Faith and Well-Being

For the last several years (six or so?) I have identified myself as an Agnostic Theist. Anyone who reads my posts can probably figure out my beliefs, but here is a blog I started (and stopped) a while back that sums it up:

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"Agnostic Theism"from Secular Religion:

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As an Agnostic Theist, I hold to the belief that knowing GOD is inherently impossible; we can only define, at most, what we believe about GOD.

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Admittedly, this degree of faith is a little 'weak'; the GOD involved is not well defined and there are no statements of knowledge involved with the belief. I've noticed, lately, though a strong desire to strengthen my belief and faith as things go well in my life. A part of me wants to embrace this desire and make stronger proclamations about what I believe in and what I think can be known or said about the GOD I believe in and other religious notions. At the same time, a logical part of me realizes that doing this would be rather hypocritical: to have strong faith in good times and weaker faith in worse times. So, I have resisted this urge on the premise that it would be wrong to give into it.Anyway, I don't think I've ever started a topic to discuss my own faith and belief, but I'm interested in talking about this with the folks here who are maybe more and maybe less faithful than I.Maybe Faith/Belief Forum?

Faith in the things I mentioned, and perhaps even a leaning toward Christian-esque beliefs. I think the thing that motivated me to start this thread was the conflict between the belief I feel compelled to have and the logic that tells me it is no good. The blog was a flop.

I don't know why my significant other would have any role in this.

Perhaps. Though the use of the Greek term instead of the Latin one does seem to alter the nature of the God in question and the process of finding belief in Him/Her/It.

Considering I didn't know my now girlfriend even existed at the time I became an Agnostic Theist, I do not see her as playing a big role in the development of my faith.Since I believe my logic and reasoning are independent of my feelings about things and people, I also cannot see how she could influence my intellectual (as opposed to spiritual) processes.I was raised as a Christian, a Creationist in fact, and largely lost my Christian faith through my adolescent and teenage years. When I entered college I was almost a full-blown militant Atheist, a feeling strengthened by experiences while in highschool (not actually in school, just during that period of my life) where I was judged negatively due to my lack of belief (the associated events of which experiences led me to EvC).The development of my faith was two pronged:

1. Through careful reasoning I deduced that beliefs and knowledge are separate faculties of thought that can coexist even when their content is contradictory. Courses on logic I took in college further convinced me that this clear and reasoned separation is not only necessary for a healthy belief system but actually leads to stronger less-shakable faith, since my belief and faith are not contingent on the way the world works (hence part of my current dilemma).
2. Events in my personal life led me to believe that there was a GOD that interacted undetectably with the world. In some ways, the very inception of my faith and belief are examples of the conflict I now face, though these few good fortunes no longer form the basis of my belief and there was certainly more to the experiences than just things going well for me at the time.

Prong (1) made prong (2) possible. I now see a complete divorce between my knowledge and my belief with the exception of my personal experiences, which influence both and are the cause of my current conflict between feeling strengthened in my faith and also reasoning that the additional faith is empty, and so not worth my consideration.My logical mind is beating my faith down constantly. And it's not that I'm not afraid to have the additional faith, but just that when (of if) I do develop that faith I want it to be meaningful and deep and not just the product of good times. I believe that strong faith should be preservable in the face of troubling experience; if not then the faith was never real to begin with. I don't want fake faith. I don't want to be a 'reverse Job'.Jon

I don't see a conflict either. The conflict I am having is between knowing that faith that exists only good times is empty faith and weak. It is based on the whims of the world; it is a leaf in the wind.Yet it draws me in though I do not want it. I am not fully convinced that being a Christian requires belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Obviously as a Christian you feel differently and are perfectly justified in your belief. I've never been particularly impressed with Wright's take on the resurrection:

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N.T. Wright in "Jesus' Resurrection and Christian Origins":

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Of course, there are several reasons why people may not want, and often refuse, to believe this. But the historian must weigh, as well, the alternative accounts they themselves offer. And, to date, none of them have anything like the explanatory power of the simple, but utterly challenging, Christian one. The historian’s task is not to force people to believe. It is to make it clear that the sort of reasoning historians characteristically employ inference to the best explanation, tested rigorously in terms of the explanatory power of the hypothesis thus generated points strongly towards the bodily resurrection of Jesus; and to make clear, too, that from that point on the historian alone cannot help. When you’re dealing with worldviews, every community and every person must make their choices in the dark, even if there is a persistent rumour of light around the next corner.

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Wright's taking a deistic approach to the question: he believes that religious propositions can be substantiated by appeal to observations in the natural world. My theistic approach is very different; I do not think that the natural world can tell us anything about matters of faith and belief.Of course, I think theistic faith is stronger specifically because it does not rest on the whims of scientific observation. If Wright is basing his faith in the resurrection on the notion that it is substantiated by the historical evidence, then we must ask ourselves what happens to this faith when (of if) new evidence presents itself.And so that would be where I sand: If I ever developed a faith in Jesus and his resurrection, it would not be because I reasoned my way to that faith but because I accepted it on faith.Jon

My point with calling his position deistic was that he seems to think we can arrive at the fundamentals of the belief through scientific means (in this case, historical study). Aside from that I don't think his position is very deistic at all. And my conception is that science and theology have nothing to do with one another. They cannot agree or disagree because they simply never deal with the same ting. And if one were to seep into the other, it would be subject to all the standards of the other. My position is that faith should be based on faith. If it's based on anything else then it isn't really faith; if belief in the resurrection is based on a preponderance of the evidence, then anyone who examines that evidence should come to the same conclusion. To me that's just ordinary science; and the fact that most people don't come to that conclusion tells me that the evidence for it is pretty weak and that belief in the resurrection is taken mostly on faith (which is just fine as far as I'm concerned). So you do not separate your belief from your knowledge? That's fine. You've given me some good stuff so far and I know you'll have more helpful insights when you get back.

That's not at all what I said, Phat. What I said was: "And my conception is that science and theology have nothing to do with one another. They cannot agree or disagree because they simply never deal with the same ting."The two aren't incompatible. In fact, completely the opposite; there is nothing stopping them from coexisting and their very nature precludes them from disagreement. I don't think faith requires evidence. Science requires evidence. If you have evidence for something, it is silly to say you think it is true as a matter of faith.I do think faith requires some reasoning, though. Your faith should make sense both in relation to itself and in relation to its role in your life. This is a personal feeling, though, based on my own desire to have meaningful and purposeful faith.Faith might not be very logical or beneficial to some people.

Those are your beliefs. And, no, they don't make a damn bit of sense to me. They're free to do whatever they want.

I thought at least one aspect of my faith was clear when I said "I have identified myself as an Agnostic Theist."You know what it means to be a Theist, right?

Which means that by definition the claims are all unevidenced.Nevertheless, the fact that certain beliefs are held on faith and on faith alone does not mean that all beliefs are (see GDR's posts and quotes from N.T. Wright). And those beliefs that are not based on faith and faith alone but are purportedly derived from a preponderance of the evidence are subject to examination by others who are free to weigh them against whatever evidence it is they supposedly stand on.Furthermore, even a belief that does not rest on outside evidence is still subject to the scrutiny of logic and rationalization.Now you may not find any of this to be a big deal, and that's fine. But then you can't cry foul when someone points out that your belief is irrational and unevidenced.Jon

That's all nice, Phat. But what does it have to do with the conflict between feeling stronger faith when life is going well and the knowledge that such faith is ultimately as empty as Job's would have been had he abandoned his faith in God at the first sign of trouble?

I don't think my faith is entirely empty. I just know that if I were to give in to my urges to have stronger faith because my life is going well that the extra faith would be empty.

And what is that supposed to show?Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

But that wasn't you in the video.You really do step over homeless men, don't you?