Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Is Faith an Accurate Pathway to Truth?


Jodie.Lynne

Recommended Posts

11 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

Is 'faith' an accurate path to truth?

Before we get started, I am talking about 'faith without evidence', in support of concepts for which there is no tangible evidence. Whether those concepts are 'god(s)', ghosts, spirit realms, "higher beings", and the like.

I am NOT talking about reasonable expectations, confidence in, or reliability in mundane matters. Like one's 'faith' in a spouse's fidelity, or the confidence that one's car will start when the key is turned. These are things that can be proven to be (mostly) true by past performance, history, and knowledge.

In my opinion, you don't get to the truth until after you die. Then there is either nothing, or there is something. 

Living by faith, in a way that does not hurt anyone else, can prepare you for either of those two options. If there is nothing, at least you led a good life. If there is something, then your life will speak for itself, and you will be rewarded.

Quote

What I am interested in learning, is if people think that religious/spiritual faith is an accurate way to determine truth. If one can believe one thing, solely with faith and without evidence, does that not mean that they can believe anything, without evidence?

I don't think we can determine Truth. We can only wait to see what it is. And live our lives in a manner in which we feel will aim us at what we hope for.

10 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

Not really, I am wondering why people can believe "A" on faith, but disregard other subjects that have an equal amount of 'proof'.

For instance, some people believe, have faith in, claims of extraterrestrial visitors, but deny 'ghosts', or vice-versa. Some have faith in a deity, by pooh-pooh the belief in intelligent life elsewhere. Some folk swear that various forms of extrasensory abilities are true, but will scoff at the idea of fairies. And some people believe that their god is real and true, on faith, and other peoples god is false.

And that last one, to me, is like arguing over who would win in a fight: superman or the Hulk. IMO, they are all fictional characters, and that is not meant as a slur on believers.

In Christianity, it is easy. Whatever is not of God is of either nature, or the Enemy. Weather, fire, animals... are natural. Ghosts, aliens, fairies, the supernatural... are by default then, of the Enemy.

Quote

Take the classic argument: Life on Earth began, because

A - God

B - natural causes.

There are, broadly speaking, three camps:

Theists who say A is the answer.

Non-theists who say B is the answer,

And a bunch of folk who try to reconcile both answers by saying "God did it using natural means.

Yeah, I fall into that third category, and I don't see any issues in that belief.

Quote

So, basically, I'm asking why one would choose to believe in something that they have no evidence for. 

Hope? Love? Family? Friendship?

Also, it depends... On what is counted as evidence. Many, if not most, of religious people TRULY believe they've had some kind of experience that justifies their faith. They've heard something come from nowhere, or felt some urge to do something that turned out to be important, or they had some prayer answered, which seemed beyond the scope of random chance... To those people... THAT is evidence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

In Christianity, it is easy. Whatever is not of God is of either nature, or the Enemy. Weather, fire, animals... are natural. Ghosts, aliens, fairies, the supernatural... are by default then, of the Enemy

No offense meant to you. But this has to be the dumbest thing I've read today. If all things are from god, this includes everything written above including "the enemy". You can't have your cake and eat it too. Unless there are 2 gods of equal power, then it would depend on which is the least bloodthirsty. But that would require faith. A faith I don't have. To be honest an indifferent and apathetic god would be better than the Christian/Jewish/Muslim god. 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, joc said:

In short, one doesn't 'choose' to believe something...for the most part.  They are taught it from Birth.  From Birth we are taught God...The Bible...The Koran...Catholicism...Judaism...whateverism.  The Birth Box is a difficult box to walk away from.   And so, from generation to generation, the same 'truth' is taught ...from birth.   And whenever anyone questions why some things don't make sense...there is a plethora of Faithful full of answers on how to make the absurd understandable.  

When people are born into a religion...they tend to view EVERYTHING from that religions foundations...the Bible, The koran etc

This is true. And is a reason that I think religion isn't really on its way out. 

I do think though that with the internet, and public education, that there are strong influences that can turn young people from religion and toward humanism. Not entirely a bad thing, but I've seen many a young person, with very little worldly experience, turn away from their parents/community and flounder off into a world of drugs/alcohol and crime. IMHO, many of these poor souls would have been better served in life if they HAD been brainwashed. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, XenoFish said:

No offense meant to you. But this has to be the dumbest thing I've read today. If all things are from god, this includes everything written above including "the enemy". You can't have your cake and eat it too. Unless there are 2 gods of equal power, then it would depend on which is the least bloodthirsty. But that would require faith. A faith I don't have. To be honest an indifferent and apathetic god would be better than the Christian/Jewish/Muslim god. 

No, you are right. I've said it over and over. God created the Enemy and the Enemy is what God made him to be. How can he be anything else?

So, yes, God can stop evil things and creatures from tormenting/hurting us, but He doesn't. Just as He doesn't rain down gold coins on us.

What I wrote wasn't really clear as I'd have liked. As Christians we believe that God loves us and only good things come (directly?) from God. This kind of neglects the idea of people saying, "God works in mysterious ways.", though when something bad does happen. The bad things that happen are assumed to be natural random events, or a result of the Enemy, who was released a long time ago and has gone his own way.

Is that more clear?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

No, you are right. I've said it over and over. God created the Enemy and the Enemy is what God made him to be. How can he be anything else?

So, yes, God can stop evil things and creatures from tormenting/hurting us, but He doesn't. Just as He doesn't rain down gold coins on us.

What I wrote wasn't really clear as I'd have liked. As Christians we believe that God loves us and only good things come (directly?) from God. This kind of neglects the idea of people saying, "God works in mysterious ways.", though when something bad does happen. The bad things that happen are assumed to be natural random events, or a result of the Enemy, who was released a long time ago and has gone his own way.

Is that more clear?

Who is the enemy?

Edit: Actually don't answer that, it's widely off topic.

Edited by danydandan
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, danydandan said:

That's not my point. My point is thinking or believing in something as right, without evidence is faith. Regardless if there are indicators that might suggest your correct and regardless if it's Scientific, Religious or something else.

Oh man... I've been down this argument before. You're not going to convince anyone you are right. The atheist minded ONLY use "Faith" in regard to religion. They'll say what you are indicating is something else... assurance, knowledge, understanding... Because they will say that faith means no evidence, and people don't drive cars, or use the ATM, or eat a McBurger, or turn on their phone, by way of faith. They do all those things by physically (intrinsically?) understanding the world we live in by way of observation and then expecting what happened before to happen again. They will say faith has nothing to do with it. Even on subjects like Love and Hate, they will put chemical/physical variables on it, and not unevidenced faith.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One thing I've noticed, and it's bothering me, is that there is a distinct deviation between the definition of faith the OP is talking about and the definition of faith some other people are referring to.

Jodie can you reiterate your definition of faith we are discussing. Because I assumed it was "faith without evidence', in support of concepts for which there is no tangible evidence". Some people are assuming faith = Religion. It doesn't.

I assumed we were discussing this definition "complete trust or confidence in someone or something" ie an opinion, not this definition "strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof". Or are we blurring the lines of both definitions?

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

A philosophy is better than faith, because it can be changed and modified as needed. A spiritual/religious faith often comes with bells and whistles that must be adhered to.

But I wasn't raised a "believer" and indoctrinated so I would never fall into the trap of "faith".  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Fairh needs to change and evolve along with everything else in life, in my opinion. 

Not that there won't be intense moments of doubt, but when it's alive, faith will grow.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

yeah, but not quite the same. William Harvey had an idea, and was convinced he was on the right track, and then tested his notion, and proved his idea correct. He didn't just come out one day and say "I have faith that blood circulates through the body! No, don't ask me to prove it, I just believe." 

 

Actually he did say I think that blood flows to the brain etcetera, based on the findings that blood from the heart was pumped into the lungs from the heart, which was then mixed with air by some Arabic doctor, can't recall their name.

Thus, without actual evidence, he assumed and hypothesised that blood was pumped to the brain and other organs was his opinion, his believe was on faith, as he opinioned it prior to having evidence. Same as Einstein's relativity, same as many Scientific discoveries. People's faith in Newton basically held back Science for decades and decades, anyone who offered any opinion that condradicted his were deemed retarded. Look how long it took for light to be established as a particle as well as being a wave? Even though there was compelling evidence that it was a particle at the time.

5 hours ago, eight bits said:

To the extent that that is the actual history, those are examples of hypothesis formation. You don't need to believe that a hypothesis is true  to investigate it (or even approximately true, which is more complicated). After investigation, you don't need to conclude it's true to conclude it's useful and so adopt it.

In real life: consider the persistence of Newtonian mechanics in practice; in theater, Brecht's Galileo (which spends a lot of time on a proposed "compromise" that the church would concede that heliocentrism was useful, but not concede that it was true).

Doesn't matter the point is that some hypotheses are based on faith. The definition of which the OP has described, believing in something without evidence.

If people know about quantum mechanics the initial premises and theories, some still are like multi-dimension string theory, are a big leap of faith.

Edited by danydandan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Will Due said:

 

Fairh needs to change and evolve along with everything else in life, in my opinion. 

Not that there won't be intense moments of doubt, but when it's alive, faith will grow.

 

 

Yeah see your not even talking about the definition the op has described in their opening post. This isn't about religion, it's about general beliefs without evidence, amounting to revealing some truth.

Religious headcases already think they have the truth written in their doctrines. They think the evidence for this trurth is written doctrine thus it's no longer on faith they believe.

 

Edited by danydandan
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, eight bits said:

But it's not everything else. To reason, you need premises.

Well technically nothing is anything else and the everything else to which I'm referring to are claims about objective reality, which includes theism.  If I'm understanding 'premises' correctly, I need premises to reach a reasoned conclusion, but if I just have a propositions with no evidence and no premises I can establish as true, aren't I still using reason when I arrive at a conclusion from a proposition without evidence?  How about, 'nothing has been established to exist in the real world without evidence'? That's pretty tautological actually, but is it outside of 'reason'?

What's different between 'there is a God who dwells in heaven and is the ultimate creator' and 'there is another large gas giant orbiting the sun outside the orbit of Pluto' or 'Kong lives on Skull Island in one of earth's oceans which is shrouded in fog that makes it invisible to our normal detection methods'?  The overall approach to evaluating the god proposition doesn't really consist of anything significantly different for me as far as approach, it just comes to a dead-end much more quickly than many other things.

5 hours ago, eight bits said:

but they can't be justified fully by evidence (as Hume noted)

Not sure why this is an issue at all, especially for anything I said.  What's science justified on if not evidence?  If it isn't really much of anything else, I and most people can live with that level of justification.  Sure there's no guarantee that the future will behave like the past or present does, but for that matter there's no guarantee that any of our perception nor our limited cognitive ability is arriving at any truths at all.  Nothing can be justified 'fully' by anything, yet for some reason I'll continue to stop my vehicle at red lights in spite of that.

5 hours ago, eight bits said:

And (see above) you don't choose whether the premises are satisfactory to you.

Possibly, but that doesn't mean I haven't learned and noticed what kind of premises and methods result in apparent truths about reality and which don't.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, and then said:

So if these events, countries, and outcomes are all perfectly realized, you still would deny the prophecy?

You know lots more about the content of biblical prophecies than I do, but I think fairly recently you asked a more specific question along the same lines of the above. Forgive as I'm probably misremembering the details, but fairly recently I think you said something about a biblical prophecy where Iraq/Iran/parts of the Middle East will be destroyed by natural disasters, you may have mentioned devastating floods or maybe it was volcanic eruptions, not sure.  As you rightly note above, the prophecies came without GPS coordinates or a date/time stamp (the latter I would argue is more of the problem), but regardless the question I have is, if the prophesized parts of the ME that are to be destroyed by natural disasters are instead destroyed by the US/Israel nuking them into oblivion, would you agree that the prophecy was not fulfilled?  Or is their mere destruction regardless of the cause 'close enough' for fulfillment of the prophecy? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, danydandan said:

Yeah see your not even talking about the definition the op has described in their opening post. This isn't about religion, it's about general beliefs without evidence, amounting to revealing some truth.

Religious headcases already think they have the truth written in their doctrines. They think the evidence for this trurth is written doctrine thus it's no longer on faith they believe.

 

 

What in the world are you so upset about dany?

If this topic isn't about religion, why is it in a religious section? 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Nothing can be justified 'fully' by anything, yet for some reason I'll continue to stop my vehicle at red lights in spite of that.

And that is reliable epistemology in a nutshell. Well done.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, Will Due said:

 

What in the world are you so upset about dany?

If this topic isn't about religion, why is it in a religious section? 

 

 

It's in spirtuality vs skepticism section, not the Religious section. There is a section called Spirtuality, Something else and Religion.

Why would I be upset?

Edited by danydandan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, danydandan said:

One thing I've noticed, and it's bothering me, is that there is a distinct deviation between the definition of faith the OP is talking about and the definition of faith some other people are referring to.

Jodie can you reiterate your definition of faith we are discussing. Because I assumed it was "faith without evidence', in support of concepts for which there is no tangible evidence". Some people are assuming faith = Religion. It doesn't.

I assumed we were discussing this definition "complete trust or confidence in someone or something" ie an opinion, not this definition "strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof". Or are we blurring the lines of both definitions?

 

The topic is Faith and its applications. Welcome to the wonderful world of slippery definitions. That is, indeed, the definition of "Faith" for a lot of people. They believe something they read in a book, or something read to them from a book. This is the foundation of Faith, for them. People of Islam often refer to Christians as "The People of the Book".

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

The topic is Faith and its applications. Welcome to the wonderful world of slippery definitions. That is, indeed, the definition of "Faith" for a lot of people. They believe something they read in a book, or something read to them from a book. This is the foundation of Faith, for them. People of Islam often refer to Christians as "The People of the Book".

But my confusion is due to the fact the OP gave their definition and people either ignored it, didn't read the OP or are just trolling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Truth is a funny thing. For an individual, I would say that faith can provide something that, to them, is as satisfying as truth. If we're talking about objective truth, though? No. Faith has no method (or need) to access objective truth by its very nature. Anyone who says otherwise is deluded. Any objective truths deduced by faith (OP's definition of faith, to be clear) are just lucky guesses.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, danydandan said:

But my confusion is due to the fact the OP gave their definition and people either ignored it, didn't read the OP or are just trolling.

I don't think the OP actually did define faith.  She said faith without evidence.  So, technically.......we could be discussing, God, Faith, Religion, or truth and how they are related.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Guyver said:

I don't think the OP actually did define faith.  She said faith without evidence.  So, technically.......we could be discussing, God, Faith, Religion, or truth and how they are related.  

I don't think we can be discussing Religion, God yeah, but not Religion because in Religion the doctrines are the tangible evidence for their Faith, wouldn't you agree?

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, danydandan said:

But my confusion is due to the fact the OP gave their definition and people either ignored it, didn't read the OP or are just trolling.

Read the third paragraph of the OP. Seems to pretty much allow any form of religious Faith into the discussion. This is the versus forum, that means at least two sides. Can't rail against the other side because you don't won't to read what they have to say. Perhaps you should start your own thread with your narrower definition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Read the third paragraph of the OP. Seems to pretty much allow any form of religious Faith into the discussion. This is the versus forum, that means at least two sides. Can't rail against the other side because you don't won't to read what they have to say. Perhaps you should start your own thread with your narrower definition.

Hence my confusion,

7 minutes ago, danydandan said:

I don't think we can be discussing Religion, God yeah, but not Religion because in Religion the doctrines are the tangible evidence for their Faith, wouldn't you agree?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, danydandan said:

Hence my confusion,

 

To some, God and religion are synonymous. Some Protestants practically worship the Bible, raise it up and exalt it like a brazen idol. It's virtually impossible to separate God-Bible-Religion, their other holy trinity.

 

 

 

  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

To some, God and religion are synonymous. Some Protestants practically worship the Bible, raise it up and exalt it like a brazen idol. It's virtually impossible to separate God-Bible-Religion, their other holy trinity.

 

 

 

I take your point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.