Mastodawn

A major concern in most religions is faith. I just saw a FB post saying "faith kills doubt and vice-versa." OK, but what the hell is faith? It tends to be defined in circular terms and/or with so much vagueness that there is no way to formalize or even really understand the concept (e.g. that "evidence of things not seen..." scripture).

Different religions have different definitions of faith. The LDS church (a.k.a. Mormons), established in New York in the 19th century, tends a bit more toward concrete definitions of terms than some other Christian flavors. I learned that faith was more or less (in my words) a response to an information signal about the reality of God, the truth of the church, Jesus' love, etc. received via channels placed in our minds for this purpose. I always found the LDS church's pragmatism and groundedness (in many things) both comforting and boring. But in this case it provided an operational definition.

And now I'm not religious.

(My father, the origin of my rational approach to spirituality, did not appreciate this explanation of my faith transition)

#religion #faith #lds #mormon #exmormon #operationaldefinition #DefineYourTerms

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Plsik (born in 320 ppm)6d ago

@guyjantic I can offer a Buddhist perspective. Faith precedes experience, because experience is not immediately available—or rather it is not perceived—at first. But for someone to set out on the path to liberation they need some kind of support (besides suffering). That support is the faith that this path leads in the right direction as those who have walked this path before us say. They cannot pass on their experience to us in any way; they can only say “Try it.” To believe that, I need faith.

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Proto Himbo European 6d ago

@plsik It sounds (?) kind of like Buddhist faith is maybe "probable cause" for improved living, enlightenment, etc. Maybe a person sees some evidence, or hears some convincing reasoning that this path leads to good things, so faith is their act of choosing to provisionally trust that reasoning or evidence as they go down the path.

I don't know if I've got that at all right...

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Plsik (born in 320 ppm)5d ago

@guyjantic Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. But I also see parallels with the Christian faith. No one has ever seen God; it is only through the believer’s attempts to understand, feel, and internalize “God’s commandments” or to practice Christ’s love that anything changes. But until then, there is only faith.

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Proto Himbo European 5d ago

@plsik Thanks. I was clarifying because I've heard many people (mostly Christians) describe their religion's definition of faith. For many Christians it's undefined or circularly defined. This is a nice, workable definition :)

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Plsik (born in 320 ppm)

@guyjantic I’m sure there are many other ways to look at faith. And it’s a personal, lived experience—a very individual one. I think that some aspects of Christian faith are simply beyond my mental grasp; I can try to understand how they see it, but I don’t have that experience. And vice versa.
On top of all that, there’s also a very dark side to it: people are capable of believing in crazy things and doing crazy things, and subjectively experiencing them as good and necessary.

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Proto Himbo European 5d ago

@plsik Yes to all of the above. As a former Christian I'll be confidently judgmental where you were polite and conciliatory: Some Christian conceptions of faith are incoherent or so vague they describe nothing and everything. I think there might have been more concrete definitions in the past, but starting with (IDK) the Enlightenment or Renaissance religious explanations for nature and life started to lose ground to scientific and rationalist explanations, so "faith" became harder and harder to define.

I think that's one reason why some people of faith use it to justify horrible actions: it's sometimes flexibly enough defined that it can justify almost anything. Now I'm thinking of that quotation by maybe Voltaire? It's something like "if you can be made to believe absurdities, you can be made to commit atrocities." I'm mangling it, but I don't have time right this minute to search.