I’ve always heard people claiming to say “you’re just using blind faith”
When is faith not blind? Isn’t faith believing without cold hard evidence? So even though you may have some good evidence, it’s not concrete, so it’s faith.
So faith is basically always blind isn’t it? Why then do people accuse others of having ‘blind’ faith then?
Some faith doesn’t equate to blind faith. Evidence reduces the probability of falsehood, and thus reduces the required faith. Blind faith would be a relevent term for a situation in which evidence is, for some reason, not used, not acquired, or not available. Believing in God isn’t quite the same as theorizing about the existance of unicorns of Pluto, because God is by definition beyond the capacity to be rendered by empirical evidence, whereas the latter is not, but they’re still both blind faith in that they don’t have evidence supporting them.
I think different people have different ideas of what faith is, and with some people faith is blind, while with others it may not be.
I can use myself as an example. I believe that the Bible is the word of God and that it is true. You could say that I have faith that the Bible is true. But I wouldn’t call it “blind faith”.
Before I accepted the Bible, I spent several years researching the Bible and history for the exact purpose of objectively proving, with hard evidence, if it was inspired by God. I used the approach of looking for prophecies that could be confirmed as having been fulfilled in history. I did this with an open mind as objectively as I could. I wasn’t trying to prove what I already believed. I didn’t know and I just wanted to know the truth one way or another. I was able to find what I believe is hard evidence that prophecies written thosands of years ago have been fulfilled in the history of the last 200 years in ways that cannot be reasonably explained, in my opinion, by coincidence. This proved to me that the Bible was inspired by a God who is able to predict the future.
However, I had to make a choice about whether I would believe the Bible or not. Just because I found proof that it was inspired did not, of itself, prove that God always tells the truth in the Bible, never lies, never breaks a promise. I thought about it carefully and I made a decision that I would trust God and believe what He says, no matter where it would lead me.
So would you say that my faith is blind?
My point was, faith requires believing without actually knowing for fact, so then some blindness is involved, even if not totally.
I’m not saying blind faith as in close-minded stubborn faith, I’m saying the basic principle of faith is not having proof but still believing, so it’s somewhat blind right?
Faith is an act of trust. I will give an example of not so blind faith.
Your car is broken. You need someone to take you to the airport 2moro. Your pal Ricky bobby is never late, and is always reliable. You have known him for 20 years. He says he will take you to the airport. If you believe him, you have faith in him, but it is hardly blind, because he has given you reason to trust him. The question about Christianity is, what has god done for you to earn your trust?
Club29,
A religion and belief in god requires faith, if there was proof of god then faith would not be needed. God requires faith, as an unbreakable oath. Religious faith can inspire alot of confidence in the rightiousness of your actions. Atheism is the same, there faith is that god is not there. Both neither require validation nor falsification. Weapons of mass destruction sarga was one of many modern auspices the religious right uses, when it turned out they werent there, the confidence in there action to continue was rocked. But wars are rarely stopped over such matters as auspices, these can be corrected later, the war in the middle east came from a faith much stronger - revenge. 
There are two words translated as “faith†in the Bible.
Hebrew: Emun – which means established, or figuratively trusty; also it can mean abstractly trustworthiness: - translated as faith or truth accordingly.
Greek: Pistis – which means persuasion, that is, credence or moral conviction.
Shalom
The kind of revenge which pretends to be pre-emptive defense, when infact, it is purely assault?
faith is earned though…
Like I have faith that certain employees will never call in sick, and certain ones will always be late. They’ve earned that faith. I also have faith that my wife will never cheat on me. Again that’s an earned faith.
When faith is blind it’s not subject to common sense or reason. LIke the poor guy who’s wife has cheated on him continuously but he remains faithful. In that case, not only is faith blind but so is love.
Is it good to go through life with blindness? In certain respects we all have tunnel vision, we ignore the signs and keep plodding along. But to be absolutely blind to something? Why?
Faith is only basically blind when you let it be. But of course, those with blind faith will be blindsided.
Yes, US foreign policy thrives on patriotism (empire) and glory, it hardly sets tranquility as a goal in the light of the twin towers.
well this is a tangent, but going back even further than that, The dems (clinton in particular) had Osama BIn Laden in his grasp more times than you can count on one hand and let him go (along with Sandy Berger) because he was afraid of the “PC effect”… that it wouldn’t be politically correct for him to take out a Saudi Prince. The USS Cole, the Embassies, the original WTC bombing… all of these happened during Clinton’s watch when he didn’t use “Pre-emptive” strikes dan.
US Foreign policy only cares about money though, Kesh… the only reason we are still involved in the middle east is because they have the lube to drive the engine of our economy.
Scyth,
You do know that the 9/11 commission has totally repudiated that story, right?
which…?
Clinton and Osama. I could find the page #, if you’d like.
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
Faith is a fascinating topic to me. It can be discussed for hours and hours and still only touch the surface. Faith is a word used to describe an attribute. Yet it is not just a word, it is a virtue. According to Confucius it is the central virtue of what is called the five constant virtues. They are faith/trust/sincerity, righteousness, propriety, benevolence and wisdom. Faith is central to the other four, without it the others cannot be cultivated.
Faith is more than belief. Belief is believing what someone else has taught us. It is taking someone else’s belief and making it our own. It has no basis in truth, I can believe anything that I want to believe and for me that will be true. But faith is different, it is inherent, it always existed and has nothing to do with the external world. A tiny place to begin to grasp what faith really is would be to start from the fact that whatever it is that we have faith (not belief) in also has faith in us. Faith is not belief.
A
Liquid,
Are you translating xin as faith, in the religious sense? I’d argue that such an interpretation is incorrect, both in terms of philology and philosophy.
I cannot find a single instance in the Analects where xin, or the concept of xin could be used as 'religious faith'. Indeed, Confucius rarely spoke of spirits, ect. -- indeed, he judged such musings to be a waste of time. While I can agree that there are many instances of taking others in good faith are emphasized, I would argue that such situations would better be described by ren (benevolence or (co-)humanity. The pictograph is literally two people together.). The idea of xin is used to mean doing what one says (the ancients were loath to speak because they were afraid their actions might not live up to their words, ect.) as well as doing what one is supposed to do (a minister that doesn't dwell on matters outside his ministry is a good minister, ect.) Reciprocity is a far better translation for xin than 'faith'.
As for philosophically, even Neo-Confucians (which would have a religious demension) would argue against religious faith being the central virtue. They favoured benevolence (a Gentleman is at home in benevolence, if a benevolent man were to appear the whole world would follow him, the parable of King Xuan, ect.) while the Xunzi school favoured li (he told Zigung that he loves the Rites, the superior man performs all actions according to li, the Gentleman hates those who are unobservant of the rites, rites are one of the three things a gentleman takes his stand on, ect.) Indeed, the three things a Gentleman takes his stand on are: Rites, Benevolence, and Righteousness. Any other additions are corruptions from the Han synthesis (particularly from Wuxing and its obsession with the number 5).
While it is true that Confucius said that reciprocity was the single thread that bound his philosophy together, this is not faith as you seem to mean it.
In a religious context, people who talk of “blind faith” tend not to know what they’re talking about (I’m looking at you, Richard Dawkins). No theist thinks that his belief in God is ‘blind’ or any nonsense like that. As Bob has mentioned, it’s more a kind of trust, and we generally wouldn’t say that trust is blind. I trust my parents - and it would seem very queer to say that I trust them blindly. I trust them precisely because I have good reason to trust them. If I am justified in trusting my parents, I imagine that I would be justified in believing in God if he exists.
If faith is used in a more technical sense, then again the ‘blind’ idea is a straw-man. No theologian/philosopher of religion thinks that faith is anything like that.
Religious epistemology fascinates me. The idea that one has to leave one’s brain at the Church door doesn’t strike me as any more convincing than the idea that atheists cannot be moral.
Xunzian,
Firstly, I am not speaking religiously, I am not religious. However, I cannot ignore the spiritual implications of the word virtue.
In this case I will be so bold as to translate xin as sincerity or trust (the two words seem closely related to me). But what does sincerity mean? Yes we say to be sincere is to do what one says as well as what one should do - it is my understanding that xin is deeper. Why were the ancients so cautious? Perhaps because they were aware of the consequences of their words and their deeds. How were they so sure? Sincerity in my opinion is more accurate. Having said that I expressed that faith isn’t just just faith, it is a symbiotic relationship with the universe, some people say God (I think it is open for interpretation), it encompasses sincerity - more - reciprocity. This is my understanding, I would imagine Confucius himself had a far greater depth to his philosophy.
A
While I still disagree with placing xin as the most basic virtue upon which all others are built, your interpretation of faith is consistant with the trinity of Heaven-Man-Earth.
As always, Liquid, you’ve shed new light on this issue for me, thank you.