"Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge. "
Post by gryphonpoet on Jan 24, 2007 2:14:43 GMT -5
I prefer to think of Faith as less of a groping in the dark for something-but-I-dont-know-what. To me, Faith is more like using a different sense to 'know' something is or isn't right.
To call blind hope "Faith" is a travesty. It deprives you of an entire level of awareness that proves infinitely beneficial. Faith prefers to see with spiritual eyes, not merely the physical ones.
Post by The Hatter on Jan 25, 2007 17:27:37 GMT -5
Rand has a valid point in saying this. Being a bit of a contradiction as far as terms of thought go, I can understand her point as well as Poet's.
Faith to a large degree is measured by what you belive to be true. For instence, Christians belive that a man, Jesus, of the Christ family. Is the son of The One True God, and is their savior. Do they have any proof other than word of mouth, or that which is put into a book that has little if no scientic backing? No. But at the same time, being a Wiccan I'm lumped into the same catagory because I belive that though a force of will I can change the flow of normal reality around me.....i.e. Magick.
Rand's arguement is true, in that someone who has faith, if a situation is taken on it, and it alone, will use their feelings (keep in mind that I using a completly scientific standpoint here) to guide them though it. Not rational thought.
Post by gryphonpoet on Jan 26, 2007 0:36:37 GMT -5
l4m8r053 said:
For instence, Christians belive that a man, Jesus, of the Christ family. Is the son of The One True God, and is their savior. Do they have any proof other than word of mouth, or that which is put into a book that has little if no scientic backing?
Two points of order, Keraz. In order they were stated.
Jesus was not born of the Christ family. His birth name (since he was half-Jewish on his mother's side) would actually have been "Yeshua bar Youssef". "Christ" is an English tranliteration of the Greek "Xrestotes", meaning "Messiah" (Hebrew - "Meschiach") In what might be a Celestial pun, the Latin word "Chrestos" means "slave". So the joke is true... Jesus' last name is NOT Christ.
The second point is merely an observation. You state that the Bible (the book to which you refer) has little or no scientific backing. If that is true, then how do archaeologists of a wide variety of faiths (including but not limited to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Agnosticism and Atheism) us the aforementioned book as a guide to finding the facts surrounding Ancient Middle Eastern history? They have done this dating back to the 1300's and the first Crusade, in order to verify occurances in both the Old and the New Testaments.
To elaborate more on what I had said.
Faith can not be based on feelings or emotions. They change from moment to moment. Faith can not be blind, either. Or else you will stumble and fall on your spiritual journey. Instead, it is a knowledge of what is there, even if you can't see it. Faith requires a large measure of trust that the overwhelming majority of people (especially those who are supposedly "living by their faith") never achieve. In fact, I have met a few atheists who have a stronger Faith than most of the Christians I have ever known.
::slaps himself in the face to stop a lengthy, irrelevant discourse on the verb "to anoint"::
gryphonpoet said:
The second point is merely an observation. You state that the Bible (the book to which you refer) has little or no scientific backing. If that is true, then how do archaeologists of a wide variety of faiths (including but not limited to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Agnosticism and Atheism) us the aforementioned book as a guide to finding the facts surrounding Ancient Middle Eastern history? They have done this dating back to the 1300's and the first Crusade, in order to verify occurances in both the Old and the New Testaments.
In exactly the same way that they use any other primary source. The book in question is in fact a number of works by a number of authors, from about 1300 BCE to 120 CE. That they were written is not in question, and many of the events related therein can be verified by other sources (primarily Roman and Egyptian). Some books of the Old Testament, in particular, are nothing more than a political history of the Hebrew nation.
These books say that these events occurred. This does not tell us that these events occurred, but rather that someone of that time thought the events occurred. One of the greatest histories ever written - the work, in fact, from which we get our word history - speaks of the Persian Wars in the same tone as the giant camel-eating golden ants of the Arabian peninsula. Primary sources are valuable but dubious, especially when they are decades to centuries removed from the events they record. (The first of the Gospels to be written - I believe it was John - is generally held to date from 70 CE, some thirty-five years after the death of Christ.)
It is an interesting historical oddity that the existence of Yeshua bar Youssef is not recorded outside the writings of his worshippers. Granted, Roman provincial governors were not famous for keeping meticulous records of condemned criminals - and any such records were probably destroyed in the sack of Jerusalem.
To return to the topic at hand, though.
A lot of this debate depends upon your definition of "knowledge". If knowledge is something acquired through sensory apprehension of phenomena and the application of principles of reason to those phenomena, then faith is not a knowledge, since it stems neither from sensory apprehension nor from application of reason. Faith is based either upon aphenomenal, asensory perception, or an arational approach to sense perception. I use the word "arational" advisedly: it is not irrational, nor antirational, but arational, belonging to a realm which by its nature does not admit of rationality.
A decent acid test for belief vs. knowledge is: do you know it? If so, how do you know it? If your answer does not consist of a series of pieces of independently verifiable evidence combined with logical reasoning, it is a belief, and not a knowledge. Not that there is anything wrong with belief; far from it. I am as certain of many things that I believe as I am of some things that I know - more so, in a couple cases. But I say that I believe them and not that I know them because I cannot point to this, this, and this piece of evidence that leads me down my path of reasoning; much of the evidence upon which my reasoning is based is personal experience of a semi-mystical nature.
If knowledge is defined in some other manner, then the above is of course void.
Mmm. Kanty goodness.
So, in essence: yes, Rand is correct in her definitions. And one of the things that will forever separate humanity from our thinking-but-unliving creations is our ability to have faith, to believe, to think with our hearts and not our heads. It is a glorious unreason, which allows us to dream, to strive, and to grow beyond a sad, twisted existence as walking bags of meat and chemicals.
A side note: any purely-rational being must of necessity be an agnostic, not an atheist. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and true atheism (as opposed to bitter agnosticism or mistheism) requires a faith as powerful as that of any with other beliefs.
Post by gryphonpoet on Feb 12, 2007 13:16:43 GMT -5
The statement I made was specific and to the single point that the Judeo-Christian scriptures had no scientific backing. Archaeology is a science. It does back the majority of the statements made by the book in question. It is one science and we can discuss other sciences' evidence for or against any religion in another thread or at another time. The philosophies of the book is another matter. Those are open for discussion and personal meditation.
As far as the mention of Jesus outside of the canonical and apocryphal scriptures of the New Testament, he gets mentioned in at least one contemporary Roman historian's records. At around 90 AD, a Roman historian named Josephus mentions Jesus, John the Baptist and James the Younger (Jesus' half-brother).
I quote a translation from the Josephus text, "At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wonders." (Antiquities 18:63-64)
I'll start with an explanation: I am not Christan, I am not agnostic, I am not atheist, not Muslim nor Wiccan nor witch. I have my own belief system that is complex and would take too long to explain to people who already have their own belief structure in place. Take it as an excuse for not taking a 'stand' in one particular 'camp', I take it as a tolerance for others and their views.
Faith is an inner thing, that sometimes cannot be proved to others. You just know when something feels right to you and you only. Its like love or happiness, nobody can say you are happy, you alone know - yes people can see you are happy, but that is because we are trained by society to smile and do certain actions when we are happy.
In the same breath, faith is an inner thing that only we know is real or not. So Faith does not have to be associated immediately with religion, though some quite readily do so. I have a faith that tomorrow will be better than today, that is not attached to any religion except my own personal belief and dialog.
So from my point of view, this is a hard thing to debate because it relates to things that are intangible and cannot be proved. I'll end with a quote that I enjoy For those who believe, no proof is necessary, for those who don't, no proof is possible
CTO Cmdr Raiser, USS Broadsword (ACTD) TO Lt.JG Ro'kar, USS Perseus (ACTD) "The warrior of Light, like the experienced fighter, knows his or her own immense strength and never fights someone who doesn't deserve the honour of combat" - Paulo Coehlo
