Why is faith important?

[editec]

There's so much we can never know.

We all are sustained by some kind of faith.

Our rational minds give us problem solving ability, but not a reason for being.

Our emotions (call that faith if you choose) are why we get up in the morning.

Some of us have codified systems of faith called religion or philosophy.

Some of us just muddle though on something vaguer, but in all cases it is faith that keeps us going.

 

[dilloduck]

I think that our basic human instincts dictate our daily behavior. We get hungry --we eat. We get tired --we sleep. We get bored--we entertain ourselves. We have some wildly elaborate raisons d'etre happening but it seems like they cause more strife than motivational value.
It's a pity--we are sentinent enough to ask the question "why" but not smart enough to come up with the answer. Is that what science claims to be doing ?

 

[Derideo_Te]

When you are in times of grief of pain or sorrow, where do you take the strength to rise up and fight, from?

Doesn't have to be God, because you've stated you're not religious, but it has to come from SOMEWHERE, right?

Family and close friends provide more real comfort and support than all of 3000+ imaginary deities combined have ever done. Even total strangers will come to the aid of someone who needs support. It was Iraq war veterans who visited the civilian victims of the Boston bombing to give them comfort and support and tell them how they survived losing both their limbs and they fellows in arms.

So yes, it comes from "somewhere" and that is real people with empathy and compassion rather than mythical entities.

Fair enough. But faith can come from different sources other then religion per se.

There seems to be confusion between faith and trust. When driving down the highway do you have faith that your brakes are going to work if you have make an emergency stop or do you trust that they are going to work? While most commuters never give a thought to their brakes and how they work they trust them to function whenever they step on that pedal. What gives them that trust is that their brakes do function 99.9999% of the time that they are needed. For these highway commuters their lives are on the line if their brakes fail so that trust has to be as close to absolute as possible.

Faith on the other hand is more amorphous. People might devote a whole lot of their time to thinking about it but how often do they put it to the test? When they have a headache do they reach for an over the counter painkiller or do they put the "healing powers" of their faith to the test? The reason they don't is because if they did it for things like that it would fail and that would cause them to lose their faith. So instead they reserve it only for the "big things" like getting into the college of their choice. Then if they do get in they use that to reinforce their faith even though the college admissions process decided based purely upon their application. On the other hand if they don't get in they don't see this as a failure of their faith but chalk it up to some other specious reason instead because maintaining their "faith" is more important than losing it.

So when it comes to "other sources" of "faith" it is more likely to be that someone has reasons to "trust" other sources rather than to have "faith" in them.

 

[theword]

The word "faith" has become like the word "****". They both have had different meanings in the past, especially the word "faith".

 

[oldfart]

It's a pity--we are sentinent enough to ask the question "why" but not smart enough to come up with the answer.

I'd like to expand a bit on this. There is a built-in glitch in our self-awareness and reasoning as to our motivations. Most of the time what we do has no cognitively determined intent. Children are being truthful when they answer "I don't know" to the parent's "Why did you do that?" The truth is that most of our decision-making process is not done in a way that we "see" it.

There is a bias for rapid decision-making and action, especially in times of stress, which has survival value. Animals who take too long to decide if a flicker in the night is a threat do not live to reproduce as much as faster reactors. This is why stress hormones activate a special memory retrieval system and memory base that resides in the limbic system rather than the cerebral cortex. On a more mundane level, we avoid overburdening our brain by the use of habit and even random behavior to avoid conscious thought in every decision.

But we still have that pesky curiosity which demands that every action must have a "reason". So we make stories up; stories about everything. Literature and folklore are full of "just-so" stories which give "reasons" for common observations. The story of Noah is, among other things, an explanation of rainbows; the story of Job is an explanation of why bad things can happen to a good man. All cultures are filled with these stories.

And we make up "just-so" stories about ourselves and why we do things. Redheads have a temper and the Irish drink to excess. So be careful with redheaded Irishmen in a bar! In truth we do what we do because that is what our non-cognitive decision-making processes determined we would do. When asked why we did that, we feel compelled to provide a logical reason, so we make up a "just-so" story. In this way the cause is created after the event to explain the reason for the event itself!

One last observation: some people seek to understand these processes and view what is happening in their own minds. They peel away the "just-so" stories and try to see what happens behind the curtain. They look for how people are interacting with each other, rather than how people SAY they are interacting with each other. Neuroscience has a large role to play, but so does millennia old contemplation and meditation.

Peace all.

 

[theword]

It's a pity--we are sentinent enough to ask the question "why" but not smart enough to come up with the answer.

I'd like to expand a bit on this. There is a built-in glitch in our self-awareness and reasoning as to our motivations. Most of the time what we do has no cognitively determined intent. Children are being truthful when they answer "I don't know" to the parent's "Why did you do that?" The truth is that most of our decision-making process is not done in a way that we "see" it.

There is a bias for rapid decision-making and action, especially in times of stress, which has survival value. Animals who take too long to decide if a flicker in the night is a threat do not live to reproduce as much as faster reactors. This is why stress hormones activate a special memory retrieval system and memory base that resides in the limbic system rather than the cerebral cortex. On a more mundane level, we avoid overburdening our brain by the use of habit and even random behavior to avoid conscious thought in every decision.

But we still have that pesky curiosity which demands that every action must have a "reason". So we make stories up; stories about everything. Literature and folklore are full of "just-so" stories which give "reasons" for common observations. The story of Noah is, among other things, an explanation of rainbows; the story of Job is an explanation of why bad things can happen to a good man. All cultures are filled with these stories.

And we make up "just-so" stories about ourselves and why we do things. Redheads have a temper and the Irish drink to excess. So be careful with redheaded Irishmen in a bar! In truth we do what we do because that is what our non-cognitive decision-making processes determined we would do. When asked why we did that, we feel compelled to provide a logical reason, so we make up a "just-so" story. In this way the cause is created after the event to explain the reason for the event itself!

One last observation: some people seek to understand these processes and view what is happening in their own minds. They peel away the "just-so" stories and try to see what happens behind the curtain. They look for how people are interacting with each other, rather than how people SAY they are interacting with each other. Neuroscience has a large role to play, but so does millennia old contemplation and meditation.

Peace all.

It's a good thing that God created languages for us to b.s. each other with.

The "beast" isn't as wise as most people think from it. Those who don't belong to the "beast" understand this well.

 

[oldfart]

It's a good thing that God created languages for us to b.s. each other with.

The "beast" isn't as wise as most people think from it. Those who don't belong to the "beast" understand this well.

Excuse me for asking, but is it possible for you to render that comment into standard English?

 

[Skull Pilot]

Faith is important because if we didn't have faith, no one would do anything. Every action we engage in is done because of some degree of faith. Faith is a principle of action.

Faith is belief without logical proof.

We can predict the results of our actions via logic and experience.

 

[Derideo_Te]

It's a good thing that God created languages for us to b.s. each other with.

The "beast" isn't as wise as most people think from it. Those who don't belong to the "beast" understand this well.

Excuse me for asking, but is it possible for you to render that comment into standard English?

Don't hold your breath waiting.

 

[theword]

It's a good thing that God created languages for us to b.s. each other with.

The "beast" isn't as wise as most people think from it. Those who don't belong to the "beast" understand this well.

Excuse me for asking, but is it possible for you to render that comment into standard English?

The "beast", which is a symbolic name found in the books of Daniel and Revelation, is God's plan to deceive His people from knowing who we are and who are Creator is but at the same time, teach His people how to build things until we had the microscope, telescope, computer, internet and latest discoveries of energy and atomic elements to explain how God created us.

So the wisdom of this world cannot lead you to the Truth but the wisdom of God can use the world's wisdom to help us understand where wisdom came in the first place.

Wisdom is the knowledge of God without deception, also known as the symbolic Christ, Kingdom of God, Holy Spirit, Heaven, Zion, Jacob, etc. This knowledge is given to us saints once the desires of this world is removed, which hasn't happened since the third century.

 

[theword]

Faith is important because if we didn't have faith, no one would do anything. Every action we engage in is done because of some degree of faith. Faith is a principle of action.

Faith is belief without logical proof.

We can predict the results of our actions via logic and experience.

Like I said in another comment. The words faith and **** don't have the same meaing as when they were originally spoken. But faith has changed the most. Faith to Christianity is believing in false gods while faith in atheists is relying on proof.

Faith to a saint is knowing that God exists and will remain invisible forever.

 

[oldfart]

It's a good thing that God created languages for us to b.s. each other with.

The "beast" isn't as wise as most people think from it. Those who don't belong to the "beast" understand this well.

Excuse me for asking, but is it possible for you to render that comment into standard English?

The "beast", which is a symbolic name found in the books of Daniel and Revelation, is God's plan to deceive His people from knowing who we are and who are Creator is but at the same time, teach His people how to build things until we had the microscope, telescope, computer, internet and latest discoveries of energy and atomic elements to explain how God created us.

So the wisdom of this world cannot lead you to the Truth but the wisdom of God can use the world's wisdom to help us understand where wisdom came in the first place.

Wisdom is the knowledge of God without deception, also known as the symbolic Christ, Kingdom of God, Holy Spirit, Heaven, Zion, Jacob, etc. This knowledge is given to us saints once the desires of this world is removed, which hasn't happened since the third century.

I think you need to provide a restorationist dictionary. Most of us are familiar with the terms in a much different contexts (numerology, Kabbalah, and so forth).

 

[whitehall]

I can't speak for the radical jihad but as far as Christians go way back in WW1 they said it best, "there are no atheists in the foxholes". In WW2 "a wing and a prayer" was a popular saying. Al Gore went to the Chaplain during VietNam after seeing heavy fighting in the typewriter corps and promised to enter the seminary if the Chaplain would only get him out before his year in harms way was up. Sometimes when your back is against the wall belief in God makes you feel better. Why does the fat and comfortable left want to analyze it (only Christianity) to death?

 

[theword]

Excuse me for asking, but is it possible for you to render that comment into standard English?

The "beast", which is a symbolic name found in the books of Daniel and Revelation, is God's plan to deceive His people from knowing who we are and who are Creator is but at the same time, teach His people how to build things until we had the microscope, telescope, computer, internet and latest discoveries of energy and atomic elements to explain how God created us.

So the wisdom of this world cannot lead you to the Truth but the wisdom of God can use the world's wisdom to help us understand where wisdom came in the first place.

Wisdom is the knowledge of God without deception, also known as the symbolic Christ, Kingdom of God, Holy Spirit, Heaven, Zion, Jacob, etc. This knowledge is given to us saints once the desires of this world is removed, which hasn't happened since the third century.

I think you need to provide a restorationist dictionary. Most of us are familiar with the terms in a much different contexts (numerology, Kabbalah, and so forth).

The dictionaries of man came from "Lucifer" and the "beast". Everything I testify to comes from the invisible Kingdom of God called "Christ".

 

[Derideo_Te]

I can't speak for the radical jihad but as far as Christians go way back in WW1 they said it best, "there are no atheists in the foxholes". In WW2 "a wing and a prayer" was a popular saying. Al Gore went to the Chaplain during VietNam after seeing heavy fighting in the typewriter corps and promised to enter the seminary if the Chaplain would only get him out before his year in harms way was up. Sometimes when your back is against the wall belief in God makes you feel better. Why does the fat and comfortable left want to analyze it (only Christianity) to death?

Why does the military have a symbol to place on the graves of Atheists who gave their lives for this nation and the Constitution? See #16 in the link provided.

Available Emblems of Belief for Placement on Government Headstones and Markers - National Cemetery Administration