Harbal wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 2:00 pm
Okay, if you want to put it like that: You have presented to me, under the heading of Christianity, a narrative; a story; an alleged state of affairs; a version of events, none of which I believe to contain any truth. I could say more or less the same thing about any other religion, or set of religious beliefs, that I have been made aware of.
That, I can understand, as a statement.
The reasons for it, not so much. But the utterance itself at least adds up. My problem with the reasoning is the phrase, "...none of which I believe to contain any truth." For while one may be skeptical of particular statements in any particular belief system, it's surely obvious that every belief system also contains claims that are obviously true. And that would be true of even the most wild imaginings...they're surely anchored in at least one or two real facts about the world.
So "none of which..."? I can hardly credit that. There must be
something you think is true.
I have to put that down to hyperbole. I can make no other sense of it.
If you need another reason to believe...like, say, a feeling, or a disposition...then you don't believe it at all,
And that is what I often suspect to be the case with religious people.
Indeed, I'm sure it's sometimes the case.
It it always? I don't think so. I've met people who at least seem
very sincerely wrong, if not always
sincerely right.
And of course, rational persuasion is the right way to form a belief.
That in itself is reason enought not to hold any religious beliefs. Religion is not rational; if it were rational it wouldn't be religion; it would be something else. Religion always requires a belief in things that are not part of our experience of the ordinary world, and in fact run counter to it.
Oh, I don't think that's so, at all. Rather, I would say that (at least in some respects) every religion tries to take the data of the real world and give some account of it. I've not yet run into
any religion that could entirely avoid the necessity of grounding itself in some set of facts.
And if such a belief system were ever constructed, I suspect nobody at all would ever believe it.
Maybe that's why you don't see "religious" people as being sincere. If your assumption is that they see themselves as operating in defiance of facts, then you would have to think they were always secretly suspicious they were fooling themselves, and they'd all be in "bad faith."
You may choose a different way, H., if you so desire.
Choose a different way to do what?
To believe.
But I cannot make heads or tails of the claim that you "have no capability." That would be no capability to be persuaded by reason.
If Christianity contained rationality, it would not put so much emphasis on faith.
Ah, you've misunderstood "faith," or at least, you've misunderstood the Christian understanding of what it is. (I won't speak for other dogmas...their defenders can defend themselves, I think.)
Faith, in Christian thought, is not something like, "defiance of facts." It's not refusal of rationality. Rather, faith comes into play, for the Christian, whenever all the available facts have been gathered in, and though they may be many are still not absolutely conclusive; but still there is something that must be decided.
In the Christian sense, a scientist exercises faith whenever he proposes the meaning of his latest set of experiments -- for he does not know that the very next trial, or some piece of data he has neglected and misread, will not disprove his theory in the next five minutes. Indeed, it sometimes happens so. But he ventures, based on the data he has in hand, that perhaps his thesis is warranted; and so he risks proposing it. He trusts his own diligence, his own experimental methods, and the set of tests he has devised, and puts his own reputation at stake by advancing a conclusion. That's faith.
Or a young man wishes to know if a young woman will go on a date with him. He has some evidence -- she is pretty and he is handsome, perhaps; or she has spoken attentively to him at a party; or her friends have suggested they'd be a good couple; or that he cannot believe the twisting in the pit of his own stomach is not, on some level, possibly reciprocated -- but whatever the reason, he has to have faith. Because unless he ventures to her door and asks, he will simply never know whether or not she could want him. He doesn't have a perfect data set to reassure him; but he has a great deal, perhaps, to give him courage...and so he goes, and the facts reveal whether or not he was right to invest his faith in that project.
Or, when you got up this morning you did not know whether or not this was the day you would die. In fact, you are sure, and can be sure, that one day, you will. But you don't suppose you will. You have faith that the day will be kind to you, that your activities have at least some chance of success, and that fatality is not guaranteed to await you when you step out of bed. It took a modest faith to put your feet on the floor and get up and face the day. But it was faith nonetheless. You could have no absolute assurance the day would not be your last.
These things are faith. But they are surrounded by data, by fact, by experiences and by realities. They are not belief
in defiance of these things.
They are rational. In fact, they are also unavoidable.
We all have faith. The main difference is what we choose to have faith in.
