Is it productive for an atheist to engage in discussion about God? - Page 2

Geshtinnanna · 01-08-2008, 10:40 PM

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Originally Posted by marmalade

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Originally Posted by Geshtinnanna

I can't speak for other Atheists. I can speak for myself. I actually just replied to a thread like this on another forum. I have no faith. As someone with a mental illness I recognize my limitations in faith. If I were to say I have faith, it would be in myself. That I can judge 100% correctly. I have proof of myself and experience with myself. Everything else is up for chance and doubt of some form or another. Plus once you have been severely abused as a child, you tend to view things very differently. As a child, my budding faith was taken from me and has never returned.

I find it interesting how most people associate faith with belief and certainty. You say you have faith in yourself which I translate as you trust yourself. Trust also relates to belief and certainty. And so related with this are mistrust, doubt, and uncertainty(or chance as you said it).

To me, none of that has to do with it for faith isn't a psychological trait. I'm filled with mistrust, doubt, and uncertainty. And, yet, I have a sense of faith. As far as I can tell, faith is what is left after mistrust, doubt, and uncertainty have replaced all your hopes and assumptions. I'd say that faith is only possible to the degree that its been challenged and only when its become unmoored from any certainty(individual or collective).

I may have a fair amount of mental illness, but(as far as I know) I was never abused as a child. However, I do feel like a very wounded person, and I've come to associate my sense of faith with my woundedness. If I hadn't spent most of my life mired in depression and suicidal at times, then I wouldn't have had the experiences I had that my faith is based upon.

Obviously your experiences are quite different. It seems like faith can mean anything and everything. Faith latches onto whatever catches our imagination and for you issues of trust seem to be what are the fodder for your 'faith'.

Have you ever read any of the depth psychologists such as Hillman?

Never heard of him. As a bi polar, I have found I have certain issues with time and its distortions. In the midst of manic or depressive episodes I am unable to move past the immediate moment. It's hard to explain. It's a part of my illness. Faith and hope are not good life strategies. So I nix them in place for realism and practicality. To be honest, my father passed away when I was 11. Bad things happened after that. I think I lost faith then. And I have finally found a way to live happy without it. So why even try to get it back?

marmalade · 01-08-2008, 11:23 PM

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Originally Posted by Geshtinnanna

As a bi polar, I have found I have certain issues with time and its distortions. In the midst of manic or depressive episodes I am unable to move past the immediate moment. It's hard to explain. It's a part of my illness.

I'm not bi polar, and so I can't say I know what you speak of. I do get stuck in the present moment with my mono polar depression which may or may not be similar. That feeling of stuckeness, of 'no escape' is partially what I've come to think of faith as. In this sense, I don't see faith as something that one chooses. I feel that faith only becomes clear to the extent that choice becomes less clear.

But we're both talking about experiences that are hard to explain.

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Faith and hope are not good life strategies. So I nix them in place for realism and practicality.

Well, I suck at practicality. But realism is how I define faith. Faith is seeing reality for what it is directly and honestly.

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To be honest, my father passed away when I was 11. Bad things happened after that.

I'm sorry to hear that. Life can really suck sometimes. Its even worse when bad things happen when a person is young. In a truly good world, everyone would at least have a happy childhood.

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I think I lost faith then. And I have finally found a way to live happy without it. So why even try to get it back?

I've never thought faith is something that can be lost or else can only be lost in the sense that the mentally ill lose 'reality'. Maybe 'realism' and 'practicality' symbolise to you something akin to what 'faith' symbolizes to me... or maybe not. Its fine if the word 'faith' has lost meaning to you. The word isn't important to me either.

If you've learned to live happy, then you might be doing better than me. Faith or no faith, happiness has never seemed to be my lot in life.

Vinterland · 01-09-2008, 08:11 PM

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Originally Posted by marmalade

Not to answer for Gesh, I have faith in faith. This means that faith is an experience to me and not a belief in something particular. For instance, I have faith that all faiths are pointing towards similar experiences even though its unclear exactly what this is. And, in fact, my faith is the stronger because of this lack of certainty.

If I knew anything with absolute certainty, then faith wouldn't be necessary.
If I believed in anything with absolute certainty, then faith wouldn't be necessary.

Faith goes where knowledge and belief can't. Or maybe faith is that which can transform knowledge and belief into living experience. Everything begins with faith, but its just a matter of what we put faith into. Even science must begin with assumptions that can't be proven scientifically. This isn't a weakness of science. This is a fact of the human psyche.

Knowledge and beliefs can and are often derrived using faith. I agree that at the beginning, there is a point where illogic triumphs and we must make assumptions and build from and that is the weakness of logic.

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I put faith into all kinds of things, but I try to remember that faith precedes what we place it in. To imperfectly translate this into scientific terms, observation should precede theory.

So, isn't faith a word for the phrase "bad use of logic"? It seems to me that every statement of faith uses logic as a tool to come to those conclusions so that there's no such thing as a belief that is devoid of logic...exception being certain people with cognitive deficencies.

romansh · 01-09-2008, 08:44 PM

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Originally Posted by Vinterland

So, isn't faith a word for the phrase "bad use of logic"? It seems to me that every statement of faith uses logic as a tool to come to those conclusions so that there's no such thing as a belief that is devoid of logic...exception being certain people with cognitive deficencies.

I have trouble telling faith and belief apart.

"I have faith the sun will come up tomorrow morning" ..... god will make it so
"I believe the sun will come up tomorrow morning" ..... the astronomers have got it right and the sun won't go supernova for a while yet.

?????

is faith putting belief in god's hands?

Vinterland · 01-09-2008, 09:18 PM

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Originally Posted by romansh

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Originally Posted by Vinterland

So, isn't faith a word for the phrase "bad use of logic"? It seems to me that every statement of faith uses logic as a tool to come to those conclusions so that there's no such thing as a belief that is devoid of logic...exception being certain people with cognitive deficencies.

I have trouble telling faith and belief apart.

"I have faith the sun will come up tomorrow morning" ..... god will make it so
"I believe the sun will come up tomorrow morning" ..... the astronomers have got it right and the sun won't go supernova for a while yet.

?????

is faith putting belief in god's hands?

depends on the context. Belief is commonly used synonymous with faith, but as I defined, and as many dictionaries do as well such as www.m-w.com , belief is a 'truth' to any level of conviction, that is based upon evidence. Using the term in this context is correct:
"I believe evolution is true based on evidence"

as it is in this: "I believe in God based on evidence".

The difference is context I believe, but what I recently noticed (and what I brought up to Marmalade as a question) is that it appears to me that both statements are made by use of logic. The former is obvious because of the overhwelming evidence for evolution, but the latter statement uses logic to identify terms and reach conclusions that although are loigically unsound, are not distinct from logic. So this has me confused because I very often see theists claim that faith is a seperate entity from logic, that it is a completey different method to attaining 'knowledge' and then often will cite the limits of logic. However, examing this 'statement of faith', "I believe in God because I experienced him" is something made by logic. The person has used logic to define God and also to rationalise an experience to the extent that they have formed a belief. Do you see faith as completely seperated from logic?

romansh · 01-09-2008, 09:39 PM

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Originally Posted by Vinterland

However, examing this 'statement of faith', "I believe in God because I experienced him" is something made by logic.

I'm not disagreeing with you..... belief and faith can be interchangeable or me as both being logic based (or at least ostensibly).

Now the statement "I have experienced god; therefore god exists", is that logical?

Vinterland · 01-09-2008, 09:45 PM

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Originally Posted by romansh

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Originally Posted by Vinterland

However, examing this 'statement of faith', "I believe in God because I experienced him" is something made by logic.

I'm not disagreeing with you..... belief and faith can be interchangeable or me as both being logic based (or at least ostensibly).

Now the statement "I have experienced god; therefore god exists", is that logical?

I'm not sure, but I think it is. The person has said: My experience is 'A'. My experience was God, meaning it was synonymous with God, therefore A=A. That is there knowledge. I don't know the formula letter thingy, ut I hope that makes sense. If not let me know.

romansh · 01-09-2008, 10:03 PM

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Originally Posted by Vinterland

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Originally Posted by romansh

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Originally Posted by Vinterland

However, examing this 'statement of faith', "I believe in God because I experienced him" is something made by logic.

I'm not disagreeing with you..... belief and faith can be interchangeable or me as both being logic based (or at least ostensibly).

Now the statement "I have experienced god; therefore god exists", is that logical?

I'm not sure, but I think it is. The person has said: My experience is 'A'. My experience was God, meaning it was synonymous with God, therefore A=A. That is there knowledge. I don't know the formula letter thingy, ut I hope that makes sense. If not let me know.

I have a problem with the letter thingy.
The letter thingy only works for me if we agree on "A" and its meaning.
Now agreeing on the meaning of that "agnostic" thingy....

Sesame Street ..... I have experienced the letter A therefore it exists????

Vinterland · 01-09-2008, 10:07 PM

Ok, I'll try again. The person has an experience, that is "A". They begin to use logic and then rationalise that the experience, A, is God. So God becomes A. They've successfully defined the experience by using logic, right?

The only exception I see now is "gut instinct" when someone knows something instantaneously. That can wait for later, though.

marmalade · 01-09-2008, 10:18 PM

Faith to me is an experience. I wish I knew how to explain this experience to someone else. The closest I can say is faith is a sense that there is something that is fundamental and inherent to my experience, but what is fundamental and inherent about it is the 64 million dollar question.

Faith isn't logical or illogical. Faith is non-logical. However, faith can be loosely applied to logic, but there is no direct correlation. This is the problem many believers is that they want to believe faith is logical, but faith as an experience is a separate issue from what they happen to want to believe about it, how they want to interpret it according to specific theologies.

Faith is a non-verbal experience. As such, we can talk circles around it until the end of time. Words are useful towards communication if the people communicating already share an experience such as what I speak of. But if their isn't a shared experience, then they're talking around eachother.

You two don't seem to understand what I mean by my experience of faith. So, I can only assume the word as I'm using it is meaningless to you. The term 'faith' is often used the same as belief or a set of beliefs, and I guess we're limited to talking about it in that way.

If I experienced God, it would be logical to claim to know God. However, no one ever experiences God. People have experiences that they interpret as God and these interpretations are ususally based on social expectations. So, the statement that "I experienced God" isn't itself logical. In a sense, all our interpretations of our experience can be questioned in this way.

Belief plays into this in the sense that:
- someone assumes their interpretations accurately describe their experiences, and
- someone assumes the social expectations that they base their interpretations on correlate with 'objective' reality to a large enough extent that they can be considered true/real.