What may not be believed by faith?

hello :) i am glad to see you here and glad your question is still open.

yes, sadly, i don't think it's possible to argue that the manner in which religions are interpreted and practised is not divisive, so, i'm not going to try. i think you know, perhaps better than most of my contacts, the struggle i've had 'faith-wise' and so i hope you know that i come here to answer your post, not in the hope of convincing you or persuading you of anything, nor to change your mind, the only aim i have is to answer as frankly as i know how to.

you already know that, in my opinion, it is not faith or religion themselves which are at the root of the problem. after all, you and i, for instance (and a multitude of others within and without the forum), manage to be civil (and even amicable) despite holding very different beliefs. in my opinion, the only way forward is education. yes, i know there have been radical or fundamentalist terrorists who happen to have been well educated, but what i am talking about is education before indoctrination. this is what we must insist upon. once a radical or intolerant interpretation of a religion is deeply rooted (especially if the rooting process began when the brain was at its most impressionable) is it nigh on impossible to change it.

another thing which is practically impossible to untangle is the economic, political and other social pressures and influences which are operating in the environment which gives rise to a particular belief system. now, it is my honest opinion, that if critical and logical thinking were made much more of a priority in the education of children and young people, there would be a great deal less extremism (political or religious) in the world. if every teacher could be counted on to have intellectual integrity, there really would be a great deal less trouble in our world. if places where wishful thinking is passed off as science, could see the damage they inflict... if there was better and fairer access to education, if, if, if...

so, to answer at least one of your questions, it isn't faith which is going to help us advance, it is education, an education in which things are seen for what they are, where the different values and merits of different ideas and histories, as well as systems, can be appreciated for what they are and the actual contributions they make to the lives of people- not for what we wish them to be, that's what's going to help.

edit 15/07:

hey you, i was just wondering when you were going to show and here you are, excellent. this was no rescue my friend, it is always a pleasure to converse with you and, since it happens so infrequently, i intend to make the most of it :)

this for me is the crux:

"a method designed to expose individual bias and prejudice"

you are quite right in that this is what makes the sciences successful on a global scale. now, is there any reason this could/ought not be applied to religions? obviously, i'm not talking about all the obscure little cults but i am thinking of the world's major religions. such an endeavour would strip every single religion of everything except the very basic core message. i know, it's totally unrealistic (even for a daydream believer like me, lol!)

more method and less madness, that's what i say.

hey, what do you know, when we first began, we could not have thought of ourselves as anything other than espousing very different beliefs, yet, the more we talk, the more i realise we have at least a foot each in common ground....

doubt: yes, i think i probably find more resonance in respect of doubt in judaism than i do elsewhere. there is nothing sinful or unreasonable or unhealthy about doubt, it is an integral part of the quest, any quest. in my opinion. it tends to open doors rather than firmly shut them.

p.s. you knew exactly what you were doing when you pulled out sam harris, didn't you ;) ?

Factions are not exclusive to religion, there are always factions within the scientific community as well, and let's not even waste any effort talking about economic and political factions. Science is (or at least is supposed to be) the one place where everything is always true, false or unknown (but I would argue at least half of all cosmologists violate that rule) while virtually all other disciplines, politics and economics most notably, rarely if ever deal with quantifiable absolutes. When it comes to determining the nature and institutions of society by popular consensus, it is always a matter of incorporating a myriad of disparate beliefs. I submit faith in humanity is indeed responsible for the greatest advancements of all and if faith multiplies religious factions then it certainly multiplies humanist factions as well. How many religions? Communism, socialism, capitalism, libertarianism, primitivism, syndicalism, on and on... these are belief systems that incorporate no god theories or mythologies, and how many 'divisions' of each of these exist? Faction divisions are not unique to gods, it's just what humans do any time they can't resolve something indisputably and the longer the dialogue continues, the more factions it produces. (I don't think faction divisions are automatically negative either. Look at what we call 'liberals'. We are a faction of a hundred factions, we never agree on anything unanimously but that virtually never divides us.)

'Theology unable to justify or explain religious factions' is essentially a strawman argument because most faiths (theistic, political and economic alike) are always more general than literal. The ocassional literalist may overcommit to a position then you expose the self-contradictions of the literal interpretation and to a third party observer, you 'win' that argument but the literalist will never admit that and the best we can hope for is that enough pressure over time will eventually soften up the literalist. However, anyone with a shred of sensibility -- or even just a shrewd rhetoritician -- only has to say relious texts are written by men, men are imperfect and therefore the texts and interpretations are imperfect, and that's that, argument over, no decision. I am not an expert on theology, it is not a particularly compelling subject to me so I have never put any serious effort into studying it but I am pretty sure most theological academics always say texts and interpretations are always imperfect. I appreciate with a question like this you may be trying to chip away at the literalist in the hopes of one day softening up the literalist, in which case my whole response is essentially irrelevant, but I thought it was intellectually stimulating so that's my 'answer'.

Because my pastor was a Philosophies of Education professor, I kinda got a deeper learning about faith. Belief is an element of it. The information received is believed upon, and acted upon, with the intent of increasing confidence in what is believed.

But what I see you asking for is as if belief and faith were separate. And as I understand those terms, they are not separate, but belief is a part of what makes up faith.

Here is the definition looked at:

Faith is action, based upon belief, sustained by confidence.

If you know anything about the scientific world, you might know that scientists have their own pet theories and understandings. I hope you would agree.

Example: The Theory of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. Both scientific. Factions.

Sadly the key points of Christianity are unknown to most all people as it is written in Daniel and other parts of the Bible he shell throw truth to the ground , well it is not something that will happen it happened a long time ago and the lies are with us still . i don`t blame anyone for thinking religion is just plane stupid.

Nevertheless, I don't think real belief can be reached through pure faith. As you say, faith being the absence of evidence. Belief is an intellectual process that occurs when the available evidence satisfies your standards of knowledge. Absence of evidence can never lead to belief, by definition. Faith can lead to making someone act as if they believed.

First you should know faight most bring you to equal Godlike mankind and in that area you will find your answer.SÃ¥ if something is not believed by faith is against in fact selves and is not enduring.

The power of faith is that it requires no rationality, so one can use it to get people to believe most anything.

~

Obedience to Time works in vain.