Is faith the answer to cognitive dissonance?

That's exactly what it means in these passages... well "not seeing" means "having no evidence".

quote:

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24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

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It can't be that. The other diciples had seen Jesus after he was resurrected and Thomas had not. This wasn't about believing if Jesus had exasted or not, it was about him walking around after being crucified. Thomas couldn't believe it unless he saw the nail marks and put his finger in them.Jesus isn't talking about just seeing with your eyes, he's talking about having concrete evidence. Thomas required evidence to believe and Jesus said the blessed are those who believe without evidence.

For me, not at all.If anything, my faith causes cognitive dissonance.

I qualified the evidence with "concrete"... which is what Jesus was talking about. Not just hearing about it, but actually seeing and touching it in order to believe it. The person who requires that kind of evidence to believe does not fall into the blessed crowd, according to Jesus.

So?

Nope. No, my own personal faith does not smack of BS to myself ABE:I should probably mention that I don't consider my faith to be blind either. I'm just saying what the Bible says that Jesus said.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

Irrelevant. No, no, no.Its not just seeing with your eyes 'cause Thomas had to stick his fingers in the holes too.And Jesus is talking in past tense. He doesn't say blessed are those who will believe. he's talking about the people around him at that time that believed he had risen before they have to stick their fingers in the holes to find out for themselves. What about sticking your fingers in the holes? There was more than simply sight there. And presumably, Thomas was seeing Jesus while they were in the same room together, but Thomas didn't have his "Ah-ha!" moment until after he stuck his fingers in the hole. The blessed are those who don't get the visual evidence and have to believe for some other reason rather than those who get to actually see Jesus with thier own eyes!?That doesn't seem very well thought out....

It doesn't matter what I, or the courts, define as evidence. We're discussing what Jesus was talking about. He was certainly talking about evidence that is more than testimony.But now I'm curious, are you saying testimony is concrete evidence? Even in court I don't think it is... Not explicitly, but its implied, and many people see it as that way. Heck, look at the art of the scene: But that doesn't make sense as following from the story.It goes like this: "Hey Tom, Jesus rose. 'Nah, I gotta see this' *sticks finger in*, "OMG, it IS Jesus!" To which Jesus replies (according to you): 'The people who will believe in me with little evidence are lucky that they arent going to be believing something else".No, that just doesn't make sense.It makes more sense that Jesus is talking about people who believe in him without having to see for themselves that its true before they believe.

I believe all kinds of different things without logical proof or material evidence... But since I already believe in God, him temporarily breaking the laws of physics doesn't cause me cognitive dissonance... to an extent It depends on how much of the laws it has to go against.For example, an actual global flood would require a god that is duping damn near everyone.One guy turning water into wine one time... not so much.And actually, with the flood scenario, the breaking wouldn't really be all that "temporary".Honestly though, I fell like I'm the type to error on the side of science, so to speak... The miraculous things I have faith in aren't so spectacular to cause the cognitive dissonance... or so I think

I doubt it because I never felt any discomfort. Although, I don't think my beliefs are held very strongly in the first place.Growing up, I thought the Flud story was true. Then I found out that a global flood didn't happen. So I didn't believe the Flud story was true anymore. I guess since I wasn't really committed to the belief, then I didn't have anything to be dissonant about. However, I can see how a person who's entire worldview rests on a literal inerrancy of the Bible finding out that it has error would have that dissonance.But I don't see faith as being the answer to that dissonance. It comes before it, not after it. I don't feel like I need to justify my beliefs...I think the less spectacular-ness yields less incongruence which elimates the room for the dissonance to be.It seems like you viewing it as a person having a set of beliefs before any investigation and then finding out the errors of the beliefs. But for me, the beliefs are forged from the investigation so right off the bat there's not a lot of incongruence. And the beliefs that are held prior to investigation aren't held strongly enough to cause the dissonance.

I don't dispute that. I realize that I could be accepting some serious BS. I thought you were saying something more than that.

Its DOI... the Declaration of Independence.

Whatever... subject

So?

Right. I wasn't committed to the belief so it was no biggie to realize it was wrong. For someone who's faith in God rests on an inerrant Bible, which rests on The Flud being real, see that The Flud couldn't have happened would challenge their fiath in God and cause cognitive dissonance.But I don't think the OP is correct in the faith being a result of that CD. Its the other way around. The CD is a result of them having that fiath.

Not much and I have a lot of apathy...I'd say I'm committed to Jesus's divinity and God's existence. For that, its not so much a "belief". An experience was convincing and I take it to be real and true as much as, say, me liking the flavor of chocolate. I don't "believe" that I like chocolate, I just like it.Does that make sense?