Where is the faith?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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The following is rough, but it will capture the kind of general underpinnings that support my belief. If there are questions, I’ll try to tighten things up along the way in whatever answers I can provide to whatever responses are evoked-- I am trying to work this line of thought out as I go along, so I will feel free to rephrase or (outright) modify if I need to.

I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, so, of course, I believe there is a God. I have been taught this by people who form a group, members of which group, are at the contemporary ends of chains of people who have been similarly taught by other people who have been taught by others, and so on. These chains stretch back in history to people who encountered Jesus Christ, who made these (initial) people aware of the facts (his relation to God and his status as Messiah.

These initial encounters, along with other significant occurrences, has been documented along the way in ‘written’ material that has been preserved over the ages. To be sure, this documentation is not the documentation that is produced nowadays with respect to current events, which documentation will be available (I hope) to future generations. But then neither is a lot of the other documentation from 2000 (give or take) years ago.

It is true that the material of the Bible has been considered more than just documentation, so it has been preserved, more or less, intact. As a partial analogy, think of famous diaries or journals that have come down to us through history. In some cases they are valued for more than the history they include, and so, are kept intact, as it were. The Bible contains parables, psalms, teachings, etc.

It also contains points, passages, comments that generate difficulties. However the difficulties are difficulties, at most, for the particular points. They don’t create difficulties for other parts of the Bible.

I would not say that my belief in Jesus/God is based on the Bible. But I wouldn’t say that my belief in Abraham Lincoln is based on the Encyclopedia Britannica either. With respect to Lincoln, it might be closer to a true picture of things to say that I believe that the Britannica is a source because I know things about the environment (both contemporary and historical) in which it exists/has existed, how it has been produced, etc., (and, of course I know these things because of what I have learned from other sources of information). My knowledge of these things is underlies the fact that I view the Britannica one way and works of fiction another (including fairy tales). If pressed to check the Bible literature against the “facts themselves” (it often seems like something like this is hurled as a challenge at believers, I can’t carry out such a check. But I can’t do this for any history book, and I take this to be a reductio ad absurdem of the challenge.)

One often hears that religious belief, unlike non-religious history, for example, is based on faith, not evidence. Using the above comparison between belief about Jesus Christ and belief about Abe Lincoln, where exactly does faith play a role in one, but not in the other?.

Ima T. Heist

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Faith does Play a role in all intellectual undertakings. However, we have documents written in Lincoln’s own hand. What I’m saying is that Lincoln wrote what he wanted to be remembered for.

Besides the question Is not whether or not Yeshua Ben Miriam existed. Who knows? The question is whether this Judean agitator was divine.

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Come on, ima. I’m sure you can see the (obvious) differences in historical source evidence for the lives of Jesus Christ and Abraham Lincoln.

Your problem is manifested in this confused sentence. Belief and history are separate categories. In other words, Religious history does NOT equate to religious belief. Thus, it is perfectly possible to lend credence to religious history whithout lending credence to religious belief.

Evidence is the root of all history. Without it, there is no history! Religion, like politics , philosophy, science and drama has a historical basis in evidence.

This is not to say that evidence is sufficient as proof. It clearly is not. The task of the historian (in any of these fields) is to evaluate the evidence). This same rule applies to the religious believer, who must evaluate the extent/substance of his beliefs.

Above, you talk of Jesus Christ and Abe Lincoln as though historical evidence pertaining to them is similar. It is not. This is your mistake. The good historian recognises that evidence varies from case to case- from strong to weak- from deep to shallow- and from subjective to objective.

An evaluation of what is true must take into account these factors- and must show evidence of their consideration in order to be defensible (and thus repsected). The problem facing religious believers is that seldom are they able to think in thse terms- and therefore, they are often embarassed by the kinf of conflagrations you establish above.

My advice to you is to adopt an objective, historical stance with regard to your religion and to work on learning areas of history which you are not familiar with in relation to it. This will help you convince yourself, as well of others, wehn you talk about it, and will contribute to your own evaluation of its truthfulness.

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Faith… What is faith? Faith in God? Whose God? Who wrote or spoke of the God in which you have faith? Another human being, or many other human beings? Then essentially your faith lies in humans, not in God. You can only dicsover God on your own my friend, not by reading the bible or listening to dogmas. Jesus Christ was a man, not a deity. Never did he say he was to be worshipped like a deity, nor did he claim anything other then Jewish faith for himself. His philosophies were virtuous, yet people took him to utter extremes, and essentially ruined all that was good about him. Look at the people who typically follow his supposed doctrine. They are hypocritical and frequently defy their own doctrines. Religion should be about free will, not controlling fear that equates to faith in some doctrine of man created to assert control, and order. The order that best suits those that created the doctrine that is…

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Well examine your chain. If your protestant Martin Luthur is in there. He did a bit of heavy editing of the Bible (at least thats what Catholics claim.) Before that there where a few hundered years of Catholic politics. Heck the Bible wasn’t even compiled until four hundered years after the events, and if I remember properly the earliest of the gospels was written one hundered years after the death of christ. So now eye witness reports where written down.

As I understand about the histroy of the time. There was a “messiah” aproximately once a week- it was a big problem as they had a tendancy to try and convince people to revolt. I can just imagen the Roman Soilders, “Ah feck, under duderhead rideing a donkey through that gate. Think we’ll have to kill this one?” There was a phrophecy going around after all.

But none of that matters. If I could go back in time and talk to old Jhosh I doubt I would belive him immediately even if he healed someone or something. I’d probably push him on some epistomological issues and see what his answers were. As this is impossible, and I only have third hand accounts to go off of, I’m afraid its just not that interesting. Agurment by authority is already a falacy, I’m certianly not going to take it from someone with such unconfirmed credentials. Peace.

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There is quite a difference here. As others have stated, history and belief are completely different.

I myself believe Jesus Christ existed, but he had no divine powers. All stories about his walking on water etc. are manifested. In those times, followers of improbable and radical ideas were easily come by. I’m sure the followers of Jesus were just looking for something to believe in, having been living in such poor conditions, they had nothing but his word to brighten their lives.

Records and writing in those days are not what they are today. It was less developed, less knew how to write to express their opinions, and writing was not as widely available.

I refuse to devote my life to the words of men of those times, as I do not feel they know half as much as we know today. I would rather devote myself to the writings of various intellectuals of our modern time, and develope my own ideas based on this knowledge.

However, I refuse to indulge myself in the belief of God, as I find it much more important to gain knowledge of the human mind and cognitivity in general.

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Many philosophers like to say the religious accept their beliefs “on faith”, while they only have axioms. :laughing:

It’s the exact same thing.

For example, I cannot prove there is anything outside my head. However, if I accept the Bible axiomatically, then I can derrive that there is a Creation from that. Atheist philosopher’s simply assume that reality exists and that God is not part of that reality, but they equally accept this “on faith.”

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Well the differance is that an Axiom isn’t belived but assumed. There are times when an axiom needs to be changed or eliminated. Such as when its causeing problems with the other axioms. You can think of an Axiom as a guest at a dinner party.

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Ummm…no. Not at all.

We have reason to believe in reality. We lack any reason to believe in God.

I do not “assume” that God is not a part of reality. Nor do I assume there’s anything outside of myself. I infer this from experience, and the consistency/inconsistency of experience. I don’t “know” that there is a world out there, but it certainly seems reasonable, and so I have reason to “believe” this.

This does not apply to God. And just as I can ignore the purple, intanigble, invisible gorilla that’s plotting my death, I can ignore this “God” entity. Does it mean it’s not real? No. Does it mean it may as well be (in so far as I have concern for it)? Yes.

Please, don’t conflate reasonable beliefs with unreasonable assumptions.

Sorry, this is just a pet peeve of mine.