Can faith alone ever be sufficient?

[Soph0571]

Since Adam and Eve, God as the Christian Faith understands him, has manifested himself to man. Moses with the burning bush and the ten commandments, Noah with the instruction to build a huge boat, Isiah and Ezekiel to name but a few from the Old Testament all had visitations. How about Paul and the road to Damascus? Or Patrick, the banisher of snakes from the Emerald Isle, who heard God speak to him at the tender age of sixteen. We have the Prophet Muhammad, who was visited by Gabriel on behalf of God in 610.

Throughout history we have well known examples of people who affected change because of their belief that God had spoken to them. Movements were raised, religions were born. Think Joan of Arc or Joseph Smith, or Jim Jones, or the Branch Davidians. (Of course, we also have as examples, every Republican Presidential candidate in modern times).

For some the messages from God have been positive and have had a positive impact, for others those messages have given the receiver of such blessing carte blanch to commit murder, genocide, rape and every other horror that man can reign on man. As a result of this one does have to question the veracity of those who claim that God commanded or directed them in a certain path. Conflicting messages from ‘Saints’, ‘Prophets’ and those accused of being charlatans would lead one to suspect that the voice inside said heads may not be holy in nature. If you truly believe that God talks to you or to anyone within your belief structures how do you reconcile the conflicting nature of Gods messages? Say God had a chat with you tonight and commanded you to undertake a certain task. Would you accept that as a miracle of faith and do as God has commanded, or would you want something a tad more concrete? How do you determine that is not just a delusion or mental illness? What if you were commanded to undertake an immoral act? After all, plenty of people over the centuries have committed hugely immoral acts on the say so of their chosen God. If God came to you tonight and asked you to sacrifice a child, would you?

How about he came to you and declared Soph as his new prophet, would you accept my teachings? Or if I declared God had spoken to and revealed the truth to me and all must follow me or risk eternal damnation, would you? Or would you ask God for proof? Or go to the head doctor for a serious examination of your mental health – or send me to the head doctor for a serious examination of my mental health? What makes you believe that God spoke to Peter, or Paul, or Moses, or Abraham, but could not have spoken to Mohammed? How do you determine which people are telling the truth about their visit from God and which are not? What proof to do you require that it is the word of God and not the word of Man? Can faith alone ever really be sufficient?

[MineralMan]

1. Many stories have been told and written.

Some people believe such stories. For people of "faith," any story can be true, as long as it aligns with their particular biases. All the rest of the stories are false. "Faith" is how you know the difference, I am told by people of faith.

They must be right. I have no theistic faith, and don't believe any of those stories. Odd, isn't it?

[Bretton Garcia]

2. Faith is a special device for justifying biased decisions.

To repair the damage done by Faith, we all need to use a lot of Reason, Intelligence, Science, and even some common sense.

[MineralMan]

3. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1.

That's the Bible verse they quote before or after telling you something unbelievable and illogical.

My response:

Faith is the substance of nothing, and evidence of nothing at all.

[Bretton Garcia]

12. Faith does not "walk by ... sight" or visible evidence.

Therefore it is blind.

[MineralMan]

15. How does a group of blind people describe an elephant?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

[Lordquinton]

19. While I get the point it's trying to make

why do they just feel one part of the elephant? they can move around, and show each other what they have found. They're blind not immobile. Somehow all these parables seem to rely on people being rather dumb.

[tblue37]

78. P. T. Barnum had something to say about that. nt

[Lordquinton]

80. He also had a thing or two to say about Elephants as well

[marylandblue]

4. in general, we are not rational creatures. So no reasoned argument penetrates faith.

More rational people or those of different faiths may not like it. That too is irrational. Learn radical acceptance. You can try to reason with emotions, but few people succeed.

[Bretton Garcia]

13. Accept all the crimes of religion?

[marylandblue]

14. Who said anything about accepting crimes?

But does pointing out someone else's irrationality prevent crimes? Does noticing someone else's irrationality mean that you are not?

[Bretton Garcia]

16. Yes it does.

[marylandblue]

17. Now there's a rational answer.

[Bretton Garcia]

20. Yes it is.

1) "Radical Acceptance" (1993) is, deep down, a form of fatalism. Which 2) means "accepting" that there are many things we can't change. And yet the whole history of science tells us that many limitations we thought were timeless, permanent barriers - like diseases - could in fact be cured.

And in fact, 3) the core of motherly advice to children, assumes rightly, that much of their bad behavior can be cured. Likewise, 4) formal education assumes that much bad behavior is occasioned by animal emotions; that can to a large extent replaced by rationality.

And 5) to a large extent, history, observable human progress, suggests that the radical pessimism of Radical Acceptance does not seem justified.

[uriel1972]

21. YEEESSSS!!!!

That is exactly my objection to "acceptance", I do NOT accept that things can't change.

[marylandblue]

29. People are really confused about what acceptance means and what it does.

You are confusing acceptance with fatalism or passivity.

[marylandblue]

23. Radical acceptance is not fatalism, but accepting what's in front of you.

If you have a fatal illness, then you accept that your illness is fatal. It doesn't mean there will never be a cure in the future, but that's of little use now. You can also accept that there is a non-zero possibility that the doctors are wrong, but don't bet on that.

The point about mothers advice and education is off the mark. Child rearing and education are complex activities that include a lot of non-rational behavior modification.

History is difficult to interpret one way or the other. You could learn from history that we've made a lot of progress. You could also learn that civilization advances then retreats, so progress is really just a myth of our civilization. Historians argue about the meaning of historical events all the time. We won't solve that one here.

[Bretton Garcia]

26. As an historian and educator, I disagree.

Pessimism about rationality has long been fashionable in some circles. But as an educator, sometimes in cultural history, my job is often teaching college students to write reasoned, logical accounts of things. And most students manage to learn that, reasonably well. Though if they are extremely religious, it is often harder for them.

[marylandblue]

28. Do all historians and educators agree with you?

If they do, do they offer a guarantee of success, or do they say "we can't predict."

[Bretton Garcia]

30. Most can distinguish between a logical versus a very emotional argument.

For prediction, I move on to say, sociology-based analysis of present and historical behavior.

[marylandblue]

32. Do the sociologists assume people always act rationally

Or that they will start doing so at some unspecified point in the future?

In your own historical analysis, do you assume that people in the past were making rational choices, or that people in the 20th century were more rational than people in the 19th?

[Bretton Garcia]

34. We can predict situations where people will react emotionally

And then encourage them to act more rationally.

And looking at past and present culture, behavior,. we can see, and suggest, the usefulness of that.

And very often, students will agree.

That is a major reason why they go to college in part; to develop an ordered and rationally informed view of life.

Probably our own era is slightly more rational than even the 19th century; thanks to the new behavioral or social sciences. And to 200 years of perspective.

[marylandblue]

43. How are defining "reacting emotionally" and "reacting emotionally"

Sorry about those questions, but they mean different things in different contexts.

[Bretton Garcia]

47. We know about 1) animal instincts. say.

And how human behavior reflects them.

We know 2) formal logic; and how human statements conform to it - or not.

We know 3) from psychology. various forms of behavior are pathological. And 4) emotional.

We very often know 5) when statements conform to facts, usually, and when they are not.

[marylandblue]

48. None of that comes close to answering my question.

[Bretton Garcia]

50. Correct grammar in your question?

[marylandblue]

51. Oh I see. Sorry about that. Here

What definition of "acting rationally" are you using?
What definition of "acting emotionally" are you using?

[Bretton Garcia]

53. I'm using say, the five sources cited above with others

It's thought that emotions are more animal/instinctual. Reason is more prominent in humans than animals overall. Due to a much larger cerebral cortex, etc.. Reason is most obviously formalized in formal logic, and can be measured in IQ tests, etc..

[marylandblue]

55. We are creatures who can reason, and we can learn to do it better.

But when it comes to decision making and daily behavior, we are often driven by things other reason. Simply telling people their decisions are irrational does cause them to become rational. You taught motivated, probably higher-than-average IQ students how to produce your desired output by providing feedback and rewards. But they also had to want to be in that situation to begin with. And if you trace that back to why they want to be there, the original decision is probably not rational, even if they frame it in rational terms.

[Bretton Garcia]

56. Need for money, jobs, food, is both emotional and rational

Some might go to college out of convention, emotional pressure. But in this case, we can show, clarify, some reasons behind the emotions.

Not all emotions are rationally justifiable, in a modern civilization however. Especially when they are unmodified by education, training, and conscious critical evaluation.

[marylandblue]

61. A lot of the needs we call rational are based in our organic nature or social matrix.

Last edited Mon Apr 8, 2019, 11:24 AM - Edit history (1)

Not in reason. We don't eat because we have reasoned we need food. We don't want to live because we have reasoned that life is good. We eat because we are hungry. We want to live because we have a life instinct. We want money so we can eat, and stealing food has negative social consequences.

None of these are reasoned positions. But they are so embedded in our physical and social existence that they appear "rational."

No emotions are rationally justifiable, nor do we need to justify them. We just feel them. We can't reason them away. We can learn to control our behaviors into more socially acceptable forms, but that's not the same thing. We can also learn to change habits of thought that lead to unpleasant or maladaptive emotions, but that's not the same thing either.

[Bretton Garcia]

64. Hunger is instinctual. But on analysis, we see it is rational too.

Biology tells us that the defining chatacteristic of a living organism is to live. And to live, it logically needs to eat.

The organism itself might not experience its hunger as rational. But on reflection, WE can see that, given its basic nature, it is quite rational for it to feel hunger; to motivate it to seek food.

[marylandblue]

67. You are confusing the experience that actually causes us to eat

and the scientific analysis of why we eat. One has nothing to do with the other.

Thomas Jefferson said something like, if we had to rationally decide when to eat, we'd all starve to death.

[Bretton Garcia]

68. Jefferson made a mistake.

Modern psychology, social science, acknowledge that instinctual drives, emotions, can have a rational, ratiocinative element, even if it is not clearly sensed by say, a hungry person. So in determining rationality, the subjective feeling is not sacred. Or the ultimate arbiter, in deciding what is rational.

See "emotions " in a standard contemporary encyclopedia.

For that matter, consider that even most hungry people sense a kind of logic to hunger; if they don't get food, they know they will starve to death.

[marylandblue]

72. We seem to be having a disconnect and I don't know why

Last edited Tue Apr 9, 2019, 12:09 AM - Edit history (1)

But you seem to be answering things different from what I'm saying. For example, you write, "So in determining rationality, the subjective feeling is not sacred. Or the ultimate arbiter, in deciding what is rational." Well, I didn't say anything like that, or at least I don't think I did. I don't think Jefferson meant that. I'm not even sure what it means.

I'm pretty familiar with psychological research, but I don't get what particular finding you think is relevant. I understand that our emotions and our thinking are interconnected, if that's what you mean, but that's not what I'm talking about at all.

[uriel1972]

31. To accept what can't be changed...

The key issue is deciding what can't be changed. To often in dealing with acceptance I have been offered the status quo as something that can't be changed.

It is what it is... but what is it? Who decides what it is? Why am I expected to accept things from the past and walk away? That is what I was being taught/told as I was being introduced to acceptance.

From the song Rise by Public Image Limited, "Anger is an Energy". I refuse to accept the crimes that were done to me and not seek address. I was told the world don't change, but it does, but it does.

[marylandblue]

33. That's not how I was taught about acceptance. I was taught

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

You can drop the God part and grant yourself the serenity.

I've seen serene people change things. I've seen non-serene people tilt at windmills and give themselves heartburn.

[Bretton Garcia]

35. The Serenity Prayer is religious in origin

And probably tainted, therefore.

[marylandblue]

42. Shoot the messenger's mother?

[Voltaire2]

44. Apparently it means substituting cigarettes donuts and bad coffee for alcohol,

while lying about the last time you got drunk to a group of fellow (ex) drunks. Or at least for something like 90% of 12-steppers.

[marylandblue]

46. You just don't like the religious origin and formulation, so I'll give you a non-religious one.

Shit happens. Deal with it. Maybe you can fix it? Don't be a chickenshit about it. Be smart about it. Don't buy a quack cure even if you are dying.

[Voltaire2]

49. Just pointing out that the serene passivity of 12 step programs is an evidential failure

with respect to actually treating addiction.

[marylandblue]

52. AA popularized the Serenity Prayer, but they didn't write it

And I wonder why people think serenity in this sense is "passive." Maybe a better word is sangfroid or composure?

In any event, this not about passivity. But if you actually can't change something what do you do about it? Spend the rest of your life weeping and wailing?

[Bretton Garcia]

57. So if there will always be evil in the world, why resist it?

I ask with ironic intent.

To suggest the flaw in your approach.

[marylandblue]

60. We are always solving the problems that are in front of us.

And that's all we can really do. Evil is an abstraction and an unstable one at that. What was evil 100 years ago is now okay. What was good back then is now evil.

But suffering is here and now. Therefore we try to solve problems in real life not in the abstract.

[Bretton Garcia]

65. It's probably just semantics whether you call suffering evil.

But in any case? You might concede that there is something out there that might seem eternal to some. But that you've decided to try to at least partly, locally fix. Rather than just reciting the Serenity Prayer, and turning away.

[marylandblue]

66. I don't know why the "courage to change the things I can" is being missed

That implies you are doing something, doesn't it?

[Bretton Garcia]

69. The rub is, many think many things can't be fixed, that are fixable.

You for instance, declared evil to be eternal or abstract, and therefore unfixable. Though individual instances of one evil, Suffering, can be fixed.

Technically the Prayer acknowledge that we need to discover the differences.. But in practice? Most in practice will use it as an excuse to do nothing in all too many situations. Which seems to be human nature to some extent.

It's nice to ask for wisdom, to make out distinctions, differences; but passively waiting for it to miracuously arrive, as prayers often imply, has problems.

[marylandblue]

71. I don't interpret prayers that way and I don't know anybody who does.

Last edited Mon Apr 8, 2019, 10:36 PM - Edit history (2)

Most of the religious people I know make the same sort of efforts to accomplish things in their daily lives that everyone else does. And if it's human nature to do nothing in too many situations, why blame a prayer that doesn't even say you should do that?

Evil? I use the word because other people use it and seem to mean something by it, but I don't actual believe it exists at all. Sort of like what Nietzsche said in "Beyond Good and Evil." There are bad things in the world. Maybe there will be fewer bad things in the future. I can certainly imagine a world with zero bad things in it, sort of like heaven on earth. I'm just skeptical of us ever actually getting there because we also have a way of creating new bad things.

[safeinOhio]

5. Google "Locus of Control"

For some, control is from outside, for others it comes from with in self. I'm cool with the former.

[edhopper]

6. You do know that the concept

of locus of control in psychology pointed to people with an internal locus were psychologically healthier and better adjusted.
More self actualized as Maslow would put it.

[safeinOhio]

7. I forgot that from my Systems of Psychology in college.

I went to a school that is the hot bed of Radical Behaviorism, via B F Skinner. Any theory must have powerful stats to accept. But, somehow Locus Theory sounded good.

[edhopper]

8. Yeah

I was in school when Behaviorism was all the rage too. As well as Humanism and various other schools.
They have been overtaken by neuroscience and pharmaceuticals.



To play more games with your post. Free will would dictate that God has given us an internal locus of control. And to though we must defer to God and he/she is the ultimate power, he/she wants us to decide on our own.

[safeinOhio]

9. How do Calvinist fit in

predestination?

[edhopper]

10. I am not well versed in

silly self-serving theology.

[MineralMan]

11. Only the elect can understand unconditionally.

The rest of us have no hope at all. But God knows his own, see? Here's a TULIP for you:

[Karadeniz]

18. If only Christians understood their own teachings!

The prodigal son presents the God system. The father never contacts his son, never helps him. Paul said there are many gods, many levels of heaven;that's summarized in the parable. The Law is roughly symbolized in the parable. It's all up to the son to get back. No faith, no forgiveness.

Light is an important metaphor. God is light and we have our light. This is Truth. We should stop anthropomorphising. It's up to us to increase our light. Jesus ' teachings tell you how. Faith doesn't increase the light. Developing God's nature within ourselves does. God is the Good. We might nowadays call the light spiritual energy. Christ turned away a soul who worked miracles in his name, so he probably had faith. His good intentions didn't earn him forgiveness. Every soul has to fulfill the Law;that soul will...eventually.

Hints: understand swine and money/interest, working the vineyard, mountains, water.

[uriel1972]

22. Ummmm... yeah.

Good luck with that.
I will not beg to those who turn their back to me.

[Mariana]

24. I'm pretty sure every Christian

is convinced that they understand the teachings correctly, and that all those other people (>1000 different denominations, countless "nondenominational" and "independent" churches, and who knows how many individual practitioners with their own unique interpretations) are doing it wrong.

[Karadeniz]

75. Yep. They usually just gloss over what they don't understand. Too bad. The parables are fabulous!

[Bretton Garcia]

25. Let's acknowledge Soph's great point

Faith is often defended by believers. Even as if it is all we need in life. But the fact is that often even believers can see that faith is not all we need in life.

We usually need job skills, say. And physical necessities, like food.

Soph perhaps hints even believers might acknowledge the importance of Practical things. And see practical problems, with the faiths of, at least, others.

[rampartc]

27. that answer is in james 2 chapter 26

"17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead."

[Bretton Garcia]

36. If only believers actually read, and believed

Some ironies here.

[MineralMan]

37. One of the least-quoted verses in the New Testament.

Protestantism in general ignores that entire book, actually. I don't think I remember any readings from it during my entire time as a young person in a Presbyterian church.

It's an inconvenient verse for many.

[rampartc]

38. this business if "faith" vs "works" goes back to martin luthor

who was writing about "indulgences," which can easily be interpreted as buying a ticket to heaven. i see his point, but how can you have all that faith and not act accordingly?

[Bretton Garcia]

39. It goes deeper too

If you aren't getting good material results, or "works," then maybe you have faith in the wrong things.

See Dan. 1.4-15 KJE etc.

[rampartc]

40. you may be right

i never interpreted "works" to be anything other than things that were done by me. perhaps if i am "expecting a harvest," or a return on my faith that would explain a prosperity gospel.

[Bretton Garcia]

41. It's the origin of the prosperity thing. But there's more

That belief is often put down. But prosperity is important to poor people, who need basic things.

But in any case, it goes deeper.

Basically I'm writing about the Bible advocating primarily Science. Real Christianity was supposed to produce real material fruits, works. signs, deeds, proofs. In this world. In a timely way. And as demonstrable by science. Not just spiritual results.

If your faith or religion don't do that, then a major part of your religion is false, I'd suggest . Or not true to the very extensive "fruits" and "works" parts of the Bible.

There are a few Google books out there about it. And an article in Skeptic magazine.

Ultimately to be sure, probably all religions fail by that Biblical standard. Leaving only very fruitful Science, technology. As, ironically, true to the Bible.

[Jim__]

45. Yes it does.

The April 18th issue of The New York Review of Books has a review of Michael Massing's Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind. The review - which is behind a paywall - speaks a bit about this issue. One example:

This doctrine of justification by faith was in fact a commonplace of medieval theology, but it was obscured in practice by the medieval church’s emphasis on the strenuous pursuit of holiness. Luther radicalized it by making salvation an entirely passive process, in which human will and the practice of good works played no part. When in 1522 Luther translated the New Testament into German, he rendered Saint Paul’s assertion in Romans 3 that “man is justified by faith, without the works of the law” as “man is justified by faith ALONE, without the works of the law,” an apparently minor adjustment that in fact opened up a fundamental breach between Catholic and Protestant doctrines of salvation.

[democratisphere]

54. No.Specially if it is blind faith.

[Bretton Garcia]

58. Conclusion: faith alone is never enough. We need reason, science, even more.

Our thanks to Soph. Who is doing great work these days.

[trotsky]

59. Never.

People with great faith have done terrible, horrible things. That's the biggest problem with religion - insisting that "faith" is a virtue, that it's a good thing to believe something not just despite a lack of evidence but also *in spite of* evidence to the contrary.

That's dangerous.

[marylandblue]

63. The Marxist have a thing called "praxis."

That says if something goes wrong, it is never the theory's fault, it's always how you applied it. Sounds a lot like faith.

[NeoGreen]

62. No.

Faith is a merely an excuse.

It is a means to not take responsibility for the state of the world.

Faith is the metaphorical equivalent of donning emerald glasses:


Prior to entering the Emerald City:



Faith allows you to:

[Bretton Garcia]

70. An answer to Guil, and the alleged inevitability of faith, belief, even for rationalists

Last edited Tue Apr 9, 2019, 06:55 AM - Edit history (2)

Soph's argument seems useful in countering the claim that, due to human fallibility, limits, all people rely ultimately on some unproven value; or faith, in something or another. The present post suggests that equally, people need many other things as much or more. So even if Guil's claim was partly true, that would still not justify the extreme focus on faith that we see in Christianity.

Faith alone is not enough to get by in life. And many other things - like practical sense - have at least the status, importance and priority, of faith.

So it is wrong to strongly assert the centrality and primacy of faith. As many believers do.

[marylandblue]

73. Gil relies heavily on imprecise meanings of words without providing definitions

or he uses his his own definition and insists he is right because his definition is right. So saying "all people rely on faith," may be true according to certain definitions, but he turns that into other formulations like, "faith needs no evidence " which itself is used to justify, "nobody has evidence either for or against God." Since this seems to be his main concern, whether or not something else in life is immaterial, so long as he can maintain the centrality of the thing he calls faith in his own life.

[Bretton Garcia]

74. So we should not faithfully OR passively acquiesce to Religion

And emotionalism. Since we can usefully describe and combat its errors .Even to its advocates.

Or failing that, reach them by making fun of them.

Shifting definitions, moving the goalpost, is the core New Testament trick; literal vs.metaphorical, etc. .

[Lithos]

76. Faith is a shield

And a barrier...

You get to chose.

L-

[Bretton Garcia]

81. If you think the "shield" is true, still,

.. BOTH are always simultaneously in operation.

And in the end, even the shield in itself is a confining shell. A barrier that many should outgrow.

[bitterross]

77. Faith alone is always supposed to be sufficient.

Every religion with which I am familiar teaches all we need is faith.

So, per their logic, the answer to your question is "yes."

I can't say I believe that, but it's what is being sold in almost every religious institution.

[Bretton Garcia]

79. "Faith" means religions want unquestioning obedience

They don't really want us to ask questions. Or raise objections to their absurdities and crimes.

They just want us to shut up ("be quiet&quot , and believe/"know" they are our god. Trusting. believing, and loyally, faithfully doing ... whatever they tell us to do.

A lot like say, the army, in some ways. Just follow orders.