Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Faith is when someone else does the reasoning

 Post 42. 06/25/2018

   Faith versus Belief   

   Religious Doctrine vs Scientific Theories

 Faith, in the sense of Hope, Trust, Confidence & Optimism, is a valuable resource for humans facing a world of setbacks and challenges. It motivates perseverance despite delays and difficulties. But the term is also used to denote a particular paradigm or belief system. In the sense of "my orthodox Faith" or "your apostate Faith", it becomes a divisive force, creating categories of Us versus Them, with no allowance for overlap. A religious "faith" is a set of beliefs or doctrines that must be distinguished from other, erroneous, faiths.

In discussions on controversial religious topics, Christians typically use the terms “faith” and “belief” interchangeably. They have been indoctrinated to assume that all religious questions have True/False  answers. For example, “abortion is either A> a medical procedure, or B> murder. No allowance is made for extenuating circumstances, such as rape or danger to the mother. Since they find this two-value logic to be normal, Christians tend to assume that Scientific theories and paradigms are also based on Either/Or positions.

Scientists are humans with their own personal biases, but in their work they are taught to avoid presumptions and binary positions (yes-or-no) on technical or moral questions. That's because they don't have an infallible source of information to rely on. So their assertions are usually presented in statistical terms, and often qualified with probability estimates of relative truth. Scientists do have operative beliefs on pertinent questions, but they carefully avoid putting their faith in even expert human opinions. All scientific “facts” are subject to change as new evidence is discovered.

Christian “faith” is based on unquestioning trust in the Word of God, as recorded in “infallible” ancient scriptures. But scientific beliefs must be "falsifiable". For scientists, doubt is a virtue, and only concepts that survive skeptical scrutiny are accepted as reliable theories of how the world works. Consequently, the scientific body of knowledge is always evolving as new dis-coveries are found. By contrast, religious "truths" are supposed to be eternal, so any new discoveries are labeled "heresies".

Enlightenment era Deism, as a worldview, was modeled on the scientific approach that produced the radically new cosmo-logies of Gallileo and Newton. Their “beliefs” were supposed to be grounded in the current scientific understanding of how the world works : the Book of Nature. That's because they assume that the Creation (Nature) is the only direct Word of God, which requires no expert exegesis by human authorities. For example, anyone with an inquiring mind can see that the Earth is round, by simple observations of the horizon.

Unfortunately in both Religion and Science, some truths are not so obvious to the naked eye or untrained mind. So the arcane meaning of “scripture" or "nature” is typically mediated & promulgated by a cabal of experts, either Priests or Physi-cists. Which leaves open the question of which “authorities” to trust for truth. And the deciding factor is usually a preference for Reason or Revelation, which provide either the relative truths of Nature or the absolute Truths of Supernature. Deism, though, is a sort of crossover, with a role for a supernatural deity, whose only revelation is the natural world, and whose code-breaker is god-given Reason.  

Post 42 continued . . . click Next

Faith is . . .

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
___William James

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
___Voltaire

Faith is not a reason. Uttering “because I have faith” only changes the question from why do you believe to why do you have faith. The only difference is that you have removed evidence from the list of possible answers. Faith is simply believing that something is true because you want it to be true. That is neither honest nor something to base real world decisions on.
___www.truthsaves.com

Faith is wishful thinking.
___Gnomon

Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire.
___https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishful_thinking

Faith is fossilized belief.
___Gnomon

Faith is belief without evidence and reason, coincidentally, that’s also the definition of delusion.
___Richard Dawkins

Delusion :
an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.
___Wiktionary

Faith
with a thousand faces :

According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world. The word religion is sometimes used inter-changeably with "faith" or "belief system", but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect.
____Wikipedia

Six articles of faith or “Iman”
• Belief in Allah
• Belief in the angels
• Belief in the books
• Belief in the prophets
• Belief in day of judgment
• Belief in Allah’s divine knowledge

Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
____Edith Hamilton

Faith is acting on desires instead of knowledge.
___Gnomon

Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.
___ Elton Trueblood

Trust without reservation is the only option for the vulnerable, weak, helpless, and impotent. In other words, “slaves”
___Gnomon

Trust but verify.
___Ronald Reagan