<p>"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself"
Friedrich Nietzsche</p>
<p>My friend is a very strong Christian, and she really likes this Agnostic/Athiest guy who really likes her back. She won't seriously date him because he's not a Christian. Honestly, as a sort of Christian sort of Agnostic, I think that's a bit weird. They're only in high school.</p>
<p>I like to think of faith is beyond reason and logic, or unable to be explained by reason and logic. I guess the same way that love is a leap of faith.</p>
<p>And the stuff Paul wrote that was asked about...
"If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise you children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy."</p>
<p>Look in Chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians. It's important to note that these are Paul's opinions and not the Lord's, as he specifies.</p>
<p>Hehe...and something I find kind of humorous that Paul writes later on...</p>
<p>"Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this."</p>
<p>"I like to think of faith is beyond reason and logic"</p>
<p>Well you are wrong. Faith isnt beyond reason and logic, it is below reason, it fails the reason and logic tests. Its like some student failing a history or science test and then saying that it is a stupid subject because he failed it. Furthermore, thank you for noticing that faith fails a reason test, because anything that fails a reason test fails reality. In addition, love and faith are not similar at all; love is a very real experience/emotion that is a product of biological and evolutionary mechanics encoded within humans, while faith is a belief system that utilizes emotions like belonging and want for justice and guidance to believe in things that are contrary to evidence and reason.</p>
<p>Faith is what can't be explained by logic. It's not competing with logic. It's not tested the same way.</p>
<p>When you love someone, you're giving your heart to someone imperfect: It's completely illogical. Yeah, human beings need to reproduce to survive and so on, but it takes a bit of faith in humanity for this to happen.</p>
<p>IMO, it is just as much a leap of faith to assert that there is absolutely positively no God as there is to assert that there is a God/a certain religion is right. It's all faith. There is more to life than logic, for a lot of people. To say that all people who think of faith as beyond reason (note: beyond does not mean above, just different than) are "like some student failing a history or science test and then saying that it is a stupid subject because he failed it" is (IMO) wrong and offensive (not to mention completely dismissive of some really fantastic thinkers). </p>
<p>I'm an atheist, and I agree with Christine123: faith is beyond logic, and that's what makes it really meaningful to a lot of people. To dismiss so many people's experiences of the world is really narrow minded. Yes, you can fight (say) fundamental Christian claims with logic in court, and that's good, IMO: religion does not belong in politics. But to fight individual feelings with logic is just silly. Besides, while certian religions have done a lot of bad in this world, religion has also inspired a lot of good. As my Civil Liberties teacher used to say, the civil rights movement would have failed without the support found in African American churches. </p>
<p>Wow. Ok. Diatribe over. Maybe this is why me and my very liberal UU boyfriend get along well enough on thes issues…</p>
<p>"Well you are wrong. Faith isnt beyond reason and logic, it is below reason, it fails the reason and logic tests. Its like some student failing a history or science test and then saying that it is a stupid subject because he failed it. Furthermore, thank you for noticing that faith fails a reason test, because anything that fails a reason test fails reality. In addition, love and faith are not similar at all; love is a very real experience/emotion that is a product of biological and evolutionary mechanics encoded within humans, while faith is a belief system that utilizes emotions like belonging and want for justice and guidance to believe in things that are contrary to evidence and reason."</p>
<p>No, you're wrong. Faith and what you call "reason/logic" are just incompatible philosophies. "Reason/logic" includes falsifiability, that something can only be true if it's able to be proven false through experiment or observation. Faith rejects this idea, and is the belief in things beyond what we're able to directly see and observe. Both of them are just an individual's assumptions on how the universe works (I guess if you'd like, an attempt to rationalize the absurdity of existence), but they are just that; assumptions. By assuming that what you believe is right and mocking everybody else whose beliefs aren't consistent with yours, you become as equally stupid and worthless as a Bible-thumper. You'd be correct if you said something along the lines "The notion of faith is undecidable under our commonly accepted notion of what constitutes reason and logic".</p>
<p>You also fall into the same problem when discussing love and faith. Your basic argument is "people can feel love, so it's real. but I don't believe in faith, so it's crap". I'd stick to quoting people who actually have a clue.</p>
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That's the single worst argument I've heard against atheism. I am very atheist, and I will continue to be atheist for my entire life. You know why? Because I'm too focused on living my life in a way that is consistent with logical thought, and cohesive intellectual investigation.
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</p>
<p>This is the single worst argument I've heard for atheism.</p>
<p>Then that'll be the first one you've ever heard. I'm not the kind of person who is compatible with believing things because of "faith". Thus I am atheist. In fact, that's not even an argument - it's just a reason. Instead of one-liner trolling posts, how about you tell me why that's a bad reason? Show me a way to be religious without faith, relying solely on logic and reason, and I'll accept your claim that it's a bad reason. Until then you're just a really sloppy troll.</p>
<p>As for the whole faith thing: that sounds nice, but in reality doesn't work out too well. Why not? Because to live life, we must have some level of falsifiability and reason; otherwise we might just as well all be schizophrenic. Also, far too many religious people use their faith to argue with things that are established not through faith but through logic. And that is unacceptable.</p>
<p>We have to have some level of falsifiability and reason, but that doesn't mean some things, whether it's religion or not, are not faith-based. I do agree that too many people use faith to argue with things that are established through logic.</p>
<p>My question with faith is what exactly it's supposed to represent. </p>
<p>No one believes in something without any reason at all. That much (I feel) is certain. So there are reasons for any belief. Now if these reasons make sense, are convincing, etc... we call them logical, or at least understandable.</p>
<p>If they're poor, illogical, or otherwise bad, we call it faith.</p>
<p>So in my opinion, the entire concept of faith is a pretty bad idea.</p>
<p>Many atheists/agnostics on this board and elsewhere seem to justify their beliefs on the premise that because they can't logically comprehend/understand/reason faith and religion, and therefore religion can't be true or useful. I ask, simply because you can't logically comprehend something, does that make it untrue? Does the fact that plants and ants can't understand human thought and communication mean that human thought and communication doesn't exist? Of course not. Merely because something small and insignificant in the larger picture , like individual humans, can't grasp something bigger and more complex than themselves doesn't mean that the bigger and more complex doesn't exist. </p>
<p>I'm not trying to be condenscending. I, like most of you other teens, barely understand the first thing about life. We have just started our life's journey, so it seems odd that we speak with such confidence about the world now. I'm sure we'll be more humbled later on...</p>
<p>Anyway, just saying... there is no reason for atheists to base their whole "belief system" on denying the existence of something based on faith. like another poster said, it takes faith to deny a faith. So atheists bashing faith are being hypocritical. They are putitng their "faith" in logic, a human contrived thought process, and putting it against freligious aith-someting supposedly bigger than all of us. If you are having problems believing a faith based religion and want to be an atheist thats fine, I personally don't believe in most of them (religions), certain denominations and other religions. Just admit that you personally don't ascribe to it, and stop denying that it (a larger religion) exists simply because you don't understand it. </p>
<p>Sorry for the diatribe, I just couldn't stand some of the snide atheist remarks...</p>
<p>There are questions science will never be able to answer. For instance:</p>
<p>If matter cannot be created nor destroyed, How did all the matter in the universe come to be in the first place? </p>
<p>Also, it is possible to believe in science and Jesus.</p>
<p>Repeat: atheism is not a belief system, nor is it faith. It is the absence of faith. Atheism is saying "I do not believe in God". Thus the etymology of the word: lack of religion.</p>
<p>As for the whole ants/humans analogy, that would be well crafted, but again, what's the proof of this? Or forget proof, where's a shred of evidence that what you suggest is true? I could almost buy the idea of a higher system of thinking, but in what way is that idea more plausible than me saying the sky is green? Until there's some kind of cursory evidence (other than "you will believe this because it's true") you might as well be just making crap up.</p>
<p>Your belief in logic point is also a badly convoluted pseudo-argument. Logic is the only solid way (other than experience) that humans have to know anything (also known as reason). Think about it. If everyone works based on logic, stuff works decently well. If everyone works based on faith, we might as well be schizophrenic. While the modicum of faith that people call religion may not be as destructive as schizophrenia and the accompanying total disconnect from reality, it's certainly not helpful. Logic gets results, period.</p>
<p>I also don't deny that religion exists. I know all too well that it does. I just don't believe that God exists (this isn't "I believe God doesn't exist", it's I don't believe that God exists). It's worth noting that you yourself are atheist with regard to every religion other than your own - I just take it one step further.</p>
<p>The Brown Bomber: Science hasn't answered those questions - I think it's presumptuous of you to purport that science will never be able to answer them; you're not qualified to make such statements.</p>
<p>And yes, you can believe in science and Jesus, just not all of Christianity and all of science - some ideas are incompatible, some are not.</p>
<p>For myself, my atheism is based on a personal feeling that based on what we know of evolution, natural selection, and the life of the universe, etc., a Creationist God is extremely unlikely. I think the vague Deist God is more reasonable, but at that point, "God" becomes a bit of a semantic term - because a vague Deist God might as well just not exist, given its level of control over the universe.</p>
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Many atheists/agnostics on this board and elsewhere seem to justify their beliefs on the premise that because they can't logically comprehend/understand/reason faith and religion, and therefore religion can't be true or useful.
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</p>
<p>This is a strawman. No one's doing this. No one is saying, hey, I don't get what Christianity is about, so it's not true or right. On the contrary - people are dissecting exactly what this religion is about, and coming up with some darn good reasons for why it's not correct.</p>
<p>
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There are questions science will never be able to answer. For instance:</p>
<p>If matter cannot be created nor destroyed, How did all the matter in the universe come to be in the first place?
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</p>
<p>Are you serious about this? If you are, it's time to take some physics classes.</p>
<p>
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Also, it is possible to believe in science and Jesus.
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</p>
<p>You don't believe in science. Most of the religious folks here, for whatever reason, believe that "science" is some alternative religion that contrasts to the one they currently support. It isn't. Science has nothing to do with religion, faith, or belief. Science consists of theories, not tenets. You agree or disagree with them on the basis of evidence - not beliefs, faith, or anything else. Theories that have extremely strong evidence behind them are considered true.</p>
<p>So no, it's not possible to believe in science. One can accept certain scientific theories as accurate - but not "believe" in them like one would believe in Jesus.</p>
<p>OK I have taken several physics classes, and I am quite familiar with Big Bang theory for the orgin of the universe. I understand it quite thoroughly. However, that still doesnt explain how the matter in the universe came to be. </p>
<p>Also, I dont think science is some alternative religion, or principles. Science is man's way of probing and discovering God's universe.</p>
<p>And you can't logically conclude that religion is not correct. You either believe, or dont believe.</p>
<p>Brown Bomber: I can't logically conclude that religion isn't correct? Why not?</p>
<p>You say that it's a matter of choice, of belief. I say, fine, but for that belief to be an affirmative some level of reasonable qualification must be attained. Since there really is no hard evidence for belief in God, I treat it as I treat any other idea that could potentially be true but has little or no evidence for it (think a teacup orbiting Pluto): I don't believe in it.</p>
<p>I cannot tolerate overbearing, bible-thumping Christians who force their religion on everyone they meet. I do not have even the slightest problem with a religious person (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, etc) who is as accepting of MY religious views as I am of theirs. I am totally open and respectful of religion, even though I'm an atheist. All I ask is for a little respect and openness in return.</p>
<p>It really depends on the person. I would date a religious person, but would they date me?</p>
<p>For dating I don't care, I'll date anyone... but when marriage comes around I want someone of a similar belief system who will raise my kids with the values we deem appropriate.</p>
<p>You know, I'm willing to bet that more than half the people here are willing, whether they admit it or not, to bend their little qualifications for who they will date based on who they fall in love with. And it's not backing off of principle or following faith versus logic as much as the whims of human emotion.</p>