"Faith In" Vs. "Faith of"

[JanisChambers]

First off I apologize if this is 'beating a dead horse'.

Faith always confuses me when 'people of faith' speak about it. I think I have Faith in several things in my life. I have faith in my friends, faith in what is reliable such as gravity or that when I go though a doorway I will always end up in the other room (as silly as that sounds, could you imagine doubting that?).

"Faith in" is no problem for me, it's a matter of trust. I can't say if my trust will be betrayed, it has in the past, but without some level of trust I couldn't remain sane. Every relationship would be rocky at best, and my life would be ruled by fear. Of course there is that one nagging little problem that forces me to question.

"Faith of" is where I draw the line. I've heard the phrase "why do you hate god" so much my head starts to hurt. A God could earn my trust, but first I would have to see this god, it would have to prove it's divinity in some way that couldn't be debunked. It isn't that I mistrust god, it's that I don't find any reason to believe god even exists. Without that very elementary fact in place I can't support anything that is supposed to come from God, anything that this god has been claimed to either say or inspire.

Priests, Rabbis, Preachers, and others like them claim authority of an entity that choses not to prove it's own existence. Perhaps these people could be great leaders, good people worthy of trust (faith), but instead they attempt to gain power and trust indirectly though a greater being they expect me to have "Faith Of" and by that virture to have "Faith In" them.

How much clearer can I be in why I do not believe?

[Foster Zygote]

"Faith" is one of those words with multiple definitions. To avoid confusing the issue I find it helpful to define a belief in something with no supporting evidence as "faith" while I define my belief that my friends and family are to be relied on based on past evidence as "trust". Whenever I get "But you have faith in things too" I answer "No, I have trust in things".

[Dark Jaguar]

Yeah, I go with that too, basically because we really need two words with those meanings and if we use those two words as synonyms it makes it a little harder to communicate that idea.

[ImaginalDisc]

It's equivocation. When a believer claims to have faith in a supernatural being in spite of the lack of evidence, that's clearly unlike having faith in the fidelity of a lover, or that the sun will rise.

[Cosmo]

I'm with Foster Zygote and Dark Jaguar.

Suppose I were in a burning building, considering whether to jump out a window and (hopefully) be caught by the firefighters' trampoline below. Now, I've never been in such a situation so I have no personal experience to draw on. I can, however, draw on the experiences of others - persons I have spoken with as well as the media - to conclude that I am correct to trust those firefighters to catch me. It is a belief based on evidence.

Faith would be a belief held without evidence or in spite of contradictory evidence. We might say that Flat-Earthers are acting on faith as their beliefs contradict all available evidence; but, then again, if you've ever been to one of their websites then you'd know that they say the same thing about us. ;)

[JanisChambers]

So it's a matter of semantics? I can see how that it could be best to simply say faith is belief in something without evidence. It's really my attempt to find a common ground with believers, to show them that we as Atheists are good people, and that you don't have to fear letting go of things that do have good reason behind them.

One argument so many try to take is that there is no source of morality without a God to constantly look over them. I know it's complete bunk, but I just want to show my 'faith' doesn't go away when I get rid of god, I can have faith in my fellow man, in friends, exc. I want to find that balance between doubt and trust that can translate to others still trapped in illogical belief.

[Pope130]

JanisChambers,
You have my profound sympathy. I get that same pain when I hear the phrase: "Can't you just try to believe?"
I don't even know what that means, and no one who has used it has been able to explain.

Robert

[pgwenthold]

So it's a matter of semantics? I can see how that it could be best to simply say faith is belief in something without evidence. It's really my attempt to find a common ground with believers, to show them that we as Atheists are good people, and that you don't have to fear letting go of things that do have good reason behind them.

One argument so many try to take is that there is no source of morality without a God to constantly look over them. I know it's complete bunk, but I just want to show my 'faith' doesn't go away when I get rid of god, I can have faith in my fellow man, in friends, exc. I want to find that balance between doubt and trust that can translate to others still trapped in illogical belief.

The christian use of "faith" often is just a case of "bait-and-switch." They talk about faith using different definitions, treating it as noted above indistinguishably with "trust." Then, when they get you to admit that, yes, you have trust in something, they can say, "A-ha, you have faith just like we do."

Of course, the short answer is that it is NOT faith "just like they have," but something very, very different.

My response is similar to what the others have mentioned above: what do you mean by "faith." If they hedge their bets, go to the bible: "Faith is the evidence of things unseen, things hoped for." That's not quite the same as an empirically based trust, is it?

[JanisChambers]

The christian use of "faith" often is just a case of "bait-and-switch." They talk about faith using different definitions, treating it as noted above indistinguishably with "trust." Then, when they get you to admit that, yes, you have trust in something, they can say, "A-ha, you have faith just like we do."

Of course, the short answer is that it is NOT faith "just like they have," but something very, very different.

My response is similar to what the others have mentioned above: what do you mean by "faith." If they hedge their bets, go to the bible: "Faith is the evidence of things unseen, things hoped for." That's not quite the same as an empirically based trust, is it?


So it is pretty much the way I see it. To use the same semantics as everyone else, "Faith" and "Trust" are two things xians and other Faith heads can't tell apart. It may be one reason why they see us as immoral beings, they just can't conceive how we can practice any form of good will we we don't buy into the package deal (so to speak).

Well, perhaps I will change the name of "Faith in" to Trust, and "Faith of" into Delusion. Sounds appropriate no?

[leucanthemum]

Not to get persnickety, or anything, but, grammatically, "having the faith of" means that somebody puts faith in you, not that you believe in some divine power or presence (e.g. According to the story in the Old Testament, Job had the faith of God in him -- that is, God believed that Job was a good, true, and stolid follower who would not forsake his belief in God, no matter what sort of crap was thrown his way. Not that anybody wants to volunteer to live the life of Job, but knowing that you have the faith of somebody stronger than you is a heady thing).

I think you may want to readdress the language issue: you have faith that the sun will rise in the morning. You do not have faith in a god having caused it to rise. You have faith that gravity will hold you to the planet. You don't have faith in flights of angels.

Speaking as an agnostic, I share your reluctance to find that latter "faith in". Then again, I also have difficulty putting my faith in lovers. They haven't proven themselves to me, either. Both, it seems to me, are unearned trusts. But I do trust that messages of family, love, forgiveness, loyalty, and all that other jazz sold in the Bible is not a bad line to sell. I'd place a wee, small little trust, a little faith in the salesman who had a working model of that.

[lupus_in_fabula]

Simply having faith in one’s belief isn’t really satisfactory in my book – more like a dead end. On the other hand, I’m not totally convinced about faith simply being belief in something without evidence either, because I also tend to agree with A. Watts (among other scholars) and just say that faith enters when belief ends.

In order to understand this, it’s necessary to make a distinction between apofatic and catafatic theology. Apofatic means that it’s not possible to express the highest “religious” understanding (it’s only possible to experience it, i.e. being it). Therefore, images, symbols, ideas, categories and beliefs about god are not God itself. Hence the only way to experience God is to rid oneself from all such symbols and beliefs. In a way it’s more like talking about God in negative terms; like how a sculpture is coming to existence by removing rock. Hence faith can mean the process by witch one removes all preconceived notions about that what he/she is having a belief in. I guess gnostics and mystics fall into this category.

Of course a catafatic system assumes it’s possible to experience God through belief in the symbolism (or some preconceived notion via words), thus they tend to see belief and faith as connected (faith in their belief). But a catafatic system doesn’t really withstand a critical inquiry I think; not if the basic tenet is that God is everything (then man-made symbols are never the entirety of what they try to represent), thus it shouldn’t make a difference what that symbolism is. Moreover, Muslims are discouraged to even try to picture Allah, and a similar restriction can perhaps be interpreted in the Bible by not having false gods (which also could mean the symbols and notions themselves).

So according to apofatic theology, there cannot be faith in X; there can only simply be just faith and X;and after such realizations there tends only to be X (faith becomes irrelevant), and so we have people like Mansur Al-Hallaj who concludes that everything is God, including himself (although he was of course therefore imprisoned, tortured and crucified).

[JanisChambers]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Faith

From what I have read it seems that Faith seems to be something not very well defined. It is a mixture of the concept 'trust' along with the undefined idea of trusting without previous evidence. While I still want to convince the theological minded that one can trust without being 'faithful', I can't help but think that the word "Faith" does need to be put apart from basic trust. I just cant figure out how one can teach this to them.