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iceage  Suspended Member (Idle past 5943 days) Posts: 1024 From: Pacific Northwest Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Why is Faith so Important to God? | |||||||||||||||||||
pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
We have faith in the unseeable energies but it isn't blind faith. I think blind faith is not faith at all but wishful thinking at best.
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
I am sorry, I should have said unseen energies e.g solar, wind, magnetism etc. I wasn't referring to supernatural energies as in crystals. I believe faith in the supernatural is blind faith (fickle)although many would disagree.
However, I believe your point is that, hypothetically, if there is a god, why would faith be so important to him\her? It absolutely doesn't make sense, does it?
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
There are so many definitions of faith and they cannot all be correct. I personally don't view faith in a biblical sense as I do not know the truth of the bible. I know only the interpretations.
To me faith has to have a certain amount of viable proof which can be within the human experience. It does not nessessarily have to be physical evidence. E.G I have 100% faith that electricity exists but I have never seen it. My question is, does faith make something true or does truth manifest faith?
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
It's a bit like the chicken and the egg. How can you have faith in something that you have no awareness/experience of? If you have faith in something and know what that something is, then you already believe it to be true and faith then follows.
If some evidence just pops up, how will you know what it is evidence of? Is there evidence of a god that we can put our faith in?
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
I know you are trying to make a point here. I've read it several times and I just don't get it. Your point, I mean. I think you are saying that faith is evidence and attempting to prove it with an hypothesis that I can't follow. Bear with me. It's a bit hard imagining a god turning up in front of me. It would change everything.
I try to take god out of the equasion whilst defining faith and belief. It's easier for me to look at them throughout my own life. I have beliefs. I have faith. It doesn't mean that my beliefs are true and it doesn't mean I haven't mis-placed my faith. I have experienced the crashing of an old belief system that I had previously had faith in. I'm in the process of forming a new system. During this process I have come to understand how incredibly powerful faith and belief have been in my life, whether true or false. For example, I believed I was incapable of blind-faith but that belief came crashing down when I realized I was. However, I realize that this is my perception and I really want to see it from yours. Can you bear personal testimony to your example?
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
Ah I think I am getting there.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you are distiguishing between faith in physical things and faith in spiritual things. I agree that beliefs and faith are two separate entities but I also think they cannot stand alone. They need each other. I also think you are saying that your faith is evidence enough to believe in spiritual things. (whew it's hard work getting my head around another's perception but good practise in understanding.) The last bit about bearing witness. I watch too many courtroom dramas. I only meant, have you any personal experience of your faith and beliefs working in your own life? I look forward to seeing if I am getting on your wave length (or maybe nerves ha ha).
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
iano: "I have faith that my brakes will stop the car"
"I believe that my brakes will stop the car" I don't think I would use either of them to illustrate faith or belief because I KNOW my brakes will stop the car. That is 100% faith in my brakes. (Maybe you need a new mechanic? Only joking.) Faith and belief in the above statements are dependent on a product and would only entail my knowledge and not faith or belief. The way I see faith in my life is, it represents how much truth or validity I give to something. It's how much confidence I have based on as much truth as I can get. Now I think confidence in something and faith in something are different things but at the moment, I don't see it. Is faith a feeling or a knowing? [To my way of reckoning the only reason I 100% believe anything, spiritual or no, is that the evidence is evidence enough. When the evidence is less than enough then my belief is less than certain. It can be a suspicion that..., a feeling that..., a weak belief that... a hope that...etc.] I'm sure this is how I work too but isn't this showing that faith and evidence are two different things? Doesn't faith depend on evidence?
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
iano [Belief: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence
Faith: firm belief in something for which there is no proof. Faith almost always implies certitude even where there is no evidence or proof.] Ah now I think I'm getting somewhere. I look at 'belief' as a noun\object, whereas you are coming from belief being a verb\action. 'A belief' versus 'to believe'.The definition of faith is very vague. As it says it only 'implies', it doesn't make it true. [I have faith in God. That is to say: evidence of God. Not a trace of doubt in my mind.] You must be a partridge family fan? iano, can you explain how you came to have faith in god without doubt?
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
Why is faith so important to god?
Maybe god does not exist without it?
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
What do they mean to you?
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
truthlover [God appeared to him first, and it was only after much had happened between Abraham and God that he asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.]
Honestly, why would anyone want a god who would put his children through so much pain to prove a point? Good lord, Abrahams' wife and mother of Isaac must have been completely distraught, never mind Isaac humself. Why is this just accepted and not challenged? This cannot be an all powerful, loving creator to test us so. No, I think Abraham was seriously deluded. This kind of behaviour is not acceptable now and wasn't then. Patriarchal rule maybe?
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pelican Member (Idle past 5014 days) Posts: 781 From: australia Joined: |
I am posting this message to the originator of each thread in which I have participated. I apologize to those I have not been able to respond to. Living a double life (see below) even on a forum is very time consuming. I have had a wonderful experience and aplogize for my deceitful behaviour.
RULE 9. Do not participate as more than one ID. You may change your user ID by going to your Profile Page and creating a new alias. I have been participating as two identities. In my defense, I created two identities because I felt I needed some moral support. I also thought it would help to promote some points that I could not do alone. In view of this obvious breaking of a clearly defined rule, there can be no excuses, no claims of innocence because the truth is: I did not read the rules. I prefer to judge myself and implement the consequences myself. I prefer to be my own judge and jury. In this case the punishment is a life time ban. I will retire DAMEEVA as from 1.2.08 (just to give myself time to pack my bags) unless a higher authority decides otherwise, in which case authority has the final say. I have thoroughly enjoyed this forum and have learned a lot that otherwise I would not.
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