Belief vs. Faith vs. Ideas

lauraclay · 03-20-2007, 12:40 PM

Quote:

As a child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in God. There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them. I believed implicitly int he existence of God; I also believed in the Ral Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of the sacraments, the prospect of eternal damnation and the objective reality of Purgatory. I cannot sya, however, that my belief int hese religious opinions about the nature of ultimate reality gave me much confidence that life here on earth was good or beneficient.

This is from the intro of Karen Armstrong's A History of God: The 4,000-Year Old Quest of Judaisum, Christianity, and Islam. An amazing book by the way.

Does anyone agree? I've always thought there was a distinct difference between believing and having faith. I also thought there was a difference between believing and just having an idea about something. Cue Chris Rock as Rufus in Kevin Smith's "Dogma":

Quote:

I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier.

He goes on to talk about how people will die for beliefs, fight wars for them. I think that to wholeheartedly subscribe to a belief is foolhardy. I think you should always be open to the possibility that you could be wrong. Anyone else?

Og · 03-20-2007, 01:38 PM

Wonderfully put.

I've read a lot of work by an Indian Jesuit priest named Anthony deMello and he talks about belief like a warm blanket. It protects you and keeps you warm and you will hold on tight to it if someone/thing tries to pull the belief off of you. You're also reluctant to get up and move from under a nice warm blanket.

I continue to come to the conclusion, in my own thinking on the topic, that faith and belief are OK. That regardless of if they're right or wrong, they serve the purpose of religion which is to get people through life. Holding onto a strong belief in damnation gives strong consequences for wrong behavior and offers a moral compass. Giving an ultimate meaning to it all in god/jesus gives people an idea of ultimate meaning to all the things they do in life.

The objective reality may be that there is no ultimate meaning to our individual lives and that we really don't have free will in any sense of the cosmos, but that hardly has application to folks busing tables or being someone's secretary who are just looking for ways to get through the day.

This is the main reason that I respect religion's role in society. So belief and faith are really good mental vehicles into which you can stick your identity/self in order to get through life. There are other options too, but these are clearly options as well.

Its an objective reality that the ideas of judgmental gods in the west are not an ultimate reality, but this doesn't matter. And this is my main problem with atheists. They're demanding that people throw their identity/self into this box without god when they may not want to. The people over there in the religious camp throw their identity/self into the god illusion. They're both doing the same thing. They both are trying to get through life.

This is why it basically says that god is as real as I am in my signature. To me, god is a metaphor. To others, he's a real being. In both cases, the statement helps the individual get through life. The only goal in the world is self preservation and survival. This is a goal for only one reason. Creatures that don't have this goal simply don't survive (obviously).

Faith and belief enable this. Having unwavering belief may allow some people to do awesome things. It may cripple them for other things. But in the end, we all die.

Faith can have a lot of different meanings while belief is less broad in my opinion. Faith is something I have. Faith is something that helps me follow the evidence wherever it leads and even when I'm not sure where its leading or if it looks like its leading me away from what I used to think was true. For others, Faith is a way that they justify their belief in a religious structure that gives them purpose in life.

Belief is belief. It's the act of holding something to be true. I like to say that I have no beliefs. I don't hold onto anything. I simply let be what is. Ask me about something and I say "well, I think this is the way it works based on what I've learned about it," but there's always the chance that I may be wrong.

For people who have beliefs, as "Long Rufus" quoted in dogma, they're going to fight and die for them because they're integral to their identity. They've cast their self/identity into a box with no exits so they're backed into a corner no matter what. That's not the case with me and other empiricists.

Good topic.

lauraclay · 03-20-2007, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Og

I continue to come to the conclusion, in my own thinking on the topic, that faith and belief are OK. That regardless of if they're right or wrong, they serve the purpose of religion which is to get people through life. Holding onto a strong belief in damnation gives strong consequences for wrong behavior and offers a moral compass. Giving an ultimate meaning to it all in god/jesus gives people an idea of ultimate meaning to all the things they do in life.

I agree with this. While I personally am agnostic, I have no problems with organized religion. Religion does get people through life, I had never thought of it that way. I always valued religion as a means of comfort and safety to people. If anyone were to wake up one day and begin to realize how infinitely small they are in relation to the universe, how little control they have over their lives (natural disasters, a planetary meltdown, etc), the realization might be overwhelming. It's scary. Religion creates and order of things, a promise of significance and understanding. It also copes with death, another scary thing. Death is much easier to face (whether it be that of a loved one, or your own) if you have some understanding of it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Og

Faith and belief enable this. Having unwavering belief may allow some people to do awesome things. It may cripple them for other things. But in the end, we all die.

How true. I can't help but always ask, what is the point?

Og · 03-20-2007, 02:14 PM

Quote:

I always valued religion as a means of comfort and safety to people.

This fits exactly with deMello's belief as a warm blanket metaphor.

Quote:

I can't help but always ask, what is the point?

This is one of the reasons that religion exists. Ironically, as I mentioned, the only real purpose seems to be survival (and it doesn't have to be your purpose, you simply won't survive if it isn't). Without the strength of the ideas expressed in religion it's hard to find purpose. So religion survives because it enables survival. It gives purpose and direction.

Personally, I call my own spirituality the WTF religion. Joseph Campbell often relates that the main value of religion is to connect the individual to the wonder that things exist.

Whether you're christian or agnostic or whatever, the reality that things exist is always there. The wonder that this glass of water or this rock or all of the night sky exists (instead of not existing) just makes me say "WTF!"

I'll quote joseph campbell on buddhism:

Quote:

Now the key story for me about Buddhism concerns the sermon where the Buddha was seated, and there was a great group around him and he just held up a flower. Just a flower. One in the group got what the Buddha was on about. For him, the flower itself was enough to spark enlightenment. The rest of the crowd were still in the dark, so to speak, so the Buddha delivered a sermon--the great Flower Wreath Sutra (Avatamsaka Sutra)--to explain what he meant, which was this:

There is nothing to say about life. It has no meaning. You make meaning. If you want a meaning in your life, find a meaning and bring it into your life, but life won't give you a meaning. Meaning is a concept. It is a notion of an end toward which you are going. The point of Buddhism is this is it.

The Buddha is called tathagata, "the one who has come, thus"; the flower is the tathagata that has come thus. The Buddha is often shown just looking at the flower. That flower is the world. That flower is a flower. That flower is what I am looking at now. This has been made to serve an end but that is not the essence of the mystery of this thing. The essence of the mystery is its very being, which has a ring around it of cosmic ocean, you might say, beyond which you cannot look.

Buddhism is the illumination to the fact, the realization of the fact that this is it. You are it and it is nothing. It is a very difficult thing to tell anyone about because the words themselves suggest that there is a meaning here, but the thing is just to get it, and that is why you can't communicate or teach Buddhism: you can only bring a person up to it.

That's my story about purpose. My flower is the woman I'm going to marry here within a year or so. The children we're going to have. The scientific/mathematic path I take and that I defend my PhD dissertation on monday. Why? Because these things connect me to the mystery of existence. That a rock or a glass or her smile exists at all instead of not existing.

For christians, their flower is jesus or the cross. etc.

To me, eternal life is what it says in that buddhist quote: "This is it." It's not something that goes on forever. It's something beyond categories of time and future and past. This is how the metaphor of jesus' and buddha's teachings speak to me.

jaej · 03-20-2007, 02:18 PM

What is the point of what? Faith? Belief?

I've heard it said that religion exists because people can't cope with both being alive and having to die. I agree wholeheartedly with what Og said. Religion provides focus and purpose and meaning for billions of people.

I would say faith is integral to belief. As you said lc, how would someone deal with knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how massive the universe was and how small they were, especially if they had no form of deity to provide meaning? I think belief stems from personal insecurity, hence an overabundance of faith. Belief requires suspension of disbelief; it is because of people's inability to cope with the probable reality of our existence that creates the need for belief, and in turn religion.

An awful lot of pointless words to say I agree.

Edit: You like that book, huh?

Noscura · 03-24-2007, 07:51 PM

I agree with faith and belief not being the same

To destinguish faith and belief an easy way,...
You've got christians whom are believing in the satan. I don't see many of them puting their faith in the satan, they put their faith in God, Jesus, Saints, etc.. (I say many because I consider folks that worship the biblic satan: believers of the same jewish/christian/islamic god, thus also Christians amongst them, trying to be rebelious towards this deity)