Board index ‹ Faith and Knowledge

[Sober Till the Night]

Faith is belief without evidence.

There is an infinite number of things that can be believed in if evidence is not a prerequisite.

So with belief backed only by faith, chances of being correct are reduced to about 0%. Being correct would be based only on luck.

Since actions are informed by your understanding, having faith would mean your actions would be likely based on incorrect information.

This could lead to poor choices that could cause harm to you and others.

I honestly do not understand why faith is seen as a virtue, it is my stance that faith is a serious flaw.

How do you defend faith as a virtue?

[jimwalton]

First and primarily, I reject your definition, and therefore the rest of your argument falls apart.

Faith, according to the Bible, can be defined in various ways:

- Faith is “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” This is the commonplace use of the word apart from any religious significance, such as when a person has faith in a chair to support his weight or has faith in his employee to do a job well.
- Faith is “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” This is the definition unbelievers often use to ridicule believers, insisting that they, unlike religious people, trust only in that which is demonstrable.
- Faith is “belief in, trust in, and loyalty to God.” This is an explicitly religious definition, in many ways similar to the theological definition of faith as involving knowledge, assent, and trust. Faith here is pictured as going beyond belief in certain facts to include commitment to and dependence on God.
- Faith is “a system of religious beliefs.” This is what is meant when one speaks of “the Protestant faith” or “the Jewish faith.” What is largely in view here is a set of doctrines. The Bible uses the word in this way in passages such as Jude 3.

I use faith, as I believe Hebrews 11.1 does, in the first sense. Here's my explanation:

Jesus never said faith is blind, and the Bible doesn't imply that faith is blind. In the Bible, faith is evidentiary. I define Biblical faith as "making an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make that assumption reasonable." In my opinion, belief is always a choice, and is always based on evidence. When you sit down in a chair, you didn’t think twice about sitting down. You believe that the chair will hold you. Faith? Yes. You’ve sat in chairs hundreds of times, but you can't be absolutely sure it will hold you this time. Things do break on occasion. But you make an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for you to make that assumption, and you sit down. That’s faith, and it was a conscious choice.

Almost all of life works this way because we can never know what lies ahead. Every time you turn a door knob you are expressing faith. Because 10,000 times you’ve turned a door knob, and it opened the door. So you turn the knob and move forward. Does it always work that way? No. Sometimes you turn the knob and the door doesn’t open. But you make an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for you to make that assumption.

We know chairs hold people. That's past experience and learning. We know turning door knobs open doors. We know that when we turn a key a car starts. But every time we turn a car key, we do it because we believe it will start. The evidence is compelling, and it was a conscious choice. We don't know for sure that the car will start, and unfortunately sometimes it doesn't. Then we use our knowledge to try to figure out what to do about it. We dial our phone (as an act of faith, assuming it will work and help us reach another person), and try to get help.

You'll notice in the Bible that evidence precedes faith. There is no "dumping on a random doorstep" and good luck to ya! God appears to Moses in a burning bush before he expect him to believe. He gave signs to take back to Pharaoh and the Israelite people, so they could see the signs before they were expected to believe. So also through the whole OT. In the NT, Jesus started off with turning water into wine, healing some people, casting out demons, and then he taught them about faith. And they couldn't possibly understand the resurrection until there was some evidence to go on. The whole Bible is God revealing himself to us all—and I mean actually, not through some exercise of faith.

My faith in God is a conscious choice because I find the evidence compelling. It's an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for me to make that assumption. When you read the Bible, people came to Jesus to be healed because they had heard about other people who had been healed. They had seen other people whom Jesus had healed. People had heard him teach. Their faith was based on evidence. Jesus kept giving them new information, and they gained new knowledge from it. Based on that knowledge, they acted with more faith. People came to him to make requests. See how it works? My belief in God is based on my knowledge of the credibility of those writings, the logic of the teaching, and the historical evidence behind it all. The resurrection, for instance, has evidences that give it credibility that motivate me to believe in it. My faith in the resurrection is an assumption of truth based on enough evidence that makes it reasonable to hold that assumption. The same is true for my belief in the existence of God, my belief that the Bible is God's word, and my understanding of how life works.

I would contend that faith is rarely, if ever, without evidence. Talk to me.

[MIA]

> "making an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make that assumption reasonable"

You mean the stuff people do when they see things in the sky they can't identify...so they believe they have seen a UFO.

[jimwalton]

Nah, that's not what I meant at all. People see something in the sky and jump to conclusions. Their "evidence" is a sighting, but whether it was a reflection or a plane or whatever, that's not necessarily "enough evidence to make that assumption reasonable." Because they can't identify it doesn't mean they respond in faith to jump to a (possibly) mythological conclusion. Our senses at times deceive us, so that doesn't make the assumption reasonable.

[MIA]

Wait. Jesus died. Came back 3 days later. This proves divinity how? How are UFOs unreasonable to believe but a deity in human form is not?

[jimwalton]

OK, first of all, you said, "You mean the stuff people do when they see things in the sky they can't identify." People could identify Jesus; that was the whole point. When they actually saw him with their eyes and touched him with their hands, talked to him, watched him eat, and walked around with him, they knew it was him. So how is this an extension of your question where people see something they don't recognize (an alleged UFO), don't understand, and jump to a conclusion?

Besides, the resurrection didn't prove Jesus was divine. It was one of many evidences that he was. The Bible claims he was divine, and then gives evidences to that effect:

- his miracles that are beyond human capability (like healing blindness and walking on water)
- the wisdom of his teachings
- his sinless life
- his resurrection

These share nothing in common with a conclusion of a supposed UFO. The evidences of Jesus are in a different arena.

[MIA]

> OK, first of all, you said, "You mean the stuff people do when they see things in the sky they can't identify." People could identify Jesus; that was the whole point. When they actually saw him with their eyes and touched him with their hands, talked to him, watched him eat, and walked around with him, they knew it was him. So how is this an extension of your question where people see something they don't recognize (an alleged UFO), don't understand, and jump to a conclusion?

Because we aren't talking about jesus the human. We are talking about jesus the supposed deity. No one cares if you think jesus was a real person, all but like a dozen hardcore atheists will bother argue with you.

> Besides, the resurrection didn't prove Jesus was divine. It was one of many evidences that he was. The Bible claims he was divine, and then gives evidences to that effect: his miracles that are beyond human capability (like healing blindness and walking on water)

There are miracles all over the bible and no one claims to be divine. Moses parted the red sea per the bible...pretty neat trick.

> the wisdom of his teachings

Name something that you routinely do that jesus taught literally that was entirely original to him.

> his sinless life

He built a whip and attacked merchants...when did assaulting and theatening people with a weapon become moral?

> his resurrection

You mean the thing that makes him special and supposedly god? Where else is there resurrection in the bible that is not linked to jesus?

> These share nothing in common with a conclusion of a supposed UFO. The evidences of Jesus are in a different arena.

Same arena. You don't know how it happened...you presume divinity. Your "sinless life" idea is a joke, he attacked the temple square. Your comment about his wisdom is controversial and need proved. Your idea about other miracles proving divinity is trivially dismissed.

[jimwalton]

Jesus the human and Jesus the deity are the same being. He was both human and divine, so you can't separate the two for the convenience of your argument.

As far as Jesus being a real person, there are a handful of references in non-biblical literature (Tacitus, Josephus, Thallus, Ignatius, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Mara bar Sarapion, and Lucian) to establish the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. John Crossan, a skeptic who denies the authenticity of just about everything in the Gospels, says, "That he [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus...agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact." There is no evidence from antiquity that the existence of Jesus was ever denied by those who opposed Christianity.

> There are miracles all over the bible and no one claims to be divine.

I told you that it's not one thing, but the combination of all the factors the give evidence of his divinity. And, frankly, he was divine because of his incarnation, not because of his actions. His actions just substantiated his nature.

> He built a whip and attacked merchants...when did assaulting and theatening people with a weapon become moral?

You haven't read the text carefully. There is no record that he hit anyone or any animal with the whip. It was a weapon of authority, not one of abuse.

> Where else is there resurrection in the bible that is not linked to jesus?

Resurrection is all through the Bible, not as a thread, but as a mighty river coursing through the entire book. There are several accounts of people being raised from the dead by others, there are teachings that resurrection will happen, and there are hundreds of stories with resurrection as the motif. It's just about everywhere.

> is trivially dismissed.

You too trivially dismiss without giving adequate thought. It's enough to make me think you are prejudiced and are not giving the texts or the issue that study they deserve if you really want the best answer to your questions. You seem to be cavalierly blowing off one of the most important books of civilization as if it's a joke. I wonder, then, if you are too biased to be able to think objectively about all these matters. If you want to have a real and in-depth discussion about them, let me know.

[MIA]

I noticed my request about jesus wisdom went completely unaddressed.

[jimwalton]

You mean, "Name something that you routinely do that jesus taught literally that was entirely original to him"? Let's see, so we're not just considering all the teachings of Jesus, but only the things that I (we) routinely do? That's a pretty tight restriction. In that case, with that restriction, Jesus probably can only be placed in the club of the wisest teachers of history.