Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

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Gadianton
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by Gadianton »

Physics Guy wrote:
Fri Mar 03, 2023 4:13 pm
I don’t know why God might like faith, but humans often do reward other humans for taking risks rather than waiting for certainty. As long as the risk-reward ratio isn’t too foolhardy, we admire people who take even big risks. We give them medals, or trophies, or a lot more money than anyone ever gets for playing it safe.

I think we do have reasons for admiring and rewarding risk-taking. Some of those reasons probably don’t apply for God. I doubt God is grateful to anyone for being first in the water so that God isn’t the one to get bitten by a crocodile. But maybe some human reasons for rewarding risk are reasons for God to reward faith, as well.
That's a good analysis for what it is, but I think the problem is "faith" is a slippery word that can mean what you said, or other things not very compatible with that.

The version of faith you're talking about is the Ayn Rand entrepreneur or the "Tiger Fund" Wall Street trader who works a 60 hours a week and then spends the weekend on a Safari in Africa. I think Joseph Smith was an entrepreneur at heart, and a slightly different context could have produced a wealthy business person. There's a fine line between entrepreneur and fraud.

But I think in discussions of faith with religious persons, this is the "b" version of faith that gets played as a rejoinder to criticisms of the "a" version. I think the "a" version is the stalwart without so much imagination or drive, but who stays the course and looks neither to the left nor to the right. "Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe" doesn't really conjure an image of ambition and overman life-loving. Kierkegaard decided that pressing forward in ambiguity is a particular mark of character aligned with religiosity. But then all subsequent existentialists seem to think his point stands independent of religiosity. I think I generally encounter the advocacy of faith in the context of "blind faith": staying true to your origins, if you were born into the Church, and switching to the Church on the freakiest whim, if you weren't born into the Church.

But then when challenged, and the absurdity of blind orthodoxy or blind acceptance is pointed out, the apologists trudges through the web of related ideas where ambiguity and the spirit of adventurism meet.
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by Dr Exiled »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 1:28 am
Dr Exiled wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 12:13 am


I agree that we need to trust each other to a certain extent. I guess I support more of a trust but verify approach, at least on the big things. Of course I need to trust that employees do their work while I'm in court. I need to trust people will obey traffic rules, etc. I need to trust that the person at the taco shop isn't deliberately poisoning my food. However, if some person claims this or that without proof and then demands my time and/or money, that's another matter.
But that's exactly what happens every time you go out to eat at a restaurant. They all claim to have great food, do you actually and literally demand they show you all the evidence first before you sit down to eat?
No, physics guy is right. There is a level of trust that is definitely needed for society to function.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by Philo Sofee »

Dr Exiled wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 2:33 am
Philo Sofee wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 1:28 am

But that's exactly what happens every time you go out to eat at a restaurant. They all claim to have great food, do you actually and literally demand they show you all the evidence first before you sit down to eat?
No, physics guy is right. There is a level of trust that is definitely needed for society to function.
So that is faith - the Latin Fides means that - trust. So faith cannot possibly be accurately disparaged as the OP indicates.
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by Physics Guy »

Not all risk-taking is religious faith, but how is religious faith not an example of risk-taking, especially in the context set by the OP?

Willingness to take risks isn‘t a purely good trait, even in the particular form of trustingness. Given a choice between more and less risk, more risk is not always the right answer. Sometimes more trust is just more foolish and less trust would be wiser. But willingness to trust without proof isn‘t just always foolishness, either. It’s not always smarter to have less trust. In some cases the optimal level of trust or faith is some non-zero amount, and if you‘re having less faith than that, you‘re being foolish. It would be wiser to have more trust, to accept more risk.

The ability to act as though something were certain, even though it is not, is a tool worth having. Faith is a virtue.
I was a teenager before it was cool.
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by Morley »

Physics Guy wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 7:13 am
Not all risk-taking is religious faith, but how is religious faith not an example of risk-taking, especially in the context set by the OP?
I went back and persued the OP a couple of times, and maybe I'm missing something--but how does religious faith necessarily involve risk-taking, let alone be seen as an example of risk-taking? A woman is born into a faith and stays in that faith--I'm not seeing the example of risk-taking. Maybe if she'd married a one-armed drummer with a cocaine habit--that would serve as a better example of risk-taking.
Physics Guy wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 7:13 am
Willingness to take risks isn‘t a purely good trait, even in the particular form of trustingness. Given a choice between more and less risk, more risk is not always the right answer. Sometimes more trust is just more foolish and less trust would be wiser.
Sure, I follow. Risk-taking can be bad.
Physics Guy wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 7:13 am
But willingness to trust without proof isn‘t just always foolishness, either. It’s not always smarter to have less trust. In some cases the optimal level of trust or faith is some non-zero amount, and if you‘re having less faith than that, you‘re being foolish. It would be wiser to have more trust, to accept more risk.
Okay. Now we learn that risk-taking can be good. Which means that the trait can be either good or bad.

So far, though, I'm not getting the link with the particular type of faith that is religious, mountain-moving faith.

Physics Guy wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 7:13 am
The ability to act as though something were certain, even though it is not, is a tool worth having.
Again, sure. I'll agree that most abilities are tools worth having, Like the ability to take risks. Or the ability to have faith.

That said, I'm not sure the two abilities amount to the the same thing. For example, a soldier may not have faith that she's going to come back from the war, nevertheless, she may still be enough of a risk-taker to volunteer for combat in a particularly nasty war zone.

Physics Guy wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 7:13 am
Faith is a virtue.
How is faith, by definition, a virtue? Like risk-taking, faith seems to be something that can be either good or bad, depending on the context.

I will grant that possessing the ability to exercise faith can be a virtue.

...

Even with all of the above, using the word faith does not necessarily imply religious faith, nor any of the dimensions unique to that concept.


Let me know where I'm mistaken.
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by dastardly stem »

I have no issue with trusting others, but I’d maintain, I think, faith is a weasely concept as advocated by religion. We must trust, or have faith in, an abstract concept of, as most Christian’s tend to render it, a space less, timeless, bodiless mind. An idea that results in nothing, really, if you think about it. A floating empty idea that individuals have beat into them from the beginning stages of their cognition. “There’s a magic character, well of sorts, hidden to any investigation who’s watching every move you make, every thought you have…ready to condemn you for wrongness”. Apparently it’s a good thing to trust in that fanciful idea. But why? Why would there be a something who is everywhere and yet nowhere simultaneously who thinks the noblest of virtues for humankind is to trust in an idea which has no value, or so it seems, other than assenting to a virtually meaningless concept?

Sure we have a need to trust each other. We ought to bravely take risks, perhaps. But our risks ought to have reason and purpose. We ought to have a goal, I’d say, outside our own desire to be placed higher than others on a scale of who’s better. Believing in nonsense is believing in nonsense. Its value may mean something like at least I’m part of a community. But if there is a god and he’s hiding better than any hide and seeker can possibly hide all so we can believe he’s there for no good reason, then instead of a virtue, he’s trying to magnify our sense of selfishness and stupidity, it seems to me. There may be something good there, but what is it? What good comes of it? What would god really see value in?

“Well that dear child there assents to my existence even when a murderer promises to kill him for believing. He trusts he’ll be blessed by me more than others and that’s the best thing ever for these wimpy delicate creatures. Oh and that woman believes even though she has no godly reason to believe at all. All so she feels comfort in the notion that she’s not going to hell in a hand basket like other people, at my choosing. That’s a great virtue”, says god. And what do we do with all the things god apparently has commanded or has done according to our lovely Christian scriptures? “Even though I’ve had millions of children and other “innocent” people killed, it’s really good these people who have no reason to believe in me except their own desire to live after they die still trust in me. I will bless them. Hell I may need them to execute my judgments again. I need to exploit their unreasoned belief again as a test I figure anyway. Would that guy who tells everyone to believe in me really kill his child? Is he that trusting? That faithful?”

That’s seems the other problem with faith. How far do we take it? God is it seems nothing more than a figment of human imagination. Why trust that? What good comes of it? And if there is a hidden character whose better than us all why does he see faith as the most important thing a person ought to do?
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by Philo Sofee »

Physics Guy wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 7:13 am
Not all risk-taking is religious faith, but how is religious faith not an example of risk-taking, especially in the context set by the OP?

Willingness to take risks isn‘t a purely good trait, even in the particular form of trustingness. Given a choice between more and less risk, more risk is not always the right answer. Sometimes more trust is just more foolish and less trust would be wiser. But willingness to trust without proof isn‘t just always foolishness, either. It’s not always smarter to have less trust. In some cases the optimal level of trust or faith is some non-zero amount, and if you‘re having less faith than that, you‘re being foolish. It would be wiser to have more trust, to accept more risk.

The ability to act as though something were certain, even though it is not, is a tool worth having. Faith is a virtue.
Good balanced approach... you said better than I could, no surprise. Thanks.
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Gadianton
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by Gadianton »

but how is religious faith not an example of risk-taking, especially in the context set by the OP?
I don't know who you were responding to, but I do agree in the "b" definition of faith that faith is an example of risk-taking. Joseph Smith certainly took risks.

But I think in the more usual context of religious teaching, faith is the opposite, it's sticking with your familiar routine. In the established religious community, faith is trusting and believing in the establishment. It just depends on what the religious predator is trying to get people to do. If the message is to the flock, faith is trusting the shepherd. If the message is to an outsider, then it's the courage to take a chance on something new.

As the OP pointed out, going "all-in" isn't necessarily an admirable quality, but then neither is holding, or staying out of the game. Evolution probably optimizes the number of risk-takers.

If I were to argue against faith, my case would be that "faith" puts a moral spin on either side of the same choice for the sake of bolstering a worldview before the fact. Anytime the word "faith" gets used to describe either risk taking or staying true, it's done so in order to coerce the person making the choice into doing what the coercer wants them to do.

A couple sayings I've heard in church that go along with the "a" definition of faith -- trusting the shepherd, and not taking risks.

"Don't give up what you know, for what you don't know."
"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by Morley »

Apologies for the snippy tone, Physics Guy. I wrote the above at 2 AM--apparently not my best time of day.
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Re: Faith! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Post by huckelberry »

I thought faith was when a person becomes aware of a possible goal that has significant value so pursues it with trust in the possibility.

That is using Physics Guys word trust. Courage and hope would also be words that fit.

One difficulty is that the word faith is used in different ways. It is entirely possible that not every use of the word faith is referring to something of the same value. Some versions might be bad. I can see a point to the picture on previous page of a fellow looking at a collection of rock cliffs and pointing out that faith in oneself can be a mistake. Yes the cliffs ask necessary skill experience and equipment not just faith which if pursued without these could lead to death.
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