In my opinion, faith is a blend of trust and belief. It is a matter of trusting and believing in something for which you do not have proof of an absolute and objective kind. Ultimately, it is entirely subjective. But in the end, I feel that everything is to some greater or lesser extent subjective. Thus, Matt's chair analogy (which is an extremely common analogy) holds up unless it is forced to withstand an enormous quantity of pressure (since no analogy is perfect). Many things are a matter of faith simply because precedence does not mean continuance: just because the sun came up today does not mean it will come up tomorrow. Thus, we have faith that it will until such time as it does. These are my thoughts on the abstract concept of faith as an idea.
In a religious sense, I personally have faith in a loving God who is both merciful and just. I have faith in a God who sacrificed himself, in the ultimate act of mercy, to justify us, to save us from the eternal consequences of our extremely bad behaviour. I have faith in a God who says that the most important thing is love and respect.
I have faith that love is important above all, and that love includes forgiveness, consideration, respect and responsibility. I have faith that people can always be better than they are, that people can always change. I have faith in Psi. I have faith in my friends and family. This is by no means an extensive list but it's something.
Faith is instinct (which is only really wrong about as often as intellect is, and is equally important). Faith is trust. Faith is hope. To me, the only thing more important than faith is love and the two should go hand in hand. Faith is part of every day, every decision we make, every thought we have. Someone was saying the other day (that is someone out of Steve, Matt, Talen and Fox, since it was on Friday) that we generally make a decision, then rationalise it, and, in my experience (both personally and in dealing with other people) this is the case. Thus, again, faith plays a role every day.
I suppose I value faith for two main reasons. One, it is very closely related to instinct, to gut knowledge, to talent, to all these things which get denounced and under-represented in our highly over-intellectual world. These are things which are important to me and, in my opinion, should be more widely recognised as having both reality and importance. Two...
Damnit, I've lost number two. Wait, it could have been this: my feeling is that 'proof' and absolutes don't exist in this world because everything is experiential. This is all very philosophical, perhaps (I mean, certainly) but, at the same time, I feel it is important to the way I, at least, experience the world. It means that everyone experiences the same thing in different ways to me, filtering the same experience (which cannot be exactly the same due to time and space interference) through their own different experiences, the way they view the world, what their day has been like before now and so on and so forth. History is experiential: written by fallible humans who had their own viewpoint to sell (welcome to a very small crash course in historiography). Those who do scientific research (no matter the area) all have their pet theories and are happy enough to mangle the results to prove their point (indeed, are often paid enormous amount by companies to do so). Theories, even if proved, get quashed because they are unpopular or would cost people money. So where do we look for facts? How do we know what 'proof' or 'facts' or 'truths' to consider the real thing?
We make a choice. We decide to have faith in particular things over others. We decide to believe that the earth is round, that Columbus or Genghis Khan existed, that the table I've put your coffee on looks the same colour and height to you as it does to me, that one person experiences the same awesome majesty of Niagara Falls as another person when standing in the same place. We choose things to have faith in so we can survive. So we don't go insane with the constant wondering what to believe, what to trust. We all have faith in something, even if it is as simple as "coffee is good" or Matt's chair. Thus, faith is as important as breath: it allows us to live in peace and hope.
(Care of Steve's question on his blog, and the post on Matt's also.)
In a religious sense, I personally have faith in a loving God who is both merciful and just. I have faith in a God who sacrificed himself, in the ultimate act of mercy, to justify us, to save us from the eternal consequences of our extremely bad behaviour. I have faith in a God who says that the most important thing is love and respect.
I have faith that love is important above all, and that love includes forgiveness, consideration, respect and responsibility. I have faith that people can always be better than they are, that people can always change. I have faith in Psi. I have faith in my friends and family. This is by no means an extensive list but it's something.
Faith is instinct (which is only really wrong about as often as intellect is, and is equally important). Faith is trust. Faith is hope. To me, the only thing more important than faith is love and the two should go hand in hand. Faith is part of every day, every decision we make, every thought we have. Someone was saying the other day (that is someone out of Steve, Matt, Talen and Fox, since it was on Friday) that we generally make a decision, then rationalise it, and, in my experience (both personally and in dealing with other people) this is the case. Thus, again, faith plays a role every day.
I suppose I value faith for two main reasons. One, it is very closely related to instinct, to gut knowledge, to talent, to all these things which get denounced and under-represented in our highly over-intellectual world. These are things which are important to me and, in my opinion, should be more widely recognised as having both reality and importance. Two...
Damnit, I've lost number two. Wait, it could have been this: my feeling is that 'proof' and absolutes don't exist in this world because everything is experiential. This is all very philosophical, perhaps (I mean, certainly) but, at the same time, I feel it is important to the way I, at least, experience the world. It means that everyone experiences the same thing in different ways to me, filtering the same experience (which cannot be exactly the same due to time and space interference) through their own different experiences, the way they view the world, what their day has been like before now and so on and so forth. History is experiential: written by fallible humans who had their own viewpoint to sell (welcome to a very small crash course in historiography). Those who do scientific research (no matter the area) all have their pet theories and are happy enough to mangle the results to prove their point (indeed, are often paid enormous amount by companies to do so). Theories, even if proved, get quashed because they are unpopular or would cost people money. So where do we look for facts? How do we know what 'proof' or 'facts' or 'truths' to consider the real thing?
We make a choice. We decide to have faith in particular things over others. We decide to believe that the earth is round, that Columbus or Genghis Khan existed, that the table I've put your coffee on looks the same colour and height to you as it does to me, that one person experiences the same awesome majesty of Niagara Falls as another person when standing in the same place. We choose things to have faith in so we can survive. So we don't go insane with the constant wondering what to believe, what to trust. We all have faith in something, even if it is as simple as "coffee is good" or Matt's chair. Thus, faith is as important as breath: it allows us to live in peace and hope.
(Care of Steve's question on his blog, and the post on Matt's also.)
1 comment:
mmmm....well i do believe faith is important but then again i'm a person of faith. not sure that science is a faith or that all scientists can be corrupted as putting their theories first. i know scientists, while holding to scientific dogma most test theories over and over. that's actually the dogma, test over and over to see if it's right and then make a theory.
we know the world is round because we have pictures, and we know columbus existed cuz historians have found proof. yes you could say that faith makes it proof but again they've been tested extensively by cynical people and proven that way. that's science. faith is intangible while science isn't.
yes faith informs life as does one's beliefs. this includes scientific theory and such, at least in the beliefs catagory. so there's my two cents.
Post a Comment