Faith Isn't Always Bad

[@starfishsystems]

Excellent conversation here. I think Jamie very nicely laid out the usefully distinct meanings of faith, confidence, hope, and trust. We can imagine plotting these terms on a two-dimensional grid. One axis would be the degree of emotional investment, and the other would be the degree of reasonable warrant. I think, for example, that what we call hope is almost purely emotional, and we know that it's emotional. Confidence is mostly based on reason. Trust is a combination of both. I trust someone because they've earned my trust, and that allows me to enter an emotional state that I don't allow for just anyone. Faith is that same emotional state of trust, but without the reasonable warrant or even in the face of adverse warrant. It's rather like hope except for this dogmatic aspect. If we plot reason on the X axis and emotion on the Y axis, we get four quadrants, of which the bottom two are unoccupied by these particular positions (suspicion, for example would fall somewhere in those lower quadrants.) So, crudely drawn, the scattegram would look like this: | FFF | HHH FFF | HHH | TTT | TTT | CCC | CCC ____+_____________________ (reason) | SSSSSSS | (emotion)

[@theothercheek777]

faith is not knowledge. when you dont know, its hope. faith is when you say you know but you dont know. we dont need faith.

[@jarodcarnarvon5198]

Actually, there are lots of Christians who spend years in Church as Christians, but gradually over a period of time myriads of things can hapoen to destroy their faith and have them doubting. The more & more time I spent in Church the more reserves I had about the religion as time went on..... Especially today's typical Church, it ought to have just about everrybody doubting..... At least back in the 60s/70s/ 80s the Churches acted like they really meant business & believed & carried out what they preached ...... Today it's more a charade and a joke...!!

[@eklektikTubb]

There are many egocentric hypocrites who tend to say "other people have faith, but i have reasonable belief and that is totally different". Most of those people are atheists and skeptics, but there are also some religious people who view their own religion as reasonable faith and other religions as silly blind faith... and their argument/justification for saying so is just something along "it is just common sense".

[@sceptictakeout6809]

Why would you infer distinguishing reasonable belief make one egocentric?

[@eklektikTubb]

@@sceptictakeout6809 I am not saying that distinguishing reasonable belief make one egocentric. The egocentrism is about "other people have faith" versus "i have belief", talking about same thing but using a different view on self and different view on others. Or a different view on own group (skepticism) and a different view on other groups.

[@sceptictakeout6809]

​@@eklektikTubb I'm still confused. The hosts clearly differentiate between 'faith' as used by many religious people and a belief based on reason. You appear to be saying that they are the same thing and it's only the ego of the skeptic that separates them.

[@eklektikTubb]

@@sceptictakeout6809 Religious beliefs can also be based on reason. Complexity of the world around us, own personal spiritual experiences, other peoples spiritual experiences, many theological arguments, testimonies of near death experiences and miracles in Lourdes... definetly not just a "blind faith" thing. Now you could say that none of those reasons counts as "sufficient scientific evidence", but who determines what is sufficient and what isnt? Is there a clear borderline between sufficient and unsufficient? I dont think so. Belief in such borderline seems to be a faith-based position, since there is no evidence of it (or at least none that i am aware of).

[@sceptictakeout6809]

@@eklektikTubb Do you distinguish between the belief in a car and a belief in a dragon existing in reality? What marks the difference between those two things corresponding to existing in reality is the sufficiency. If you say that you don't know the difference between those two things then I both struggle to believe you and really, really want you to call the show because frankly - you should know the difference between those two things