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Permalink Reply by Nelson on March 7, 2009 at 3:28am

you can continue to believe something on faith but you either begin to believe something because you were indoctrinated into it from childhood or because you had some sort of transformative experience that led you to the truth of a particular faith- and often both together. it's these things that give you faith though there's no evidence.

so i have never had one of these personal transformative experiences and i wasn't indoctrinated from childhood with belief. i have no faith. i can't wake up one day and decide to have faith. at this point in my life, having never been indoctrinated into the belief, i would have to have some sort of personal experience of the type that god apparently, if you accept the claims of many religious people for a moment, brings to many many people. what would it take for you to have faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (PBUH)? could you just wake up one day and make a decision to have faith in his complex carbohydrate goodness? so now you see why i can't just decide to have faith in your god either.

so god, being all powerful and all knowing, in having foreknowledge that i wouldn't be brought up in faith and in denying to me one of these personal experiences we hear the religious going on and on about, apparently wants me to remain an atheist. :)

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on March 9, 2009 at 7:28pm

Faith, is this context, usually involves just suspending ones disbelief and accepting without criticism whatever beliefs the theist is promoting. In addition to Nelson's excellent points about how neither faith nor belief can just be 'switched on', I also like to respond that people in other religions (Islam, Judaism, Hindu, Christianity, whichever the theist is not) also claim that just having faith is all that is needed to see the truth of their beliefs, so why don't they try just having faith in that religion?

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on March 9, 2009 at 7:39pm

that's an excellent point and it's similar to my comparison between my interlocutor's god in that case and the FSM. Hindus for instance would say you just have to have faith that Krishna (Vishnu) exists and that's all anyone needs. why can't you just have FAITH!? it's sophistry no matter who's god you swap into the equation. the reason why they can't just switch on a faith in Krishna is the same reason i can't switch on a faith in Yahweh.

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Permalink Reply by Brad Leclerc on March 15, 2009 at 1:10pm

Bah, faith. At best it's unnecessary (if you have a real reason to believe something), and at worst it's detrimental to critical thinking (if you don't have a reason, or the reasons you find don't match with the faith, and you choose to stick with the faith anyway).

Faith is pretty much a conversation stopper if you're trying to have a rational discussion. I can't think of any context in which bringing faith into a conversation could be helpful in any sense...

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Permalink Reply by Misty: Baytheist Living! on March 19, 2009 at 7:26am

I generally ask them to define faith, then continue like this:


I didn't know having faith was a decision. You just told me it was only a feeling, an inborn knowledge.

If it's rational decision, I've given you my arguments against religion.
If it is an inborn knowledge, I was born without it. That would mean that it was a mistake on god's part. A flawed god can't exist, so it's either me or him in this universe. Can't be both. Who's standing in front of you?

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Permalink Reply by Brandon on March 27, 2009 at 4:34pm

This argument covers two topics for me. The first is abandonment of logic. The second is the personal god and internal feeling of god (evidence not required).

1. Abandonment of logic.
Faith is the antithesis of logic. Once someone decides logic is unnecessary then the floodgates are open. Any argument is fair game. Like "I have faith that God died of a heart attack yesterday at 6:00 pm EST"

2. Personal god therefore evidence not required.
For a long time I thought this was untouchable. Until I saw Sam Harris do it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjhbccXIp4c
He's absolutely right. You can easily make a mockery of the idea of a personal god. On any other subject, if a person said they felt something was true, in response to their lack of evidence, then their idea would be immediately discounted.

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Permalink Reply by Marjorie K. Blegen on April 16, 2009 at 10:40pm

Well, I have "faith" that the sun will rise in the morning. Which one do you think I'll actually see tomarrow morning, the sun or your god?

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Permalink Reply by Jason Brown on April 20, 2009 at 5:54pm

Just a short anecdote .. I work in a xtian company and am known to be an outspoken atheist. One of my colleagues told me this ..

"I told a friend of mine on the weekend that I work with an atheist, his reply? 'Shit! That takes faith!'"

:D

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on April 20, 2009 at 6:00pm

i love that response. to those that assert that being an atheist lacks faith i respond that that means that they themselves have thousands of faiths. faith in the Christian god AND faith in the nonexistence of Baal, Thor, Krishna, Zeus, Allah, Marduk, Quetzalcoatl, Odin, etc!

watching them stumble around trying to respond is good fun.

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on April 21, 2009 at 3:52pm

Maybe he meant that Jason's friend needed a lot of faith to work with a known minion of Satan? :D

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on April 21, 2009 at 4:18pm

lol. could be!

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Permalink Reply by Jason Brown on May 4, 2009 at 5:23pm

Could be! :D

I like to think that I DO have faith, in myself, in the universe and on my more irreverent days, the FSM ... may you be touched by his noodley appendage, Ramen.

:D

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