Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

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JohnW
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Re: Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

Post by JohnW »

Physics Guy wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 9:47 am
Logic will accept assumptions that aren't actually true, as long as they're consistent. So logic isn't a sufficient guide to truth, for anyone. Everyone needs something besides logic.

Logic isn't just useless, though. Logic can screen out initial assumptions that are self-contradictory, or that contradict other assumptions to which you are also committed. Those things definitely cannot all be true. Whatever is true, it's not them.

Logic is a sniff test. Logic can't detect every falsehood, just as sniffing won't save you from odorless poisons in food. The fact that you can't smell botulism anyway is not a good reason to swallow everything in the fridge without sniffing it, though. There are other bad things besides botulism, and a lot of them do smell bad. You can save yourself from those things by applying the sniff test.

So I do not agree that having religious faith is about believing logically inconsistent things. Logic isn't a sufficient guide to truth but it is a necessary one.
I agree with you on logic. That is what I was trying to say, but because I was coming at it from a religious perspective, it looks like people thought I was arguing the other extreme. Hopefully I never said having religious faith is about believing things that are logically inconsistent, because I heavily disagree with that. There is a happy medium. I thought people in the thread were leaning too heavily on the logic is everything side. I guess you thought I was leaning on the logic is worthless side. I like to think the truth is somewhere in the middle, as you described.
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JohnW
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Re: Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

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malkie wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 2:16 pm
JohnW wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 2:42 am


This is probably the crux of the issue for you. I understand that in some cases there is sufficient evidence to weigh things in your mind, as you describe. What do you do when there is inconclusive evidence and you must make a decision? Surely you have come across situations like this in your life. In addition there are situations where we think we have conclusive evidence, but we actually don't . . . and we won't discover that fact until sometime in the future.

I guess if you live in such a way to never chose to believe in anything, then in my mind you limit your choices to situations where you have sufficient evidence (or feel like you do). That doesn't seem like living life to its full extent, but I recognize I am biased. I can come up with a bunch of examples of decisions in life where we are hopeful and believe the choice we make will be something good for us despite the inconclusive evidence we have at the moment of decision.
Good points, and fair questions, JohnW!

It looks as if my 'scale' description was not clear enough. In any case, of course, I can't claim that I'm an unfeeling robot about decisions - my 'gut' also informs my decisions, along with ideas about consequences for me and for others. For me, the idea of "sufficient evidence" is at best a hope, and I accept that there are always going to be situations in which the evidence is shaky, or potentially subject to unknowns. I admit that I have a tendency to get into the state of analysis paralysis.

But, to answer your questions directly:

When there is inconclusive evidence and I must make a decision, my decision is based on the balance of the evidence - minus any temporary finger-on-the-scale. I actually find it hard to imagine that there is ever any other way of deciding.

In a situation where I think I have conclusive evidence, but actually don't . . . and won't discover that fact until sometime in the future, I act exactly the same way. Having no knowledge of the future, I can only hope that my balancing act is fair. And I know that I can have no reasonable expectation at all of consistently making perfect future-proof decisions.

One principle that I have tried to adhere to in my life is that of not feeling guilty about the outcomes of carefully made decisions. If I make a decision based on the best evidence available to me at the time, then, by definition, I could not have made a better decision. So in the sense of not being happy with an outcome I may well regret my decision, but I should not beat myself up for doing what I was convinced at the time was the best course of action.

At the same time I try my best to 'own' my decisions. To be specific about how this contrasts with what I know of some religion-based decision making, I have no god to call on for help, and no god to blame when things go wrong. I'm human, and fallible, and have to accept that. Instead of saying that I failed because I didn't please god, or have sufficient faith, or pray long or hard enough, or I watched an R-rated movie, etc., I must accept that any failure was due to incomplete knowledge, or faulty analysis/weighing of evidence, on my part.
Thanks for the descriptions Malkie. What you describe above sounds like a well-balanced way to make decisions. I figured that would be the case.
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JohnW
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Re: Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

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Gadianton wrote:
Fri May 12, 2023 2:53 pm
from another thread, concerning a film project, this bit is relevant here:
On June 15, 2021, two brothers--both returned missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--set out on a mission of discovery into a remote part of the DR Congo. Their hope was to find a group of believers who had been waiting for baptism for nearly 50 years. No one knew what they would find or if they would find anything at all. Yet, with little more than a prayer in their hearts, they set out on a 1,200-kilometer journey to find those lost Saints.
More importantly than the prayer in their hearts, did the two brothers who set on this journey have the faith not to find the lost Saints?
The answer is hopefully yes. I know I discussed faith to not be healed a bunch. Maybe it deserves a secular translation. Much of the confusion seems to be coming from the wording.

Secular translation: When someone prepared to go on a journey, they have hope and faith that they will be successful. They also must be prepared for the fact that they may not be successful. Will their mental health support either outcome? If not, then they may not be prepared to start that journey. I think that is a good chunk of what is meant when people talk about faith to not be healed.
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JohnW
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Re: Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

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honorentheos wrote:
Sat May 13, 2023 7:56 pm
JohnW wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 2:19 am


Thanks. I look forward to it. When comparing riding a bike to faith, I'm more comparing the feeling of learning a bike to the feeling of beginning to have faith. It reminds me of the same feelings: uncomfortable, exposed, unsure, and even a little scary. There are clearly some aspects of the comparison that just don't fit.

As far as pride and faith keeping me in the church. I'll have to think about that one. I look forward to your explanation.
I've shared my experience a few times, but it seems worth bringing up in context of the above. My journey out of the LDS faith wasn't a shelf breaking epiphany. It was a line-upon-line experience. While hard to say this was the real start, it is useful for me to see that start with my being in college and in an Army Reserve Unit that was activated to go to Iraq during the build-up to war. Most members of our unit were all-in on the argument that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Hussein was involved in 9/11, and that unilateral war was justified. I wasn't sure the evidence supported this, but if anything I was a soldier and duty was duty. Experience and a little time led me to feel misled, with damning consequences, and a sense that just because authority was asserted shouldn't mean I comply if something seemed wrong. The Church and its authority wasn't on my mind initially, but it had to be confronted when I came across an issue online with LDS history and my instinct was well-trained to ignore it, move on. With this new life experience, I realized doing so wasn't honest so I didn't, but still acted in faith that the answers were available, my own spiritual experiences sure, and the truth would redeem the Church.

It didn't work out quite that way, and after about two years of struggling with what appeared to me to be clear indications the Church was not what it claimed yet feeling strongly that my own spiritual experiences and faithfulness wasn't built on lies, I found myself regularly praying hard for help. One day, I felt the answer came clear and in the voice of President Benson: "The Proud stand more in fear of men's judgements than of God's judgements." I had been given a copy of the Pride talk while serving as a missionary and could likely have quoted most of it at the time, so that wasn't surprising it came to mind that way. But it came clear to me as a response to my desire to know what I was supposed to do. I realized then what kept me holding onto the LDS Church wasn't faith in God, but fear of what others would think if I acted on what seemed to be clear facts to me. If God was a God of truth, why was I shirking from the truth out of fear of men's approval? This was reaffirmed to me by a friend with whom I talked this over who was one of those good friends unafraid to call me out if needed. And he did, wondering why I seemed to want someone to tell me what to do here when it was obvious I had figured out what I thought was the right thing to do?

The journey after that continued, but that was when I realized the Church could be wrong and I could act on that in faith because the Church wasn't the arbiter of truth, but of what was best for the Church.
Thanks for posting this. I will consider it. I find that pride is something that leeches in everywhere, like water. Just when you thought you took care of one leak, it pops up somewhere else.
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JohnW
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Re: Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

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Gadianton wrote:
Sat May 13, 2023 10:19 pm
To put my point more directly: I think there is serious tension between muster-seed faith and having the faith "not to be healed".

"Faith" is an erratic word, conveying different things depending on context. And the game of faith with religionists if often bait and switch. I remember giving my first talk in church as a child. It was on faith. I used examples from Paul H. Dunn as I'd gotten his tapes for Christmas. I must have been around 9, and I explained to the audience how easy it is to walk across a board a foot wide and so many feet long if raised a few inches above the ground, but raise it a hundred feet in the air? This is conventional muster-seed faith or optimist faith that everyone agrees is good. But what to make of the question, "Do you have the faith to walk that plank raised in the air 100 feet and fall, and nobody catches you, and you break all the bones in your body?"

When the question is posed with a wise stroke of the chin and raise of the brow, "but do you have the faith not to be healed?", it's an immediate context change. We aren't talking about muster-seed faith anymore, we're talking about loyalty faith. A shrewd religionist might say "faith not to be healed" = "faith to get back up" after falling off the plank. But that obviously isn't true, when considering the context of faith as loyalty is totally different. Faith = prayer for a sick relative, is totally different than faith = knock on 1000 doors a day as a missionary.

Talks on faith often begin with faith = optimism. Everyone agrees with the big-hearted optimist who perseveres though challenges. Somehow that gets twisted into absolute loyalty to the Brethren through faith's discursive semantic journey as the talk reaches its finale.

Faith can mean many different things that may or may not be related:

faith = muster-seed optimism.
faith = believing without seeing.
faith = loyalty to a person or institution
faith = precondition of knowledge; atheists have faith too! (John W. ; Jack Chick etc.)
Ok. I didn't see this before I respond to your other post. This helps explain your perspective better. I think I mostly agree. Yes, the fact that we ascribe so many things to the little word faith tends to cause a bunch of confusion. I personally think the faith to not be healed is an important concept for people to understand. It seems to round out their perspective on faith a bit. We sometimes get caught in the mustard-seed definition of faith and then mentally crash when things don't turn out as we expect. Or we take it to the extreme and start believing in the prosperity gospel. For me, most truth ends up being in finding the balance. When I get the feel for various different "types" of faith, it helps me get a truer understanding of what it actually means in my life.
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JohnW
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Re: Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

Post by JohnW »

Sorry for the shotgun posts and then radio silence for a week. I seem to be short on time lately.
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Re: Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

Post by honorentheos »

JohnW wrote:
Sun May 14, 2023 6:56 am
Thanks for posting this. I will consider it. I find that pride is something that leeches in everywhere, like water. Just when you thought you took care of one leak, it pops up somewhere else.
I find the question only really matters when applied inwardly. It's easy to see ego in others while justifying it in ourselves. Probably bad form to have brought it up in the first place.
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Re: Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

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JohnW wrote:
Sun May 14, 2023 6:42 am
malkie wrote:
Wed May 10, 2023 2:16 pm

Good points, and fair questions, JohnW!

It looks as if my 'scale' description was not clear enough. In any case, of course, I can't claim that I'm an unfeeling robot about decisions - my 'gut' also informs my decisions, along with ideas about consequences for me and for others. For me, the idea of "sufficient evidence" is at best a hope, and I accept that there are always going to be situations in which the evidence is shaky, or potentially subject to unknowns. I admit that I have a tendency to get into the state of analysis paralysis.

But, to answer your questions directly:

When there is inconclusive evidence and I must make a decision, my decision is based on the balance of the evidence - minus any temporary finger-on-the-scale. I actually find it hard to imagine that there is ever any other way of deciding.

In a situation where I think I have conclusive evidence, but actually don't . . . and won't discover that fact until sometime in the future, I act exactly the same way. Having no knowledge of the future, I can only hope that my balancing act is fair. And I know that I can have no reasonable expectation at all of consistently making perfect future-proof decisions.

One principle that I have tried to adhere to in my life is that of not feeling guilty about the outcomes of carefully made decisions. If I make a decision based on the best evidence available to me at the time, then, by definition, I could not have made a better decision. So in the sense of not being happy with an outcome I may well regret my decision, but I should not beat myself up for doing what I was convinced at the time was the best course of action.

At the same time I try my best to 'own' my decisions. To be specific about how this contrasts with what I know of some religion-based decision making, I have no god to call on for help, and no god to blame when things go wrong. I'm human, and fallible, and have to accept that. Instead of saying that I failed because I didn't please god, or have sufficient faith, or pray long or hard enough, or I watched an R-rated movie, etc., I must accept that any failure was due to incomplete knowledge, or faulty analysis/weighing of evidence, on my part.
Thanks for the descriptions Malkie. What you describe above sounds like a well-balanced way to make decisions. I figured that would be the case.
And, of course, I follow this process perfectly, every time, and so always make only the very best of decisions :)

Or:
Piet Hein wrote:Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.

No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping.
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Re: Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

Post by Gadianton »

JohnW wrote:Secular translation: When someone prepared to go on a journey, they have hope and faith that they will be successful. They also must be prepared for the fact that they may not be successful. Will their mental health support either outcome? If not, then they may not be prepared to start that journey. I think that is a good chunk of what is meant when people talk about faith to not be healed.
But as I said, "going on a journey" and turning to God, and facing a deadly sickness and turning to God, are very different things. Sure, there are some superficial similarities, as in, the adventurer may raise their chances slightly by having a positive attitude and following doctor instructions if sick. But in the case of climbing a mountain, the likelihood of succeeding is directly related to the climbers skill. In the case of a deadly sickness, the afflicted is mostly powerless. Faith in the case of sickness is in fact, belief that God will intervene and do what mankind cannot, as opposed to pushing oneself to the limit in a high-stretch goal, which is what faith is when climbing a mountain.

It's a very important concept as you say in religion: the faith not to be healed is the faith to remain loyal when your God, your religion, or what is otherwise the logical object of your faith fails you. Take the idea to absurdity: you get baptized to gain salvation. Suppose your baptism can't save you, should you have the faith not to be saved? Most people aren't victims of their belief, meaning, they incorporate advice like yours to avoid getting their hopes up in the first place -- they avoid having faith in anything that can be falsified. "The faith not to be healed" is really telling people "don't have faith in the first place," as for this variety of faith, and you now subtly shift the context, and create a new kind of faith that is, as I've said, faith = loyalty to a person or institution.

I've just stumbled upon the epic illustration of what I'm talking about. It turns out I have access to HBO Max; all this cable I pay for that everyone else uses, it never occurred to me that I have access through the app. Was setting up a new TV today, took a leap of faith, and boom. So now I'm watching Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults, and boy, is there a lesson for you, John. (caution: spoiler)

NRMs draw people who want to have faith in miracles. Many people want magical gold plates and angels and flying saucers, all those fascinating things that mature religions don't dare offer them. The object lesson of faith for a mature religion is usually about loyalty to the leaders. For most churches, "faith not to be healed" means don't get your hopes up -- don't really have faith in the miracles religions are founded on, at least not anything that can be falsified, just be loyal.

As you may know, Heavens Gate was led by a man and woman, Do, and Ti. It drew in people who wanted something greater than this dreary world just like Mormonism did in early times. They taught that they would improve themselves here on earth and eventually, they would reach a level where a UFO would pick them up and take them away. In the early days, followers would move from camp site to camp site watching the sky for UFOs. The movement is built upon faith in miracles. But Ti gets cancer and dies. So tell me John, did Ti have the faith not to be healed? Absolutely, and so did Do -- he had the faith not to let the death of Ti, a greater prophet than even he, thwart their efforts to gain salvation. They had to re-frame the belief system where Ti becomes the paradigm. Before, sickness, physical clumsiness, things like that are blockers to salvation, because these people are really going to be getting on a real spacecraft and there is a physical health requirement to do that. But Ti dies? Can't be saved. I'm sure you've guessed it, the doctrine is spiritualized, and Ti left this world to join the spaceship when she died, and so now -- the group will eventually prepare themselves and join her.

And so when talking about a new religious movement that actively pursues religious ideas, "faith not to be healed" literally results in mass suicide, when the expectations simply can't be achieved and faith shifts from belief in miracles to dogged loyalty to leaders.
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Re: No, not Everyone Has Faith; That is not the Only Option

Post by Marcus »

JohnW wrote:
Sun May 14, 2023 6:51 am

...Secular translation: When someone prepared to go on a journey, they have hope and faith that they will be successful.
Secular means "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis," so for you say that a "secular translation" includes "faith" in something is meaningless. I may hope my plans work out, but faith is not involved in this undertaking.
They also must be prepared for the fact that they may not be successful.
Obviously. This is called contingency planning, involving an understanding of probabilities or likelihoods. Otherwise known as common sense. Faith is not involved at all.
Will their mental health support either outcome? If not, then they may not be prepared to start that journey.

Well, yes. Common sense can be considered a part of having good mental health.
I think that is a good chunk of what is meant when people talk about faith to not be healed.
I disagree completely. There is not a single element of the process of evaluating likelihoods and making contingency plans that involves "faith to not be healed."
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