Why is Faith a Virtue?

You could have told us it was just another dodgy televangelist...

Sorry about the Dawkins jibe but he is the medias athiest-in-waiting. Anything to add, sure - but its late. This one springs to mind though. For my own part I can't remember asking anybody to respect my faith here or anywhere else. I don't mind if they do or don't - that's their affair. I imagine the 'respect' a Faith ( Christianity in my case) attracts is a function of the number and influence of believers adhering to whatever belief system you care to mention.As for proof and evidence. It depends on what you mean by that. If you mean measurable in test tubes and the like - then no, I have none of that type (at least of the type that might satisfy some). But that is not to say empirical evidence is the only evidence of things in which one can have faith. Empiricism only applies to certain branches of knowledge and there is no reason (empirical or otherwise) to suggest that anything that doesn't lend itself to empiricism falls into the strawteapot that Dawkins attempts to bring to the boil. In sealing himself into the teabag of empiricism-uber-alles, Dawkins tells us more about his own faith system than he does about anyone elses brew.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Hi Sis,Just back from a week in secular-land. I thought it would never end.But I did get a good tan at least

Yes of course I do. But I wouldn't ask them to believe my faith (or respect it). I'd ask them to believe what he says. My function is simply to point them to him (a beggar pointing other beggars to where the food is - as it is oft described). It may be that my faith (in the sense of my certainty) results in someone considering checking out what he says for themselves when they might not have considered it up to that point. In that case they would be demonstrating a certain amount of respect for what I say - but I don't ask it of them. And if they do come to believe what he says then that is a matter between them and him. It's not my faith they would be respecting in so far as it results in them believing him.If someone does come to believe like I do (ie: we share the same faith in him) then they will have gotten the evidence necessary for them to form that belief from him as I once did. I think it would be irrational to believe something like this if there was no evidence from him. That would be faith in what I or others say. What I would call 'blind belief'. Dodgy territory that. I pointed it out in a post above. Dawkins is an empiricist, ie: if you can't stick it in a test tube, prod, poke and measure it then it doesn't count as 'evidence'.But he cannot verify his thinking empirically or otherwise. His is a philosophy, and a common one. But his philosophy is just one of a great number of philosophies. There is no good reason to suppose he is correct (except to say, "empirically there is no evidence" - which is simply the cry of other empiricists). On the other hand you have millions who testify to a personal relationship with God. Dawkins might suppose as he supposes as to why that is the case - but he is simply speculating according to the tenets of his philosophy.The strawman is to suppose empiricism is the only way to garner evidence about things then demolish God because the evidence for him isn't classically empirical Well we cannot know that, for it is as we find it. You cannot be absolutely certain of something which is impossible to test the certainty of. Your faith is blind The reason someone believes is not that they have heard of Christianity or read the NT in the first instance. The primary reason why someone believes is because God brings them to the point of being able to. Like I say, believing something for which you have no evidence would be irrational (or something else).In order to be certain one would need evidence of the very highest order. This I have and I just tell others about where/how to find it.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I'm sure his profile helps him sell his books. Don't you think?His analysis is spot on - according to empiricist dogma. A made-to-measure analysis in other words

Hardly - unless a persons spirit would be acceptable to you as one of the 'senses' empiricists include in their dogma. Which I suspect it isn't.

Read it again Rick. Better said: "But to get the evidence God has to bring you to the point of belief. There has to be a reason to believe before you can believe (otherwise you are being irrational: blind belief). God does that work - you don't" Yup. An amusing demolition of a straw godEdited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Did you mean that factually or tentitively?

Logically this is incorrect. IF all men are fallen AND God gave the special dispensation AND let Faith in on that fact THEN hypocrisy it would not be. Would it?You could always withdraw the ad hom before too many log on and see it Sidelined

What I was pointing out was that Dawkins tea party was an example of philosophical empiricism. "We can't disprove Thor but nobody actually believes in Thor... we just go one god further".Why does Richard not believe in Thor or any other god do you think?

Empiricism, Empiricism. All is empiricism.Can you not tell when someone is telling the truth or lying Schraf. I know your in retail so the skills might need some honing. But like, can you not just tell?

Personal revelation would be evidence would it not? Like, if God made himself manifest to you in a way which didn't involve your usual senses (for he could per definition do so)what higher level of evidence would satisfy you? There is no reason to suppose empirical evidence is supreme so one shouldn't get to bogged down in that - empiricism is not a virtue.And if many other people described him in the same way this would help you rid yourself of the notion that you were crazy (otherwise there are a lot more crazy people in the world than we thought and who,strangely, are crazy in the same way)And say you had a personal revelation without ever reading the Bible and found that the person described in the Bible is as you found them through personal revelation. Uncannily alike. Would this testify to both your sanity and the veracity of the Bible (purported up to that point as being word of the person who made themselves manifest to you)? You are entitled to admit into your court whatever class of evidence you desire. And exclude whatever class you desire. It is your court afterall. A believer has proof which has been deemed sufficient for their court. There is no argument which suggests that your court is superior to theirs (that I know of). Each to their own.As far as being a virtue, the virtue is a function of the person who assigns faith to be one (I read virtue as being equivilent to "approved of" "a positive thing" here). And in this case it is God who approves of faith in a person. Faith in this instance would be a trust in him, believing what he promises, for example. God approves of that. Of course a person would already have to have something of a personal relationship with him in order to trust him and believe what he says: some prior experience. This is not the same as the foundational faith that he exists: for he gave that faith to the person and so would be strange that God would consider the person having that faith as being virtuous for having something he gave them. It doesn't really. The answers you get just don't satisfy you is all. It seems to me that you will only admit "5 senses" proof into your court and you cannot accuse someone of dodging the question just because you won't accept the evidence. That's essentially it Chief: your deciding empirical-only, but you have no fundamental basis on which to suggest that this is the highest court in the land. Its your personal choice to so limit the evidence.You know what they say about pointing fingers That's a rather simplistic, glass-half-empty way to look at it, is it not? Look what unquestioning faith in the scientific method has achieved. It isn't necessarily. Faith in Hitler wasn't good. Faith in God will always be (God the person - not the Religions which claim to 'represent' God (as if he needed representation!) Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Say you were to stumble across a dusty old box in the attic of your old house. And you open it up and inside there are some old letters and you read them. They are love letters.Could you form the impression that the person writing the letter loved the recipient of the letter. Could you form the sense that they were not lying in what they wrote? Most justice systems I know of hold to the idea that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty (which makes sense in general: someone will tell the truth unless they have some motivation to lie - truth is the motiveless default).I suppose one can suggest reasons why the person writing might be lying and if these reasons are deemed by yourself to be very good then I suppose you can make up your mind that what was written was a lie. For want of any empirical evidence either way one has no reason to suppose that they were lying. It would be a suspicious mind indeed that plumped for that conclusion.

Well if you came to believe in God and were told by someone "Here's the Bible - its his word" and you went off and read it and found that the person described (and talking) therein was the same as the person you had come to know then you would have good reason to trust other things that he said that you didn't know by personal revelation. Knowing something of a persons character is one way to crosscheck on whether what is being said fits with what is already established. (Hence the expression "out of character")There are other things as well. Take lusting for example. I would have done a lot of that before I was a Christian (somewhat less now) and my circle wouldn't have seen anything at all wrong with it (they still don't). I had some hazy, background notion that it wasn't kosher - and not just in the sense of making the lustee feel uncomfortable (I got good at avoiding that after years of practice: gentleman that I am). Then I read that it is wrong and why it is wrong and it all fits and makes sense. The background, hazy become foreground clarityOr take larger tranches. At the moment I'm doing a Great Debate with Larni about the book of Romans. Paul makes a closely knit, internally consistant with the Bible-as-a-whole, argument. You can't chop out/add bits without affecting the balance. If Paul is telling porkies, then you would have to have good reason as to why he went through all this trouble and how 66 books written over whatever number of years they were written fit together so well. The more you examine it the more impossible becomes the notion "it was written by a bunch of desert nomads"A mistake, deliberate or otherwise will affect the workings of any mechanism. I don't see the malfunction if it is considered as a whole (as opposed to the "you can make the Bible say anything you want" cherry picking that so often goes on)Which reminds me: you never did come back on the "God, Jealous in the style of a green-eyed-monster" rebuttal Whilst people in those days weren't tecnological this is sometimes extrapolated to infer they were less intelligent than we are. A person dies and is laid in a tomb for a number of days in the heat. People then, as now, would pretty well know (and smell) what death is. Then the guy is called out from his tomb by a man named Jesus. Now either there was some fiendishly clever conspiracy going on which made people bury a man who was actually alive - or the man was raised from the dead.Its not the kind of thing you make mistakes about. But they could be lying of course. But lets suppose they were innocent of lying until proven guilty. And seeing as there is no empirical evidence, proof we do not have nor shall we ever (this side of the grave/2nd coming)Only belief based on whatever evidence we have at our general disposal. You believe not, I believe so.You pays your money and you takes you eternal destination (if you'll allow me the works = salvation lapse here )Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Whilst your broad brushstroking of faith concentrated heavily on the negative varieties they have little to do with the faith in God. It is a little bit rich to lay the state of the world at the feet of a particular faith when so many faiths contribute to the problem prime of which is faith in mankind to actually do anything about it.Its not a matter of not caring or not doing anything to minimise the problem. But to have faith that mankind will lay aside his self-interest so as to do anything effectual about it strikes me as infinitely more ludicrous that I think even my faith strikes you. The god-in-own-image-and-likeness before which mankind bows is his global economic system - Capitalism. This god demands our planet as a sacrifice (and every year he demands 5% growth to boot or in lieu of that, the politician who stands in the way of said growth)If someone could figure how to get 5% year-on-year econmic growth without raping the planet or alternatively, convince the public to vote in politicians who will change the worlds economic system from capitalism then I'll renounce my faith or eat my hat - whichever you prefer.{AbE} Some faith-sapping figures: The solution: A Global Political Initiative Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.