Why is Faith so Important to God?

Here is a question that popped out of the thread Religion and Chain Letters thread that has gone unaddressed.Why is the quality of faith or belief in the unseeable so supremely important to God? A false god or meme-complex requires such blind faith, but the real God?In Christianity, faith in God is the principle doctrine - all the rest are details. If one believes the NT, faith is the central deciding factor as to where an individual will allegedly spend eternity; eternal bliss or eternal torment. This message is repeated over and over in the NT.Does it make sense that a being who supposedly deals with the material world (walking in the garden, flood, stopping sun, miracles, etc) would withhold tangible evidence of his existence but yet place supreme value on a specific faith or belief in the unseeable? What is it about faith that God supposedly values above all else?This critical importance of faith is even more incredulous when one considers the evidence that faith is fickle. There are thousands and thousands of faiths and variations of faiths. Without evidence faith is ungrounded so the evidence would indicate. Material evidence does wonders for unifying a faith. For example, most have faith in gravity and that the sun will rise tomorrow.Anybody here have an answer to this question? I searched the web for answers or apologetics to this question and have found nothing.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

"Blind Faith" is a loaded word and really not very concise. I probably should not have used the term.However "unseeable energies" is even more of a fuzzy nebulous term without meaning or significance. BTW I hear that crystals also have this property of unseeable energies, whatever that means.Nevertheless, I fully expected my question to be misunderstood. I am not questioning the degree of blindness of your faith.I am asking very specifically, why would faith be so supremely important to God?Why would the creator of the universe, value belief in the unperceivable, to such a degree that it supposedly dictates whether you spend eternity in heaven or hell? Then to highlight my incredulity on this point I make the following observations on the problems with faith....

Faith is fickle and does not lead to a strong unified belief, precisely because it is not grounded.

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Faith in the unperceivable is exactly what is required to promote a false god or idea. Is this a coincidence or clue?

Yes you are correct, why does god value our faith in his unseen existence as the most supreme quality.I could go on and on with biblical passages on how faith in Jesus is the only way to salvation but this one more general and should suffice..."And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." (Hebrews 11:6) Edited by iceage, : reread Brian reply and responded appropriately

"faith" is not evidence of existence of God. The Heavens Gate practitioners had faith so do suicide bombers. The Heavens Gate faith does not prove there is a space ship behind a comet. That is the question! Why would God make faith in the unseeable as a means to be "saved". It is a foundational question that is so often implied but never to my knowledge defended.As i pointed out such faith or belief in the imperceivable is a requirement and necessary to promote a false belief. Is it a coincidence that the god of the bible requires such a faith or a clue. And the evidence is..... Please don't say faith as that would be most circular. Edited by iceage, : Added subtitleEdited by iceage, : No reason given.

While I wait here for a Christian response to this question (btw thanks jar for your input) I just noticed this passage from Hebrews:"And without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6)Which correlates quite well with..."And without faith it is impossible to propagate a false god"Any Christian want to defend this and tell me where I am wrong...

Well Ian I will tell you that this is best response I have received to date on this question. It's poetry.However, like a lot of poetry it is nonsensical and illogical. Maybe the meaning is just too deep for me. I tried parsing your first sentence with some effort. If I remove some of the unnecessary words to simplify we have:"God-supplied Faith engenders belief in God - long after it fueled a belief in God"Huh? Help me out.Further the usage of belief and faith in this sentence are close synonyms making the above sentence tautological as best. Replace faith with belief and it reads the same. Unless you can differentiate you action of "faith" in some tangible way, then it is common ("universal currency") with others action of "faith". In other words, faith in the unseeable involves dependence on God and that is what God ultimately wants.I will offer that faith in the unseeable involves independence from the rational world and dependence on the imperceptible passions of the mind - a boat afloat without an anchor to the material world. I like how Crashfrog once put it "I just realized that it was me talking to myself".And I have some evidence to back up this claim; namely the thousands of variations of faiths in the unseeable - and I am just referring to those within the Christian realm. A Mormon's faith in God is significantly different than yours; as is the JW as is the Christian Identity brotherhood as is the Davidian's as is the Phelpian's as is the Catholic's.And this is simultaneously evidence against your substantial claim of God-supplied faith. If there is such a thing as God-supplied faith one would predict some uniform expression of faith world wide.In short faith in the unseeable is fickle as per the evidence. I can see no logical reason why God would value such faith in the unseeable so greatly. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

Iano please slow down reread your statement and you might spot the redundancy. Can you explain the difference between "engenders belief" in God and "fueled a belief in God"? Or does belief have two different biblical definitions here? You mean your "faith == evidence". Search a Biblical dictionary and provide the reference. I looked it up in both Holman's and Easton's. That is a perfectly nice English dictionary definition...

quote:

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Faith n 1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.

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Oh creating your cultist lingo does not differentiate your faith in any way - in fact creating your lingo makes it all the more the same. The fallacy is that you evidently believe you have the "one true" faith yet you have absolutely nothing to demonstrate that. Your claim is that there is such a thing as "God-supplied faith". So does God selectively administer this "God-supplied faith" to predominately Christian cultures? and Christian households?And if Christianity was the true religion would you expect it to be more or less fractured then any other if the there is such a thing as biblical "God-supplied faith"? Faith is evidence in imaginary worlds.

No this is sophistry.The reason that one believes the brakes will stop the car is prior experience of them doing so and not faith. Your are playing on the various forms of the term faith/belief. You may have convinced yourself but nobody else. The form of faith you are using above is evidence based faith. The _only_ reason you have faith in the brakes is because you have evidence of brakes stopping a car before.If I put you in the cockpit of a 747 would your faith help you determine what any particular button actually does? No. Your faith is not evidence and is useless. If you push a button, and to relief, only the cockpit light comes on you now have faith in what would happen if you pressed that button again.Faith is not evidence. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

I can appreciate that you feel your "faith" is justified. I disagree (and wow especially chariot debris at Aqaba!) but that is not the question.People are so use to answering just how they faith is justified they miss the implied assertion - _why_ would God so dearly value you faith-in-the-invisible in the first place?When you examine the question in the abstract and remove all the laden verbiage and all the religious ornaments the core concept that a God would use faith-in-the-invisible as the criteria for salvation/eternal torment is absurd.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

Heinrik, sometimes the fewest words says the most....

Hi Truthlover.... It has taken me more than 25 years to ask that question. However Jesus was talking to those who had the opportunity to witness miracles - I wish I had a time machine. The bible is riddled with the "believe and be saved" message. This probably sums up the message (for that matter maybe the whole New Testament)... Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

The lack of unity in the interpretation of this so called evidence is one of the reasons I discount it. Given a body of evidence, the better the evidence the more unified will be the conclusions based on it. If you look around there are hundreds if not thousands of very very different interpretations of that evidence. In short, faith is fickle and subjective as the evidence so easily demonstrates.Jesus said if you don't believe in him then believe in his works and miracles. Well we don't have such miracles to examine just hearsay and documents were we don't even have the originals or were even titled copies until centuries after the events - we don't have a clue who these people were that wrote these works. And interestingly there are not even any disinterested parties to attest to these miracles.The way I see the Christian question presented, it is like temporal life is one big gullibility contest and you win for the lack of trying.But I come to this point and step back 30 feet. Why would a God even value such belief? As I pointed out earlier a false religious meme-complex requires faith, God the creator of the universe? hardly.

The problem is that faith has several different meanings and nuances, which confuses this type of discussion (see iano's response for verification). Perhaps "belief" is a better word since it has a more concise meaning. The bible is not evidence of God but evidence that humans tend to worship themselves, their culture and anthropomorphically envision God as some sort of royal warrior alpha male.The bible repeatedly refers to "belief" as essential for salvation. Why would that be?Why would God require and value "belief" and provide insufficient and conflicting evidence? The fact that the evidence is insufficient, incomplete and conflicting is easily demonstrated by the thousands of different religions, creeds and denominations.Consider how many different laws of gravity are there? There is one. If God wanted us to know God and God's nature it would be similar to the law of gravity. No guess work required.What is interesting, and this is my major point, is that meme-complexes, false theologies and cults require and demand "a leap or faith" based on beliefs without evidence. Why would the real God also require the same? Again why would god require "believing". A leap of faith will land you further from God IMHO. Cults and false religions all require a "leap of faith".RR I don't want to sound too critical here but I think this underlying implied premise is not very often considered or questioned. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.