Where Faith Comes From in the "moderate" Christian religions

are you referring to 'faith' and 'belief' as one in the same? I ask because when I talk about faith, i dont mean a belief system. I view them separately. By way of illustration...a bus/train/car has two components, the driver and the machine. In this case, the machine is the belief system (buddism/christianity/islam) and faith is the driver. Its what motivates one to carry out the requirements of the belief system. I agree with you on that. Many people choose what is most convenient for them. Whereas, it should always be based on truth.

It's not possible that you haven't heard of the idea that evolution is the means that God used to create us in his own image. Are you dismissing that idea out of hand?Edited by Aware Wolf, : readability

He is dismissing it because, unless you can prove that God was able to guide evolution throughout and did so, there is no reason to suspect it.

This just brought to mind the similarities between religious belief and the justifications that are raised for it, and the split brain experiments.In those experiments the corpus callosum (the part that connects the two hemispheres of the brain) of the subjects were severed, in essence making two different brains in charge of opposite halves of the body. Since the speech control center is usually located in the left hemisphere of the brain which controls the right side of the body (and the right half of the visual field), the right side of the brain could be directed to do things that the left side of the brain was unaware of. For instance, the subject's view of their hands were blocked and a variety of objects were placed in range of their grasp. The name of an object was flashed into the left visual field only, meaning that the right brain only saw the word. The left hand (controlled by the right brain) could locate the proper object and hold it, but the subject would be unable to tell the tester what object they held in their hand and would deny having seen the object's name being flashed on the screen.The relevant part of this ramble is I seem to recall that when the left hand was observed by the left brain to seemingly act on its own, the left brain would be compelled to make up a reason for its actions, one that it would believe completely. I think this is called "confabulation", and I cannot help but think it may be somehow related to faith experiences.

Well, maybe, but this statement: seems to be stronger than no "reason to suspect," but rather "is impossible."

Jees! Peg. I go and defend you (to some small degree) and then you go and say:You just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you?When you said:I was allowing that you might have been saying it in the gist of we being a product of evolution. (As opposed to evolution having something to do with abiogenesis.) And rocks fall to Earth miraculously too, I suppose?I had faith in you, Peg. Now if I'm ever sitting in a courtyard and a servant girl comes to me and say, "You also were with Peg," I'll deny it before them all. "I don't know what you're talking about," I'll say. And then if I go out to the gateway, where another girl sees me and says to the people there, "This fellow was with Peg." I'll deny it again, with an oath: "I don't know the woman!" And, if after a little while, those standing there come up to me and say, "Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away." Then I'll call down curses on myself and swear to them, "I don't know the woman!"See if I don't

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.

Thank you for the exchange.
Hope things are well ... I probably should not respond to this, as I am apparently not a christian, moderate or otherwise. However, since I do promote Yeshua as the Anointed One spoken of in Original Testament texts, I will indulge.The truth of the bible is often left to selection. For example, a long enduring tradition suggests that blood revenge techniques were implemented during the service of Moses to appease atonement requirements on Mt. Horeb. However, the Prophet Yirmiyahu declares that such hogwash was never instituted by Moses or the Father and that the tired and senseless gibberish was implemented by malignant priests through later forgeries.The two traditions are mutually exclusive of one another and, as can be seen, I am settled with Yirmiyahu's disclosure as the honest one.My main 'religious' belief may be that sins cannot be 'removed' by blood letting. Yeshua is depicted as delivering a humane tradition during the course of His three year ministry that ignored any and all of the popular 'atonement through blood revenge' concepts that have infilitrated even modern consciousness. Empirically, that seems to be the case. Atonement is not accomplished by murdering innocent animals, whether they have opposable thumbs or otherwise.In the book named after him, Yeshua's brother Yacov is depicted as disclosing to his hearers that undefiled religion before the Father consists of caring for orphans and widows in their misfortune and keeping oneself unstained by the world. I take the last part regarding 'being stained by the world' as a direct reference towards accepting and promoting any and all magical blood ritual's, especially when they are associated with the blood libel of an innocent.So, in short, I base my religious beliefs on promoting humanity, as opposed to dodging accountability towards it.Accountability towards humanity is obviously how the continuous living of the world is accomplished.One Love

An admirable view. I wish all theists thought this way.

personally I believe the spirit of scientific inquiry is built into all humans...this is why so many have some belief in scientific knowledge of some sort.Even those who dont believe in evolution, they do believe in something that caused our being, ie God doing magic....this shows that even if one doesn't believe in the results of applying the scientific method, they still yearn for knowledge, meaning and wisdom.

If one had some sort of prior reason, outside of biology, to believe that the universe as a whole was brought into being by an (omniscient) God, then as a consequence of that proposition one would have to believe that we and our evolution were part of God's plan.It is not necessary to add the proposition that he guided our evolution from a temporal point of view. When a computer programmer writes a program to produce fractals, s/he writes the program, puts in some parameters, and presses the START button: we should think the programmer very inferior if s/he had to keep pausing the program and tinkering with the variables.

Yes; however, this would be a more deistic POV. Theists, though, do believe that God needs to keep tinkering with us and can't leave well enough alone. Good points about active guidance v. initial parameters.

A theist doesn't believe that God needs to tinker with everything. Having said "Let there be gravity", he doesn't need to intervene to make things fall.Christians are doubtless obliged to believe that God has performed some miracles, but they are not thereby obliged to deny that some things happen by secondary causes.

Yes, but this is only in relation to the laws of the universe which God can (apparently) break to perform his miracles. Note my quote below. (emphasis mine)

I have heard that assertion, but I dont agree with it. I hold to 'creation by God' just as the bible says. Animals were created according to their kinds, and man was created in Gods own image.
If i'm told that I should believe in evolution because its taught in science and science is 100% accurate, Should I believe it? Are all beliefs 100% accurate and true just because it is accepted by most people and taught in school???If you lived at the time when the beliefs of Greek philosophers were treated as 100% accurate, then you probably would have believed that the earth was flat and held up by elephants riding on a giant tortus, or that the stars were holes in the sky...or perhaps you would have believed that humans were born from spontaneous generation and evolution.In the 5th century BCE, the Greek philosopher Empedocles believed in spontaneous generation, gradual evolution of organisms and survival of the fittest. Not long after that, Aristotle taught that "man is the highest point of one long and continuous ascent." They started the idea of evolution and it certainly wasnt based on the scientific method then, nor do I believe it is today. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

LOlwell you go right ahead and deny me, i'll wave you down when they're not lookingBut if you dont think evolution contradicts the biblical claim that God created life, and man, please explain it to me.If evolution means that we've descended from a common ancestor, how does this NOT contradict the biblical claim that God create the man in his image? I dont get it.