Is faith the answer to cognitive dissonance?

Its DOI... the Declaration of Independence.

No, what happens here is that fundies twist and turn like twisting turning things to stop themselves having CD.And you say that Shakespear is universally attributed to his plays but you must admit that there is an outside chance that he ghost wrote for somebody else.

Ahh, I see.That was when it all went bad for you guys?

Whatever... subject

We can even use a specific example, if you'd like. Message 54
My question to you in that thread was... what's the duct-tape represent in real life? It doesn't even have to invlove evolution. The duct-tape could represent any objective, verifiable idea within reality that you think is "evidence for faith".This is the cognitive dissonance. The idea of this wonderful analogy, but with nothing to actually apply it towards in real-life. I agree that the duct-tape in your analogy is a fantastic indication of "something going on" (possibly divine, even). However, the analogy includes a cognitive dissonance when attempted to transfer to reality. What, in reality, can the duct-tape actually represent to show that "something is going on" (possibly divine)?Or, perhaps you were just using this duct-tape analogy to show a scenario where it would be plausible to have faith-based-on-evidence, and didn't actually intend for it to be applicable to real life? In which case, no cognitive dissonance would exist. However, no "evidence for faith" would exist, either.

I think you and I have pretty conclusively agreed that just about everything we believe, no matter how well evidenced it may be or how confident we may be, could be BS. I am saying that being told that the less you question an unbelievable claim the more "blessed" you will be smacks of BS. It smacks of BS in the same sort of way that Scientology smacks of BS. Being created by someone who said "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."If I was starting a religion that required people to believe outrageous things then I would try to convince people that the less they questioned those claims the more they would be immaterially rewarded in some way. In that sense the whole "blessed are those who believe but do not see" thing smacks of BS.

So?

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck.......

yeah Peg, I understand what you think about faith but faith does not start with evidence. For instance, look at the story of Abraham and Isaac; Abraham absurdly believed everything would be okay if he just sacrifised his Son. He had faith in God but he did not have any evidence that everything would end well; that is faith.Faith in marriage is a bad "example" *cough comparison cough*. I understand you line of thoughts but it is simply not correct. When you have faith in God deliverering a savior to mankind they did not have any evidence, but they had faith. I would recommend you to look into Sren Kierkegaard (Christian existentialist philosoph); genius guy, explains it way better than I will probably be able to ever do.Hmm you might have a point about miracles, however, it is still in contradiction to whatever we have non-questionable evidence for. But I probably agree with you if we think miracles are likely to happen, then it is not cognitive dissonance, but I am still skeptic to that explanation since I think you believe that because of the bible, shortly; circular logic.

So in essence you don't feel any cognitive dissonance or discomfort at having your previous beliefs proven wrong because you didn't really care very much if they were correct in the first place. Flip-flopping between beliefs about the historical accuracy of the Flood wouldn't be painful as you don't have any strong compulsion to believe true things.This interpretation fits with my opinion on the subject; cognitive dissonance increases along with the importance one places on being correct in their beliefs. People who have "faith" are not disturbed by cognitive dissonance because they are not particularly concerned about their beliefs being true.

it does no such thing.The word Yom was studied and found to be used in many varied ways in the hebrew language. This gave some people the idea that it does not only mean a 24 hour day.its as simple as that.

I can see that this could very well be true: that yom was meant to mean other than 'day'.However, as this is interpretation, how can you say for sure it is the correct interpretation (especially when YEC have absolute faith it is equal to day?).

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purpledawn writes:

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But the scenario you gave isn't adapting the belief to what is written. The scenario you gave adapts what is written to current knowledge. IOW, changing what is written.

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it does no such thing.

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The word Yom was studied and found to be used in many varied ways in the hebrew language. This gave some people the idea that it does not only mean a 24 hour day.

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its as simple as that.

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Your scenario in Message 63 is not adapting belief to what is written. In that scenario you are trying to adapt what is written to current knowledge. You're trying to make the conflict go away.As it has been told to you many, many, many, many times before; how the word is used in a sentence determines which meaning is used. Yes, even in the Hebrew language. When there are no pointers that tell us to use the figurative meaning, we don't just decide to use it anyway. Just because a word has many meanings, doesn't mean we just arbitrarily pick the one we want.By picking the meaning that suits your purpose, as opposed to what the writer was saying; you are trying to change what was written to fit with current evidence.That is not what scientist do when they reevaluate research or find new evidence.Just a reminder that this thread isn't a discussion about the word yom, so don't take it down that road.

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Scripture is like Newton’s third law of motionfor every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In other words, for every biblical directive that exists, there is another scriptural mandate challenging it.
-- Carlene Cross in The Bible and Newton’s Third Law of Motion

you dont seem to understand that its evidence that causes a person to have faithWe see Gods acts of the past as evidence for his acts into the future. We havnt seen the future events yet, but we have faith that they will happen because of what has happened in the past.Abraham was aware of Gods acts of the past and so had faith in what God said about the future.Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

We cant say for sure what the exact length of the 'yom' is in Genesis, but we can say for sure that the word means 'any' length. When that is factored into the equation, and we take an honest look at the possiblity that the earth is much older then 6,000 years, then we adjust our teaching accordingly.No one can be dogmatic and say it is 24 hours, and no one can be dogmatic and say that is 1million years. But the physical evidence should lead us to conclude that the word in this instance means a very long time....thousdands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years or a billion years....it could be any of them.