Faith

[katzenjammer]

I will believe that no matter how much evidence you can produce that would indicate otherwise.

I don't think that is faith, sounds more like denial to me.

I really hope that you not questioning my FAITH .

[Soundsprofound]

Heck no, too busy questioning my own faith, or lack there of.

[Tumult]

This topic comes up in almost every post, so I think it's high time we fully discussed what faith is.

To me faith comes across as fear dressed up as virtue. Believers, and their God still have it all to prove, and so far have done nothing, and we all know there is nothing forthcoming. People who try to explain faith often have amusing anecdotes or the saying "you can only understand faith when you have it", which I take to mean when you've suspended your rational thinking long enough to be hypnotized to believe it. Faith peddlers often say faith transcends reason - and reason is the very thing that questions faith. This makes it easy for people with faith to avoid answering any real questions, other then some vague superior state understanding, more profound then mere reason. Reason is crude and simplistic next to belief without evidence. To me if someone uses that argument it means two things, they don't know what they're talking about. and they don't want me to know what they're talking about. See faith isn't above reason, faith avoids reason, because reason threatens it, so faith disqualifies reason. But I don't know if it is faith that makes people believe, I mean I know it's what the believers say, but I think otherwise. Believers think we're born in a state of sin, a condition that can only be cured by your total submission to religion. But that wouldn't flatter them, so they give it a name, call it faith, and they pretend it comes from within, when we all know nothing about their religion is allowed to come from within. That would give them strength and freedom, and their religion can't have that. Faith is an invisible rope around people's necks the pulls them in a direction not chosen by them. It's a word that means you believe what you've been told to believe without feeling like you've been told to believe it.

So what's faith to you? And it may not seem like it, but I am honestly interested in hearing religious people's points. And I will try to have as much an open mind as long as there is open minds on both sides.

So you've nailed down your perspective of faith.... why would anyone want to have a discussion with you given that "we all know there is nothing forthcoming", "you can only understand faith when you have it", the people you want to have a discussion with have "suspended -- rational thinking" and are "hypnotized", faith "avoids" and "disqualifies reason" and is "an invisible rope around people's necks the pulls them in a direction not chosen by them."

If that is what faith is to you how can someone who has faith even be capable of having a discussion?