Board index ‹ Faith and Knowledge

[Flip Flop]

A few questions here, so please, bear with me.

Within Christianity, why is faith necessary, and appreciated?

Hebrews 11:1 - “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

This sounds like wishful thinking, and nothing more. I often hear Christians proclaiming that we all have faith, but Christians tend to confuse faith with reliability, predictions, and hopes.

What is good about faith? I’ve always considered faith to be intellectually dishonest and steeped in willful ignorance and gullibility.

Why is faith relished so dearly by Christian congregations? Faith is not the tool which separates the truthfulness of your God from every other God out there, so what is the purpose of faith? What does it do for you?

If the shared belief is reasonable, why does faith even come into the equation?

Do you apply faith to any other aspects of your life, so as to avoid the Special Pleading Fallacy? If you do, which aspects?

[jimwalton]

I define faith as an assumption of truth based on the evidence (and faith is always based on evidence) that makes it reasonable to make that assumption. When I go to sit in a chair, I can't be 100% that it will hold me (chairs occasionally do break). But I've sat in this chair 100 times, my eyes tell me it looks the same, and so I plant my rear in it, believing and assuming it will hold me. It's the same when I turn the key to start my car (I have faith it will start), going to the store (I have faith it's still there), or thousands of other things in daily life. It's what the author of Hebrews claims in Heb. 11.1: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” There is a certainty based on evidence, though because it is not seen it is subject to faith, just like the store in my previous example. A blind person cannot distinguish color, but color is a real thing, and its reality is unaffected by whether or not the blind person is able to appreciate them.

Hebrews 11.1 is anything but wishful thinking. It says "Faith is being sure of what we hope for," meaning that we can have certainty in the reality of what we've been told. Then the verse continues, "...being certain of what we do not see." Again, it's like me going down to the grocery store. In once sense I know it's there—I've been there 100 times, I didn't hear any explosions through the night, or destruction equipment. I have every reason, based on the evidences, to get in my car and drive there, since I know it's there. But in another sense I can't REALLY know it's there until I pull around the corner and see it. I'm acting "certain of what we do not see."

You'll notice as you read the Bible that people were never asked to have faith until they had evidence to base the faith on.

> What is good about faith?

As I mentioned with the grocery store example, I have knowledge of things I can't see based on the evidence. The Bible calls it faith. I live my life by faith because we're 2000 years removed from the New Testament, and I've never seen God or heard his voice, but I have knowledge of the truth of all these things. So what's good about faith is that it allows me to live my life as a Christian.

Sorry to hear that you've always considered it to be intellectually dishonest and steeped in willful ignorance and gullibility. Obviously, that could be taken as quite an insult to a number of extremely intelligent people who are Christians. : )

Good faith, like good science, needs sound, rational thinking. Christianity is based in evidences, not blind beliefs. That’s why it’s historical, and not philoso-theological like Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Islam. The earth is here as evidence of a creator. The existence of the Jews as a people group is evidence of God's work in history. The evidence of Jesus as a historical figure and in his death and resurrection is presented in affirmation of his deity. Faith in the Christian definition is distinctly evidentially based, and not just an "out there" kind of "well, you just hafta believe."

I'll add this: There are without a doubt different kinds of existence. The existence of the chair behind you is very different from the existence of memories, or the thoughts in your brain. Your car in the driveway exists in a different way than, say, time does. Physics cannot and does not cover the whole of reality; it's only a slice of it. I said faith is an assumption of truth based on evidence that makes it reasonable to make that assumption. If your friend tells you they bought you a ticket to a concert, you'd get in the car (by faith) and go with them, because you have all kinds of evidences (your relationship with them, their tone of voice, their body language, etc.) that make it reasonable for you to believe what they are telling you. I find the same dynamics and realities in my relationship with God.

[J Lord]

> Christianity is based in evidences, not blind beliefs. That’s why it’s historical, and not philoso-theological like Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Islam.

Why is Christianity historical and Islam not?

[jimwalton]

For one, YHWH enters history and acts to bring about the salvation of humanity. The one-after-another historical narratives of the Bible are records to explain what is happening historically and how to interpret those events with the knowledge of God's interaction with history.

Allah, by contrast, does not personally enter into human history and act as a historical agent. He always deals with the world through his word, prophets, and angels. He does not personally come down to deal with man.

If you were to read the Bible and the Qur'an side by side, you could tell the vast difference immediately. While The Qur'an mentions Moses, the Bible tells his story. The Qur'an mentions Abraham, but the Bible spends 11 chapters telling his story.

Christianity is more of a historical faith, whereas Islam is a geopolitical one. Christianity is about God at work in history.