Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

[Gadianton]

More that faith stands out from normal decision making when it insists a lower probability explanation should be preferred over a higher probability one based on the available evidence

I figured that's where you'd go with it, in that case, Evel Kneivel should be bless for his faith above all else.

[JohnW]

If faith is just moving forward against the problem of induction, then there is nothing special about it. Religious zealots should quit talking about being "blessed" for faith, since faith is mandatory to function. That's like being blessed for speaking a language or for walking on two feet.

Believe it or not, I completely agree with you. I don't think having faith is anything special. The argument I would make is that if you have faith in something worthwhile, then that is special. It is all about picking the right thing in which to have faith. Of course, that has the potential of just circling around terminology to get the same result.

[Rivendale]

Faith as you defined it is not correct. Setting on a chair and having faith it won't collapse is a judgement call bases on lived experience. We have chairs and we have watched the sun rise so we have a level of confidence regarding everything.

[JohnW]

If faith is just moving forward against the problem of induction, then there is nothing special about it. Religious zealots should quit talking about being "blessed" for faith, since faith is mandatory to function. That's like being blessed for speaking a language or for walking on two feet.

Well said, Dean Robbers. I don't understand this self-defeating gambit. If religious faith is no different than evidence-based confidence, then it should not hold any sort of special place in society.

Yeah, I don' know if it really means anything appreciable. I think for me it was just a different perspective on what I thought was a tired old object.

It is sort of like those moments when you are working on a difficult physics problem and you recognize that a chunk of the equation actually represents a physical phenomenon. It doesn't change the equation at all, but when you have been struggling with that part of the equation for so long, it feels like it changes everything.

[JohnW]

Faith as you defined it is not correct. Setting on a chair and having faith it won't collapse is a judgement call bases on lived experience. We have chairs and we have watched the sun rise so we have a level of confidence regarding everything.

Yeah, I think you are right with regards to chairs and sunrises. I was comparing it to things where we don't have such direct experience.

[Rivendale]

Faith as you defined it is not correct. Setting on a chair and having faith it won't collapse is a judgement call bases on lived experience. We have chairs and we have watched the sun rise so we have a level of confidence regarding everything.

Yeah, I think you are right with regards to chairs and sunrises. I was comparing it to things where we don't have such direct experience.

I apologize. I am not following . Direct experience to a person who has never experienced It is something we have all experienced from childhood. The very act of experiencing is a cumulative effect on a persons overall view of the world.

[msnobody]

So the title may have just a little bit of clickbait in it, but the statement is generally true. Hear me out.

At a very basic level, faith is a word that signifies trust in God or trust in religious leaders. The secular version of the word is even more general. It just means strong trust in someone or something (e.g. I have faith in the banking system).

When I get on an airplane, I don't demand to see the oil pressure gauge or carefully look over the safety checklist. I trust someone else has done that. When I get on the internet, I do check to make sure my news feed comes from a trustworthy site. When I read a scientific paper, I usually don't repeat the experiment to check their work. I trust someone else will do that. I do, however, repeat their experiment when it is related to my current research and it challenges my previous results.

You see, we all have faith or trust in things. Life is just too short and our brains are too tiny to know everything before we do something with our lives. We have to trust in someone and move forward with the information we have. This can be true in both secular and religious realms.

Why is this important in a forum like this? I sometimes hear people give a terrible definition of faith. This definition goes something like this: faith is believing in something while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Yes, many of my fellow religionists follow this sort of definition, but it doesn't make it any less wrong.

When I was struggling with my faith a couple decades ago, my problem was that I had a problematic definition of faith. How could I believe in the church now that I knew all this difficult information? It just happened to be that I was taking my first graduate-level quantum physics class at the same time. I found myself asking the same questions of quantum physics. I know church doctrine and policy is not the same as quantum physics, but there were enough similarities to lead me to the epiphany that faith and trust have to be siblings. In both cases, I found myself able to trust in something that just didn't make complete sense to me at the time.

I'm curious what your thoughts are, especially considering this concept is one of the main reasons I kept my testimony during my own struggles with faith.

The missionaries had me read Alma 32 this week and as I tried to unpack it, it seemed to be telling me to trust in something in which I had no knowledge, and went on something like if I wasn’t baptized, it would be out of a stubbornness of heart. I saw it as a manipulative text although my brief discussion with my friend raised in the church didn’t seem to think it sounded manipulative.

[honorentheos]

More that faith stands out from normal decision making when it insists a lower probability explanation should be preferred over a higher probability one based on the available evidence

I figured that's where you'd go with it, in that case, Evel Kneivel should be bless for his faith above all else.

I don't know. Part of the "magic" of stunt driving is how much they do to control something that appears uncertain and dangerous. The issue here being an intentional attempt by the entertainer to cause a mismatch between how probable the crowd is to judge his chances at success compared to their own judgment based on knowledge they have that the crowd lacks. Probably something in that which could relate to the OP I guess. Only in reverse. The church leaders present a degree of certitude higher than actually justified based on implied knowledge, and church member lean on that to adjust against the probabilities they can judge based on the evidence alone.

[JohnW]

Yeah, I think you are right with regards to chairs and sunrises. I was comparing it to things where we don't have such direct experience.

I apologize. I am not following . Direct experience to a person who has never experienced It is something we have all experienced from childhood. The very act of experiencing is a cumulative effect on a persons overall view of the world.

No problem. I'm just agreeing with you that I don't need to have faith or trust in the sun rising. I have experienced that enough that it is just a given (I'm actually not a morning person, so maybe I'm lying just a little bit here). Same thing with chairs that I have sat in a bunch of times. Where I need to have faith or trust is in things that I personally haven't experienced much. I know mostly nothing about aircraft safety. If I saw an aircraft safety checklist, I really would't be able to tell whether the aircraft was safe to fly on. I still fly on aircraft. I still flew on my first aircraft, probably because I trusted my Dad when he said he had flown on an aircraft. I still fly on aircraft even when I see news reports of aircraft accidents, probably because I trust the reports that say it is still one of the safest ways to travel.

[drumdude]

All aboard the USS Mormonism. With enough faith, anything is possible. Nephi made it across the ocean in a handbuilt boat, this ship should be totally fine too.

Have faith.

old ship.jpg

Ha Ha! I don't care what your argument is. When you make me laugh out loud, you automatically win the argument. (smiley face)

Man is that he might have laughter.

I think joy was a mistranslation