Why is faith considered to be such a great virtue?

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Partinobodycula said:
Solipsism is the only worldview that uses logic and evidence as its basis. All other worldviews rely on faith to some degree or other. The value of faith is that it allows one to form a functional understanding of the world, upon which cause and effect, right and wrong, true and false, can be defined. Faith provides the context by which one interacts with the world. There is that which one knows, and there is that which one believes through faith, and oftentimes it is difficult to know the difference. But there is more to faith than simply providing context.

Faith gives people the assurance that there is a purpose, a meaning, to life. All the suffering is not in vain, and all the hardships are not without hope. Faith gives one the courage to persevere when reason would dictate that the struggle is pointless. Faith is virtuous, because it gives hope, it gives courage, and it gives meaning. One of the things that children learn as they near adulthood, is that life isn’t fair. The innocent suffer, and reward is not commensurate with merit. Perhaps one of the causes of teenage rebellion is this sudden realization, that life isn’t fair, and the world is all too often indifferent and cruel. In such a context, faith, and especially faith in God, is a compelling and reassuring concept. The belief that beyond all the suffering, there is a purpose, and there is justice, makes life bearable. Such assurance is only obtainable by faith.

Being a solipsist I try to understand why people believe the things they do. I try to identify in myself, that which I observe in others. I understand that faith has its virtues, but I also admit that faith has its flaws. Faith, pushed to its human extremes, yields radicalism, which manifests itself in the very injustice and cruelty that religious compassion and forgiveness would seem to abhor. People are by their very nature both cruel and compassionate. It seems sometimes that people use faith in God, not as a guide for their actions, but rather as a justification for them. Such is not faith, such is human intolerance, masquerading as faith.

The difficult bit, is knowing when one is using faith as motivation, and not merely as justification.
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And Ockham’s Razor defeats solipsism with a single stroke, making it the most illogical and ridiculous belief there is.
 
Partinobodycula said:
Solipsism is the only worldview that uses logic and evidence as its basis. All other worldviews rely on faith to some degree or other. The value of faith is that it allows one to form a functional understanding of the world, upon which cause and effect, right and wrong, true and false, can be defined.
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In broad principles, I agree with you. However, technically, solipsism is not totally consistent with evidence. In solipsism, you are positively determining that nothing other than the self exists. What evidence is there to suggest this?

Have you considered instead Scepticism (not in the popular, but the classical sense)?- which is refraining from all determinations, other than of one’s one perception. This would be to say, “possibly the world exists, possibly it does not,” or, “it appears that a world exists, but whether it does or does not, it cannot be determined.”

You seem to be saying is: “I experience a desire for meaning, and provisional acceptance of certain religious systems seem to satisfy this desire- as to the objective truth of these, I cannot determine.” This is pretty much classical Scepticism, rather than solipsism. If you were really a solipsist, in the sense of making a positive determination of the sole reality of self, you could not logically accept the ideas of religion.
 
Qoeleth said:
In broad principles, I agree with you. However, technically, solipsism is not totally consistent with evidence. In solipsism, you are positively determining that nothing other than the self exists. What evidence is there to suggest this?
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Qoeleth, I appreciate your (name removed by moderator)ut, but I would respectfully disagree with your definition of solipsism. As with most beliefs there are variations in definition, and as such disagreements are inevitable. I do respect your opinion, but I would argue that the most generally accepted definition of solipsism is that “nothing can be known to exist outside of one’s own mind”. It is not an affirmative assertion. This is my understanding of solipsism.

However, I do not wish to hijack this thread with a discussion of my beliefs. I simply wished to share my views on the virtues of faith. If you would like to begin a thread on solipsism I would be glad to contribute.

Otherwise I will graciously return to the silence from which I came.
 
presidentjlh said:
You ever thought something was true, but just don’t know why? How do you know you can count on someone to be there for you in times of trouble? Are you telling me you’ve never had faith that something would turn out well, even though you had no scientific evidence or anything to back it up?

How is faith not a great virtue? It’s the ultimate expression of trust.
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So then why don’t we just say that trust is a virtue?

Certainly everyone has had hopes and hunches about future events or the problems they face. There are many examples of scientists that “have faith” in their theories. For example, Murray Gell-Mann had faith that one of his theories was correct because of its simplicity. He held onto it even after several experiments seemed to disprove it. Eventually, it was determined that all the experiments were flawed and his theory was correct. I suspect, however, that this exposes faith as an unusual virtue. It is only seen to be virtuous when it is vindicated. In other words, we do not remember or recognize people whose faith turned out to be misguided. Is this sort of faith virtuous? What about this kind of faith? I think not. How can we decide whose faith is virtuous? I think that it requires more faith.
 
Poseidon said:
Faith is belief in something despite a lack of evidence, or evidence against it. I don’t see anything particularly good about this, yet many people think that it is a great virtue? Why is this?
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Because it’s a theological virtue-IOW one that is impossible to attain on ones’ own.
 
tonyrey said:
Faith is not only belief but the dedication and commitment of one’s entire being to truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and - above all - love. It is a great virtue because it entails other virtues such as hope, trust, courage, patience, fortitude, compassion, kindness, humility and unselfishness.

Lack of faith is the rejection of the **objective reality **of virtues which are supposed to be human conventions which do not correspond to an ultimately purposeless existence in a purposeless universe.
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This is the response I wish I had written.
 
tomarin said:
Faith is not only belief but the dedication and commitment of one’s entire being to truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and - above all - love. It is a great virtue because it entails other virtues such as hope, trust, courage, patience, fortitude, compassion, kindness, humility and unselfishness.
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Thank you for those encouraging words!

The main thing is that we share those beliefs… 🙂
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Poseidon said:
Faith is belief in something despite a lack of evidence, or evidence against it. I don’t see anything particularly good about this, yet many people think that it is a great virtue? Why is this?
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Excellent question! Please consider the following:
When one knows Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, one is filled with tremendous ability to practice greater patience, kindness, and motivation, and is abundantly filled with greater peace and happiness, even in the face of the extreme struggles of being patient and kind in the face of unjust impatience and meanness.

Since this is the Goal, one must recognize that the only way to know Him is to first take a step of faith. It is impossible to get to know Him without initially having faith.

Therefore: since faith is a requirement to get to know Him and His Kingdom, Faith is a Great Virtue.
 
Poseidon said:
Faith is belief in something despite a lack of evidence, or evidence against it. I don’t see anything particularly good about this, yet many people think that it is a great virtue? Why is this?
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Poseidon, here is the beginning of Chapter 11, Book 3, of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis:
I must talk in this chapter about what the Christians call Faith. Roughly speaking, the word Faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply Belief—accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people—at least it used to puzzle me—is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue—what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.
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Interested in finding out where he goes with that?

VC
 
It’s pretty damn hard to believe in something without evidence. It’s also pretty damn humbling. That sounds like a damn good virtue to me.
 
Poseidon said:
Faith is belief in something despite a lack of evidence, or evidence against it. I don’t see anything particularly good about this, yet many people think that it is a great virtue? Why is this?
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Faith does not have to mean belief without evidence. Faith in its most important sense is “commitment of one’s entire being to God.” This can be consistent with having good evidence for belief in God.

Second, it can be meritorious to believe without evidence. I submit to you an example:
I am accused of a crime. All the evidence is against me such that any reasonable person would find me guilty, yet in spite of this I am innocent and know that I am. I have two friends. One of them trusts me in spite of overwhelming evidence against me. The other does not, he decides that I am guilty.

Which one has been a better friend to me? Which one will I have a stronger relationship with?

When Thomas doubted Jesus and Jesus rebuked him for it, Jesus was not so much saying “you should have believed in me without evidence,” as he was saying “you should have known me better.”

At any rate, we believe all sorts of things without evidence for them. Some examples include that the universe was not created five minutes ago with built in memory traces, that I am not a brain in a vat, that there are minds other than my own, that I can trust my own mind (to use my mind to prove my mind would be circular), etc.
 
danserr said:
Faith does not have to mean belief without evidence. Faith in its most important sense is “commitment of one’s entire being to God.” This can be consistent with having good evidence for belief in God.

Second, it can be meritorious to believe without evidence. I submit to you an example:
I am accused of a crime. All the evidence is against me such that any reasonable person would find me guilty, yet in spite of this I am innocent and know that I am. I have two friends. One of them trusts me in spite of overwhelming evidence against me. The other does not, he decides that I am guilty.

Which one has been a better friend to me? Which one will I have a stronger relationship with?

When Thomas doubted Jesus and Jesus rebuked him for it, Jesus was not so much saying “you should have believed in me without evidence,” as he was saying “you should have known me better.”

At any rate, we believe all sorts of things without evidence for them. Some examples include that the universe was not created five minutes ago with built in memory traces, that I am not a brain in a vat, that there are minds other than my own, that I can trust my own mind (to use my mind to prove my mind would be circular), etc.
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What about my examples?
TheTrueCentrist said:
So then why don’t we just say that trust is a virtue?

Certainly everyone has had hopes and hunches about future events or the problems they face. There are many examples of scientists that “have faith” in their theories. For example, Murray Gell-Mann had faith that one of his theories was correct because of its simplicity. He held onto it even after several experiments seemed to disprove it. Eventually, it was determined that all the experiments were flawed and his theory was correct. I suspect, however, that this exposes faith as an unusual virtue. It is only seen to be virtuous when it is vindicated. In other words, we do not remember or recognize people whose faith turned out to be misguided. Is this sort of faith virtuous? What about this kind of faith? I think not. How can we decide whose faith is virtuous? I think that it requires more faith.
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Under what circumstances is faith actually virtuous?
 
Partinobodycula said:
tonyrey, if the God who created you, can love you, forgive you, and die for you, though you are no more than a reflection, why can’t I?
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You making two assumptions : that I am no more than a reflection and that you are God, both of which require evidence!
 
tonyrey said:
Because faith is not only belief but the dedication and commitment of one’s entire being to truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and - above all - love.
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👍 That’s right-the ability to believe in those things as realities-realities flowing from a source greater than ourselves- foundational to our universe in some sense-and the ability to commit to them.
 
TheTrueCentrist said:
What about my examples?

Under what circumstances is faith actually virtuous?
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Well, you have totally ignored my examples to demand I answer yours. And yours are little more than a google search of suicide bombing and an instance of a 16 year old who died from refusing to seek medical treatment. I don’t see that a suicide bomber has faith in any sense of the word, and the case of prayer healing only also suggests a misguided faith. One might as well suggest that he will refuse to eat and only pray figuring on God to keep him alive. Now, if God had actually revealed to a person that God would heal him independent of medical treatment, then that person should trust God and accept this “on faith.”

So, your examples don’t really help. I have never claimed that *all *cases of a person claiming to act by faith are legitimate, only that some are. Hence, it is no refutation of my position to show a couple examples of misguided faith.

I made two points, first that it can be reasonable, and in some circumstances virtuous, to believe some things without proof or even when there is evidence against them. (As I believe that my friend is innocent despite all evidence against him).

Now, you have not objected to this, so I gather that we agree that there are at least some circumstances when one can have faith in this sense. And why are other cases of belief without evidence not faith? Aquinas taught that to believe something on faith was to believe in something because it was revealed by God. This would be something that was not directly provable (he thought the Trinity an example), but was implied in revelation (scripture) and hence we believe it because God has revealed it, even though we cannot directly prove it. We rationally believe revelation because God has confirmed it my miracles.

Second, faith in the most important sense of the word is not just a matter of belief (scripture says that even devils believe and tremble), but a matter of personal commitment of one’s entire being to God. You did not object, so I gather that we agree that faith in this most important sense is reasonable.
 
danserr said:
Well, you have totally ignored my examples to demand I answer yours. And yours are little more than a google search of suicide bombing and an instance of a 16 year old who died from refusing to seek medical treatment. I don’t see that a suicide bomber has faith in any sense of the word, and the case of prayer healing only also suggests a misguided faith. One might as well suggest that he will refuse to eat and only pray figuring on God to keep him alive. Now, if God had actually revealed to a person that God would heal him independent of medical treatment, then that person should trust God and accept this “on faith.”
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I wasn’t contesting your examples. I was demonstrating that a overwhelming devotion to some God, cause, or other belief is not always considered virtuous. Recall that Abraham had faith up to the point of putting his son on a sacrificial altar. We find such faith admirable, but not the faith of parents who let their children die because of their faith. Why do you think a suicide bomber is able to kill himself? Is it not out of faith that his actions will accomplish something?
danserr said:
So, your examples don’t really help. I have never claimed that *all *cases of a person claiming to act by faith are legitimate, only that some are. Hence, it is no refutation of my position to show a couple examples of misguided faith.
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So tell me, how do we determine who is actually acting out of faith? What are the criteria? It seems to me that you simply disallow any example of faith which doesn’t seem virtuous.
danserr said:
I made two points, first that it can be reasonable, and in some circumstances virtuous, to believe some things without proof or even when there is evidence against them. (As I believe that my friend is innocent despite all evidence against him).
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So when you say faith is a virtue, you don’t mean that all faith is a virtue, only that your particular faith is a virtue. This is different than other virtues. There are no qualifications on the virtue of love, hope, or patience, are there?
danserr said:
Second, faith in the most important sense of the word is not just a matter of belief (scripture says that even devils believe and tremble), but a matter of personal commitment of one’s entire being to God. You did not object, so I gather that we agree that faith in this most important sense is reasonable.
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But I think we will also agree that a suicide bombing is an example of someone totally committing themselves to God.
 
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