Re: Accounts and teachings of ALL religious institutions should be open to public scr
Did DIVA write all that, or plagiarised from somewhere? Please quote source. Be honest.
Faith is taking the place of fact in providing the basis for religion. The number of religions claiming full factual support for their beliefs is declining, and fully-literal interpretations of religious texts are becoming less popular. There’s good reason for these trends: given current historical and scientific evidence, it’s hard to see how facts alone justify most religious belief. Something more is now necessary.
That’s where faith comes in. Faith is often described as a “way of knowing” that doesn’t require factual evidence. It’s a deep and sincere feeling that something is true. Many religious believers feel a close emotional connection to their God. To them, this feeling is itself proof of their beliefs; no further evidence is necessary.
Certainly it’s the case that some religious beliefs could be true. The universe is a mysterious place, and our understanding of it is not, and never will be, complete. There may be things that are true but that can’t be proven true with factual evidence. Some of them could be current articles of religious faith. But does faith help us arrive at this truth? What type of certainty does it provide?
We all know from personal experience that we’re sometimes wrong. Our beliefs aren’t always true. It’s possible to know something to be true only later to find out that it isn’t. When you’re depressed, you may feel helpless and worthless. Your feelings are real , you may feel them so strongly, in fact, that you’re certain they’re true. You may know you’re helpless and worthless even though you aren’t. These feelings are so strong they can cause people to kill themselves.
Knowing is a state of mind. When we know something is true, we feel with great certainty that it’s true. But the act of knowing does not itself make anything true: our mental states represent the world, they don’t control it. A belief that is strongly felt–or even known–can be false. Our feelings themselves are real, but the reality they point to may not be. Faith doesn’t provide any great level of certainty.
So our beliefs and feelings are unreliable. But aren’t they still some indicator of truth? Otherwise anything and everything is equally likely to be true, and that seems absurd. Indeed, it is absurd — our knowledge of the world is imperfect, but we still manage to use it day-to-day. Our senses–emotional or otherwise–are flawed, but that doesn’t mean they’re useless.
Now if all knowledge is imperfect, why single out faith? Why is knowledge obtained through faith worse than any other knowledge? The answer is that, while all ways of knowing are flawed, some are better than others. What makes some ways better? The fact that they can be corrected through thought and experience.
A belief that cannot change can’t be moved closer to truth. Faith-based beliefs could be true, of course, but they could also be false. A strong feeling that something is true doesn’t make it true. You’re not actually helpless and worthless when you’re depressed, even though you may know you are. People who kill themselves due to depression have great faith in their depressed thoughts. Faith-based beliefs are what they are — they can’t be corrected through thought and experience.
There are other reasons to question faith. We tend to believe things we want be be true. Psychology research indicates that people tend to interpret ambiguous information in a way that benefits their interests. Most people think their abilities are above average when compared to their peers. They can’t all be right. We can test our abilities, but we can’t test beliefs we hold on faith. We may hold such beliefs partly because we want to hold them, and in such cases we should be all-the-more-ready to question them.
Our beliefs are strongly influenced by when and where we grow up. I believe the earth is round now, but I’d likely have believed it was flat had I grown up a few thousand years ago. Had I grown up in 10th century Norway, I’d likely have believed in the existence of Thor, the great pagan god of thunder. Faith-based beliefs are, like all beliefs, influenced by upbringing. While we might like to think they’re the product of a transcendent understanding of the universe, the truth is more mundane: we’re likely to possess ones that reflect the time and place we grew up.
That makes it even worse that they can’t be changed. How do I know my present faith-based beliefs are better than ones I might have had had I been born someplace else or at another time? There’s no good way to choose between them. Any belief may be wrong, of course, but only non-faith-based beliefs can be changed through thought and experience. Thought and experience may not allow us to arrive at all truth, but they’re the best tools we’ve got faith doesn’t bring anything to the table.
Faith is a bad way of knowing. Like all beliefs, faith-based beliefs can be mistaken, and we may hold them only because we like them or because we grew up in a particular time and place. But only faith-based beliefs can’t be corrected through thought and experience. They’re not necessarily wrong–they could even be right–but that doesn’t change the fact that faith is a bad reason for believing them.
Is faith all bad? Not necessarily. Faith-based beliefs can certainly be useful. As many will attest, they can increase happiness. If I want something to be true and I believe through faith that it is true, I may be a happier person ( an drunken person is a happy man ) . Faith has contributed to the happiness of many people. But is it the only path to happiness? I don’t think so. We can appreciate the wonder and mystery of the universe without having unjustified faith that it is or is not a certain way. We can live with purpose without having faith that this purpose was ordained for us.
Choosing not to live according to faith may, in fact, be a moral choice. If we accept that our beliefs can be wrong and change them when necessary, we stand a greater chance of understanding each other. Without faith we have the tools necessary to bridge differences. The possibility of a peaceful coexistence improves. Faith is not all bad, yes , but it may do more harm than good.
Did DIVA write all that, or plagiarised from somewhere? Please quote source. Be honest.
