring and imitating their tribe is the best way to determine truth.

I am claiming that intuitive and moral truth is superior to rational truth, but all I can do is help to affirm it for anyone that can recognize it. Just like how the child cannot sustain autonomy until first rejecting their tribe to some degree, the rationalist cannot recognize the primacy of intuition and moral truth until there has been some degree of rejection of rationality.

I don’t expect this to be persuasive, but maybe it’s more clear now why someone like me is not moved at all by arguments about irrationality or arguments about beliefs without evidence.

Beliefs would be, but truth wouldn't.



What is 'moral truth'? If you just mean faith, where does truth come in?


The reason it's not persuasive might be an indication that faith is not actually superior to rationality! You'd also risk putting yourself into a self-refuting position if you tried to make a rational argument for promoting irrational beliefs

The problem is when faith-based beliefs are treated as the same kind of beliefs as rational beliefs.

As long as faith is not used for truth claims I doubt there'd be much to say. But it is, often. And it causes harm, often. Does that "move you"? If you care about harm, and you engage rationality instead of faith, it should.

I appreciate the value of the scientific, rational truth in which we pretend that we can access objectivity. The truth that determines whether propositions are in accordance with reality.

The problem is if truth is relinquished to the rational, it becomes impossible to progress beyond failure points such as The Absurd described by Camus. Camus acknowledged the desire for meaning and fulfillment but conceded that reality is meaningless and unfulfilling. That is what happens when rational truth is privileged.

I would describe The Absurd as a conflict between intuitive/moral truth and rational truth. Moral truth takes for granted that our deepest desire, the desire for meaning that the Existentialists describe, can be fulfilled in this reality we are in, so then the actions that move us closer to fulfillment are ‘true’.

When we reach a failure point, we will make a psychological movement. If we make a psychological movement up toward the rational narrator in our head, then we will suppress our deepest desire. If we make a psychological movement toward our will, intuition, and imagination, then we can amplify that desire and persist beyond the failure point.

Someone can push back and say that what I am calling intuitive/moral truth can just be called a belief, but I don’t think so. In my view, when we are at a failure point, we will look to where we can find truth. Another retort I anticipate would be to say that rational truth can allow us to progress beyond a failure point also, but if that’s the case, then we are not really at a failure point. A failure point is when the rational voice in our head pretends to access objectivity and determines that failure is in accordance with our situation.

I am an ally, I assure you.

Faith is not a good way to get to truth. Of any sort. You can believe anything on faith. It gets you no nearer to the truth. I dont know what intuitive truth is, intuitions can be horribly wrong, and lead you to horrible conclusions.

Science does not pretend that it can access objectivity. It is simply a way of determining the best current model of reality in order for us to do things in the world.

I certainly and enthusiastically endorse the subjectivity and existentialism of being (human), and the spiritual realities it includes, but formal religion and dogma is most always an insult to this spiritual nature that is embedded within us. No human is a logic machine and where you see someone trying that, it's pure escapism of their wider nature. I'm not dumbfounded at all at how people can cling to religious ideation. I've already said I did it.