Why is Faith a Virtue?

Indeed it is. And how is that done? Aside from demanding evidence, one observes the behavior, facial expressions and voice tones of whomever is speaking. One might also consider that person's track record of lying. Empricism. Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

My question is "Why is faith a virtue?"I'm asking about faith. I would like to know why it is virtuous to base beliefs on a personal revelation, tradition, or authority, and not evidence.Faith, the prolific poster whose name is the topic of this thread, is disqualified from the conversation until she accepts that she is basing her religion on, well, faith. Proclaiming over and over again that something is true, with great appeal to history, is off topic to this thread. Circular reasoning is not going to help, it will just lead us in circles.I ask the question about faith. Why is it a virtue to believe something with no real proof?Answering "Well I've got proof!" is no answer at all. It dodges the question. Saying "My special book written by god is better than your special book because yours was not written by god" doesn't really help either because of two things. First, other people believe their religion just as strongly as you do yours; other people have religious experiences in OTHER religions that are just as real to them as yours are to you. Second, truth is not based on democracy.Why is it good to have faith?These things came from unquestioning faith: Jonestown, Heaven's Gate, all suicide bombings, 9/11, etc.I would like these things explained to me. Edited by Chief Infidel, :

Personal revelation would be evidence would it not? Like, if God made himself manifest to you in a way which didn't involve your usual senses (for he could per definition do so)what higher level of evidence would satisfy you? There is no reason to suppose empirical evidence is supreme so one shouldn't get to bogged down in that - empiricism is not a virtue.And if many other people described him in the same way this would help you rid yourself of the notion that you were crazy (otherwise there are a lot more crazy people in the world than we thought and who,strangely, are crazy in the same way)And say you had a personal revelation without ever reading the Bible and found that the person described in the Bible is as you found them through personal revelation. Uncannily alike. Would this testify to both your sanity and the veracity of the Bible (purported up to that point as being word of the person who made themselves manifest to you)? You are entitled to admit into your court whatever class of evidence you desire. And exclude whatever class you desire. It is your court afterall. A believer has proof which has been deemed sufficient for their court. There is no argument which suggests that your court is superior to theirs (that I know of). Each to their own.As far as being a virtue, the virtue is a function of the person who assigns faith to be one (I read virtue as being equivilent to "approved of" "a positive thing" here). And in this case it is God who approves of faith in a person. Faith in this instance would be a trust in him, believing what he promises, for example. God approves of that. Of course a person would already have to have something of a personal relationship with him in order to trust him and believe what he says: some prior experience. This is not the same as the foundational faith that he exists: for he gave that faith to the person and so would be strange that God would consider the person having that faith as being virtuous for having something he gave them. It doesn't really. The answers you get just don't satisfy you is all. It seems to me that you will only admit "5 senses" proof into your court and you cannot accuse someone of dodging the question just because you won't accept the evidence. That's essentially it Chief: your deciding empirical-only, but you have no fundamental basis on which to suggest that this is the highest court in the land. Its your personal choice to so limit the evidence.You know what they say about pointing fingers That's a rather simplistic, glass-half-empty way to look at it, is it not? Look what unquestioning faith in the scientific method has achieved. It isn't necessarily. Faith in Hitler wasn't good. Faith in God will always be (God the person - not the Religions which claim to 'represent' God (as if he needed representation!) Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Say you were to stumble across a dusty old box in the attic of your old house. And you open it up and inside there are some old letters and you read them. They are love letters.Could you form the impression that the person writing the letter loved the recipient of the letter. Could you form the sense that they were not lying in what they wrote? Most justice systems I know of hold to the idea that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty (which makes sense in general: someone will tell the truth unless they have some motivation to lie - truth is the motiveless default).I suppose one can suggest reasons why the person writing might be lying and if these reasons are deemed by yourself to be very good then I suppose you can make up your mind that what was written was a lie. For want of any empirical evidence either way one has no reason to suppose that they were lying. It would be a suspicious mind indeed that plumped for that conclusion.

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Say you were to stumble across a dusty old box in the attic of your old house. And you open it up and inside there are some old letters and you read them. They are love letters.

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Could you form the impression that the person writing the letter loved the recipient of the letter. Could you form the sense that they were not lying in what they wrote?

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Yes, one could come to those conclusions.What does that have to do with faith in God?I hope you aren't trying to equate those love letters with the Bible, because they are not in any way comparable, other than being on paper.And, as I said, just because they believe what they are saying doesn't mean that they aren't gravely mistaken.Being wrong is not the same as willful deception.Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

Well if you came to believe in God and were told by someone "Here's the Bible - its his word" and you went off and read it and found that the person described (and talking) therein was the same as the person you had come to know then you would have good reason to trust other things that he said that you didn't know by personal revelation. Knowing something of a persons character is one way to crosscheck on whether what is being said fits with what is already established. (Hence the expression "out of character")There are other things as well. Take lusting for example. I would have done a lot of that before I was a Christian (somewhat less now) and my circle wouldn't have seen anything at all wrong with it (they still don't). I had some hazy, background notion that it wasn't kosher - and not just in the sense of making the lustee feel uncomfortable (I got good at avoiding that after years of practice: gentleman that I am). Then I read that it is wrong and why it is wrong and it all fits and makes sense. The background, hazy become foreground clarityOr take larger tranches. At the moment I'm doing a Great Debate with Larni about the book of Romans. Paul makes a closely knit, internally consistant with the Bible-as-a-whole, argument. You can't chop out/add bits without affecting the balance. If Paul is telling porkies, then you would have to have good reason as to why he went through all this trouble and how 66 books written over whatever number of years they were written fit together so well. The more you examine it the more impossible becomes the notion "it was written by a bunch of desert nomads"A mistake, deliberate or otherwise will affect the workings of any mechanism. I don't see the malfunction if it is considered as a whole (as opposed to the "you can make the Bible say anything you want" cherry picking that so often goes on)Which reminds me: you never did come back on the "God, Jealous in the style of a green-eyed-monster" rebuttal Whilst people in those days weren't tecnological this is sometimes extrapolated to infer they were less intelligent than we are. A person dies and is laid in a tomb for a number of days in the heat. People then, as now, would pretty well know (and smell) what death is. Then the guy is called out from his tomb by a man named Jesus. Now either there was some fiendishly clever conspiracy going on which made people bury a man who was actually alive - or the man was raised from the dead.Its not the kind of thing you make mistakes about. But they could be lying of course. But lets suppose they were innocent of lying until proven guilty. And seeing as there is no empirical evidence, proof we do not have nor shall we ever (this side of the grave/2nd coming)Only belief based on whatever evidence we have at our general disposal. You believe not, I believe so.You pays your money and you takes you eternal destination (if you'll allow me the works = salvation lapse here )Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

The idea that there was a global flood within the last 100,000 years is factually disproved.Whether there might have been a local flood, and whether that could have been the basis for the Noah's Ark story, is unsettled.

There is no eyewitness testimony on Noah's flood.

Of course, but the letters themselves wouldn't amount to much more than circumstantial evidence. I'd still have a chance of totally misinterpreting what I was reading.

The personal criticism are inappropriate, and contrary to the forum rules. Be careful to avoid them in the future.

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Say you were to stumble across a dusty old box in the attic of your old house. And you open it up and inside there are some old letters and you read them. They are love letters.

​

Could you form the impression that the person writing the letter loved the recipient of the letter. Could you form the sense that they were not lying in what they wrote? Most justice systems I know of hold to the idea that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty (which makes sense in general: someone will tell the truth unless they have some motivation to lie - truth is the motiveless default).

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If you wanted to know the "truth", you would try and explore further and establish the context in which those letters were produced. It could well be that the person writing them was a con artist, trying to scam a poor old lady of her money. They could be the writings of a young man trying to get into the bed of large-breasted young lady. Or they could be the honest account of two people in love - it's hard to say from two letters in isolation?It's the same with the bible, if you take it as your sole source, you can say - well this all appears to be true, but when you take the wider context - then quickly you realise that most of the things described either cannot have happened at all or did not happen as described.Circular reasoning of "It's in those letters and therefore it must be true because it's in those letters" is of no use at all.Edited by CK, : No reason given.

Faith This does not mean that they were lying or not lying. It means that they are capable of lying and I state that {byou cannot know[/b] with out knowing the individuals themselves. Indeed that is the nature of deceit in that the person doing the decieving appears to be genuine.Since there is no way to know the people's minds through mere reporting in biblical texts you do not have sufficient evidence to make such an observation save through blind acceptance that these people indeed were not decieved nor being decietful. This is the reason I state that you are being hypocritical. It is no more an ad hominem than if I were to say you are not being properly critical of the texts you would have us accept as valid.Nevertheless , I apologize to you if you have felt personally slighted by my comment since the fact of the matter is that it is ad hominem if you consider it such.My question still remains in place though. What makes their veracity greater than any others seperate from the function of your belief?

We all have faith in something.Richard Dawkins, the evangelical atheist believes that there is nothing that is beyond the physical and that probably there is nothing beyond that which can eventually be discovered through the scientific method.He and others see their faith in humanity as the final arbitrator as a virtue, although they might not state it that way.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I really don't think Faith's statements are hypocritical. What is disturbing to me is that she sincerely believes a particular traditional religious teaching about the world that is extreme in its assertions of a world view for which their is much falsifying evidence and no supportive evidence.The emotional hold of this fantasy on millions of people amazes me but although there are hypocrites who prey on this vast audience say by scamming them with faith healing or just revivals doesn't mean that most of them are insincere. I suppose I even understand their sincere expression of belief. I guess I am appalled at their willingness to refuse any rationality in order to believe in their unsupported traditional viewpoint.Faith (the concept not the person) is clearly the value of obediance that leaders seek. Faith is a virtue because the High Priest and Kings of Jerusalem wanted obediance to their laws and faith that God was behind them and would punish unbelievers was a very useful way to gain compliance. Same with Christianity. If you have faith in Christ and believe that Falwell, or Robertson is conveying God's word then you will send the money and vote as they suggest.Good and bad things come from this faith. People give aid to the poor and suffering but also blindly support the vast sums that Bush and the military industrial complex are spending on wars of profit for a few wealthy men, but because of blind faith believers only see God's will being done and damn the environment.Global warming? Who cares, Christ is returning anyday real soon now and this earth is slated to be demolished anyway. Might as well, as another intellectual giant of a conservatives says, to rape it while you can. Scum like Cheney and Bush don't even care about their descendents. They got theirs and they don't care what kind of suffering anyone else is left with.Get it while the getting is good. Make the planet a cesspool or garbage dump as long as they get wealth then screw everyone else. This is a hypocritical religion, but Faith the person is simply being duped and used by these people. Those are the hypocrites who get wealthy by laying waste to this planet exploiting the ancient delusions of the pious and faithful.lfen

Whilst your broad brushstroking of faith concentrated heavily on the negative varieties they have little to do with the faith in God. It is a little bit rich to lay the state of the world at the feet of a particular faith when so many faiths contribute to the problem prime of which is faith in mankind to actually do anything about it.Its not a matter of not caring or not doing anything to minimise the problem. But to have faith that mankind will lay aside his self-interest so as to do anything effectual about it strikes me as infinitely more ludicrous that I think even my faith strikes you. The god-in-own-image-and-likeness before which mankind bows is his global economic system - Capitalism. This god demands our planet as a sacrifice (and every year he demands 5% growth to boot or in lieu of that, the politician who stands in the way of said growth)If someone could figure how to get 5% year-on-year econmic growth without raping the planet or alternatively, convince the public to vote in politicians who will change the worlds economic system from capitalism then I'll renounce my faith or eat my hat - whichever you prefer.{AbE} Some faith-sapping figures: The solution: A Global Political Initiative Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.