"Take courage, it is I," said the Lord.

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Does this mean that courage and faith are synonymous?

It seems that the evidence is arranged. It seems that it is arranged such that man must practice faith. What does it mean to ‘practice faith?’ I suppose it means to believe…even when there is substantial reason for doubt. It means to believe in the teeth of doubt…in spite of it. What do we believe? Well, the most important thing to cling to would be the promises made to us. There are a million things to ‘believe,’ but I here refer to the promises made to us.

If a man makes a promise to me and breaks it—I must, by faith, turn round and wait for him to deliver that promise. I must expect him to deliver on his promises. I must believe in honoring my own promises as well.

Today there is a notable turning in the hearts and minds of modern man. We are turning toward evidence and away from faith. We are waiting to believe until reasonable evidence appears which qualifies our faith. Man is slowly retreating from faith, by gradual degrees and numbers. More and more are falling back. More and more are turning tail on this one.

More and more are not taking a stand, because they are becoming doubtful. More and more are retreating back to civilian life while the war continues raging. Many have determined that this earth bound life is mere civilian life and that civilian life is all that life was intended to be. More and more do not buy into the reports of the war. Many deem these reports to be mere mythologies and they sit in their homes reading these reports for entertainment purposes only.

God is known for being a God of promises. Faith, it is said, is the opposite of fear. God has promised us many things. Among those promises is the one that informed us that there would be tribulation in the world and that there would be suffering. He also promised us a place in his Kingdom.

What I do not understand is that there is evidence all around which suggests that there are tribulations and suffering, both of which suggest a state of war. But more and more people are pulling out of the war and going home. Even so, they return home and find themselves at war, even in their own home. And although they fight this war courageously, they fight it without the provisions and relief of faith. They divorce the hope that belief in God’s promises gives.

Provisions. Relief. The promises of God are our provisions and our relief from this ravaging war with all its vile and bloody battles. We are not at home—but at war.

But we’ve not the courage to believe in the teeth of doubt…to believe, in spite of the doubt. Faith alone is a terrible battle. It takes more courage to believe against all the evidence than it would take to do hand to hand combat with the Devil, himself.

“Where is your faith?” Jesus said. “Stop doubting and believe.”

But more and more are saying, “Stop believing and doubt.”

It seems that the evidence is arranged such that man must practice faith. If the opposite of faith is fear, does this mean that we are practicing fear when we stop believing? What are we afraid of when we stop practicing faith? Perhaps we are afraid of the following. Perhaps we are afraid that we are being hood-winked or tricked or fobbed. Is this what we are afraid of when we choose not to practice faith instead?

“I’m not falling for that…what do you take me for, anyhow?”

It takes courage to believe God exists and that he is there. This is because God, Himself, isn’t doing much to corroborate your faith. He isn’t interested in corroborating your faith. He is vastly more interested in strengthening it in the face of great and oppressive doubt.

To believe is to take a stand. It means to fight in the war. But it does not mean just to fight in that war, but to fight in that war with a specific purpose as reported to man via the promises of God. To believe those promises even when they look like nothing more than someone’s fictitous narrative is courageous.

Therefore, if the opposite of fear truly is faith, then faith and courage are one and the same thing, after all.

2

It is just as courageous to believe in the promises even when everyone around you is telling you there is no God…and doing a marvelous job at even proving this to you.

It is humbling, it is frightening, it is lonely…it is not cowardly to continue tenaciously believing in those promises.

Kate.

3

It is humbling because it is frightening and lonely. You said you don’t see how it is humbling. It is like guarding something that is valuable to you when everyone around you is telling you that it is worthless. They tell you to get rid of it. But they don’t understand that my father gave it to me. I can’t easily part with this valuable thing I now cling to.

It would be arrogant of me to lie to you and tell you that there is evidence for my beliefs. I have not asserted this. I have asserted that there is no evidence, and yet I am conflicted as to whether to hold on or to let go.

I do not want to let go the promises of my father. This does not make me arrogant, but it does make me human.

I wish you would tell me why the Christian life is so lonely…I wish you would go into it, at least a little bit.

It is not always ‘anything.’ the term always is presumptuous and to be presumptuous is to be arrogant.

It takes courage to believe there is a God and that he is there.

Elijah

4

Holding to a set of beliefs in the face of adversity is courageous. Holding to a set of beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary is ludicrous.

There is no bravery in stubborn persistence of belief in the irrational. Such belief is the abdication of one’s thinking mind, and is not courageous, but suicidal. Man’s basic tool of survival is his faculty of reason, and abdication of that faculty is only inviting doom. You are free to choose not to think, and rather accept as truth that which you wish to be true rather than that which, in reality, is true, but you are not free to avoid the abyss that you are thereby blindly walking in to.

5

Religious nonsense. Power is the opposite of fear, and fear is just power’s lack.

One needs to be fearful to practise faith; to fear the potential absence of what one has faith in.

6

What evidence? As far as I have seen there is no evidence for or against God. There is no proof that belief in God is irrational…or that the idea of God is an irrational idea.

There is also no evidence for the existence of God. So I am torn. I have used my faculty of reason to try and proove the existence of God and I have failed. Therefore, I began to look into the wisdom behind the demand for faith. Is there some value to faith that man is missing? Is there some wisdom in requiring faith that we cannot fathom?

Is faith truly as illogical as I am being taught that it is?

I believe in the promises of God. Is this truly irrational? If it is irrational, does this make it unwise? Is there really no bravery in the stubborn persistence of belief in the irrational?

Then, my faith feels like it takes courage, when really it is just cowardly. So it provides an illusion of being something dreadful which takes courage, when in reality it is not courageus at all, but cowardly.

Why am I so afraid, if I am doing the cowardly thing? Shouldn’t my fears be relieved if I am shrinking back from something? I thought I was going headlong into the battle…is this only an illusion?

Kate

7

If I believe what is shown to me through evidence to be true, there is no virtue in this. It is not uncourageous or courageous or anything else to believe what is proven to be self-evident truth.

But if I believe what is rumored to be true, this takes some courage. If I keep some skepticism about the rumors close at hand I will protect myself from believing every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes along with a tale. But I will consider each rumor as it comes to me, and evaluate each carefully to see if the rumor should be doubted, believed, or disbelieved.

If I find that a particular rumor has some credence and soundness to it, and I believe it contrary to evidence substantiating it, then it is virtuous to believe it.

Take for example a father and son. Let us say that you are a small child. You have heard rumors that a trust fund has been set up in your name. You’ve not been directly told, but you are a very clever child and pretend to be lost in fantasy play while the grown ups have their discussions. You have been attentive and taken in what you could understand.

Now, suppose that you get a bit older and you get up the courage to ask someone about this trust fund. Suppose your family assures you, “yes there really is a fund set up for you.”

Let us say that you are bold enough to ask if you might dip into this fund today. But your family says, “the time has not yet come, you will have to wait.”

Suppose you go away upset and troubled, even angry. And perhaps you spend a year toiling to save money for a car. Knowning the whole while that you have all this money. You may grow weary. You may even wonder, “does my father really have a trust fund set up for me?”

The money is either there, or it is not. All of this depends upon whether your father is pathological, a liar, or a man true to his word.

If he is a liar, there never was any money to begin with; there never was a fund. If pathological, your father may have thought sure enough that the trust fund was real, yet it would not be; there would be no fund.

If, on the other hand, your father is a real, actaul and honest man, then that fund will be as real as your glass penny bank sitting before you; and that, even though you’ve never seen a penny of it. It will not go away when you doubt, it will remain when you believe. It will be in that bank, under your name, even if you forget all about it; even before you heard tell of it.

This is our predicament with the Jewish Messiah. He has proposed to us either a delusion, or a lie, or the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And we have heard it and must resond by either doubting, believing, or disbelieving.

He has reduced his terrible, frightening and impossible demands upon us down to a simple childlike faith. So absurd [irrational] and highly undefineable.

Kate.

8

“There is no evidence for or against God…” Certainly there is no evidence against the existence such of a thing. One does not seek to prove the non-existence of such a proposed entity. That is known as the logical fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. The onus is upon the individual making the claim to back up that claim with proof. You say that there is an entity, God, that, by it’s very nature, is not available to the scrutiny of my rational faculty or my faculties of perception, my senses. Such an entity defies all the known rules of existence. Such an entity’s non-existence is, therefore, the default assumption.

I do not take for granted, for instance, the existence of the invisible tea pot floating over your head. Based on the fact that my senses provide me with no evidence for it’s existence I am convinced that said tea pot does not exist. To believe that it exists despite what my sensory perception tells me is to believe a contradiction. Contradictions do not exist, and the only means available to man by which to integrate a contradiction into his knowledge is faith.

If a contradiction is integrated into the hierarchical structure of a man’s knowledge, then that structure is weakened, and to the extent that he sacrifices reason, his tool of cognition, to faith, the tool by which he has integrated a contradiction, he has destroyed his ability to know reality. Without the ability to know reality, man cannot long survive in reality.

The choice to stubbornly believe a contradiction is the choice to continuously weaken the structure of your knowledge, and to destroy your ability to know reality. In this way and to this extent, the choice to abandon reason, the means by which you may know what IS, in exchange for faith, the means by which you integrate contradictions into your knowledge, is suicidal.

However, you asked “What evidence?” The evidence I speak of is not evidence of the non-existence of god, for there is no such thing as the evidence of the non-existence of something. A things non-existence is self-evident. The evidence I speak of is evidence of the irrationality of belief in god. Such evidence includes the lack of evidence of his existence. (I.e. to believe in that which lacks evidence requires faith. Faith is the antithesis of reason, for faith requires only a desire to believe, and has no requirement of proof, where as reason requires proof regardless of your desire, or lack there of, to believe.) It also includes the many laws of reality, in contradiction to which any such being would have to exist. Contradictions cannot exist. If reality is one way, then it cannot be another way. If existence requires a, b, and c, then anything that is not a, b, and c is not a thing. It does not exist. There is also the matter of the primacy of existence over consciousness. Existence is primary, consciousness is secondary. This is self-evident, in that a consciousness with no existence to be aware of is a contradiction in terms. To be conscious is to be conscious OF something. Therefore existence MUST predate consciousness. However, your God is said to’ve predated existence, and to’ve willed existence into being. Such is a contradiction to the primacy of existence over consciousness. For that matter, if existence has primacy over consciousness, then consciousness has no ability to create existence, only to be conscious of it. If the disembodied consciousness that is your god created existence, then he has, again, contradicted the primacy of existence. Contradictions do not exist.

“I have used my faculty of reason to try and prove the existence of God and I have failed.” And yet you hold to the belief in that which your faculty of reason has shown you does not exist. You have accepted as true that which you wish to be true, rather than that which your means of knowing reality has shown to be untrue. This is not courageous, this is self-destructive.

The only people to whom faith is a value are the people who value death, for death is the inexorable end of faith.

Faith is the absence of logic.

If the content of my mind was at odds with the reality that I perceive though sensory perception, if my “knowledge” was at odds with what my faculty of reason showed me, I would be horrified.

9

I have read and re-read your post. I have even printed it. I think I have found within it the meaning of life…finally. You have come to the place where we need to take limits. A point on the graph where things become undefinable.

It is just as you say. You cannot prove the non-existence of a proposed entity. I cannot prove the existence of this entity. And this is exactly why I made this post. It is here, and I mean directly here, that I must take up my courage and practice my faith.

In the grips of great skepticism and doubt…I choose to continue believing. I continue to assume the impossible…the ridiculous…the uncredible. I have found, herein, the meaning of life and existence.

You have taught me that there need be no reason in order to believe…that the opposite of faith is not fear, but reason. I have been going at it all wrong. I have been trying to justify my faith by my reason and my rationale. But faith is not faith if it can be done away with by reason.

Now we have to come to a place where we are defining rationale and wisdom, that we might discover if the two are different or if they are one and the same thing. As it appears to me now, wisdom seems different. It appears to be a deeper understanding of meaning and the appropriation of that meaning in one’s life.

I would really appreciate it if you would help teach me about wisdom. What is wisdom. For if there is a God, then this God must be a very wise God to set up a universe full of creatures, and to desire the good of faith to be developed in those creatures. For He has set up the environment just so that there are only three possible options. Doubt. Unbelief. Belief.

Faith is an evidence of something hoped for. If faith is something significant, then God—if he exists—thinks it more significant and weighty than mere mortal reasoning.

But let’s face it. In light of all of this, there is no way to practice faith without practicing courage. Why do I say this? Because faith is best tested when all possible fields are set in such a way as to defy even reason.

The meaning of life, therefore, is to decide whether to doubt, disbelieve, or believe. And then, whatever road you take, to mean business when you take it.

Existence itself takes courage. Many things must rely upon faith. My heart continuing to beat is not contingent upon my reasoning. My body’s ability to provide adequate insuline does not require my reason, but faith.

Many more such things require faith. Faith takes courage.

As for wishing it to be true…

It is rumored that only the pure in hert shall see God…and let’s face it, who of the rest of us would want to see God? I do not wish it were true…I wish, and very, very fervently that it were not true.

I am not a pure individual, by any means…no where near the ball park. I would like the atheist to get on with proving the negative, not because I want to shift the burden in some silly argument, but because who in their right mind would wish God to exsist?!

Kate.

10

Who indeed would WANT god to exist…however, I assume that you actually meant who would NOT want God to exist.

Choosing to believe in something for which there is no evidence is not courage…it is not courageous to believe that if you throw yourself from a bridge, you will be magically saved from landing because you have faith in the Great Pumpkin to float up and save you. Sure, no one can prove that it WON’T happen…but it’s rather dumb to gamble with your life because of something so stupid.

11

How is belief in God to be equated with gambling my life away? My belief in God has not required me to jump off of any bridges in hopes of a Great Pumpkin to float up and save me. My faith in God is mainly a hope for something that is rumored to exist after I die, here below…it seems not a stupid gamble to believe and hope for things I have not yet received but have been promised. Just how would this be stupid?

Kate.

12

It is not the fact that the person jumped off a bridge that is the point here.

The two situations are equally brave, and in my opinion, equally stupid.

13

ok. thanks for the input.

Kate.

14

Be easy on Kate, she’s from Kansas. :wink:

This is for you, Kate. Enjoy! http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html

15

I’m engaged to a Mississippian, and I never take it easy on him. Kansas is like…two states above Mississippi, she gets no breaks from me.