Why is Faith a Virtue?

Coincidently I found this recent book just arrived in my library's new book section. I've just started to dip into it. Very interesting arguments with as much archeology as they can pack into it.lfen

Is that what you call the newspaper reports of events you didn't witness yourself? TV reports? All histories? Sure, "hearsay" of that sort.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

We have very few mass suicides or suicide bombings based on faith in the inerrancy of newspaper reports.

And there are mistakes made by reporters everyday. The news is an approximation. If they had camera's on the scene it's can be better data than if not, but footage can be edited to make people say things they didn't say for example. Why would God choose such an unreliable way of communicating such important information to humanity? really, I just can't buy this of a being who is said to be capable of the laws of gravity and the creation of the universe. Such a being would have something that just functioned like gravity. Instead in the Bible we find only recognizable human fallibilities and psychology.And what if the evidence contradicts the hearsay? Even the eyewitness testimony. I recall reading about someone who died of headshot wounds to the head. His girlfriend was reported as saying it was suicide. There was some sort of mob involvement. He had three gunshot wounds to the head. Was it self inflicted? As my memory is so bad this story must remain an apocryphal example.However back to Finkelstein and Silberman's latest book. There are no ruins of the magnitude described in the Bible at the level of David and Solomon in Jerusalem. It was a small village then.So the eye witness testimony has grown with the telling. Just like the stories about King Arthur, or Davey Crockett. Eyewitness testimony tends to get retold and as it is handed down the generations it "improves" in the telling and incorporates blended material from other sources. There is no mystery about the ways this happen. It's well documented in many times and places.lfen

If you didn't see the credit to Bram Stoker on the cover of his book Dracula you might make an awful mistake...

The ONLY point was if you trust any part of any "hearsay" or secondhand report on any subject whatever, and we all do all the time, there is nothing intrinsically untrustworthy about the Bible simply because it is a written witness report.Of course I'd claim it's a lot more trustworthy because of its multiple mutually enhancing reports over 1500 years.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Oh good grief. The analogy was only intended to demonstrate that we all have to depend on secondhand or "hearsay" reports all the time, not to claim that they're all inerrant.

Oh good grief. Then stop that analogy. If you want to compare the decision of whether or not to bring an umbrella to work to the decision on whether or not to crash a jet into a building then go ahead. You can compare the decision on which team one the football game to the decision to commit suicide for the spaceship behind the comet. Or you can stop dodging the question and answer it head on. Also, you need to take note of the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning as well as subjective v. objective facts.Why is faith a virtue?

Adenosine Tri Phosphate the energy currency of the human body.

Okay, but now that I've introduced Finkelstein and Silberman's scholarship regarding history and archeology I think that you can't claim the Bible is sufficient evidence and that none else exists.Finkelstein and Silberman are pointing to evidence that contradicts the hearsay specifically in regards to the claimed size and grandeur of Jerusalem, the temple, and the palace of David and Solomon.Do you agree that the bibical accounts are exaggerated then?lfen

I'd prefer not to get caught up with the evidence. And I understand it's hard. But let's just talk about faith.For those who believe, please, take one second and imagine that what you believe is false. Imagine that you are an atheist. Now go back to your normal self. What seperates you from the atheist is faith. We all have the same evidence. You believers just have faith in that evidence.Why is faith a virtue?Why is faith a virtue when it can lead to things like Jonestown?Edited by Chief Infidel, : No reason given.

The problem is that you can't just talk about "faith" as if all versions of faith in anything whatever were equivalent. Faith in Satan, for instance, doesn't have any virtue whatever.I don't see anything more to say on this subject. I thought we all pretty much answered it, you saw no virtue in anything we said, and that's the end of it.

on david and solomon? i'm surprised they have any! now i'm curious.

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At this request many believers here have been known either to run off or to change the subject.

Should this injunction apply just to belief in God, or to other types of belief?Suppose we believe in a certain moral code. Should we "take one second and imagine that what we believe is false"?Suppose one of the doctrines of our code is the idea that racism is evil. Should we take one second and imagine that what we believe is false?