Faith for Non-Believers

[NormATive]

Sorry, FarEastBird, I've tried composing at least two rather lengthy responses to your post - only to have them lost when the website asks me to re-log in. I'll have to compose my response and copy it to a clipboard so I can re-post it after logging back on.

NORM

[OneSizeFit]

I believe that human nature is far more complex than you seem to be indicating. Not all people, thankfully, share your characteristic. I hope that you can take steps to correct that tendency you confess to having.


NORM

And where exactly did I say that was a trait of mine? Or what did i say to indicate this is my modus operandi, prejudge much?

[FarEastBird]

Sorry, FarEastBird, I've tried composing at least two rather lengthy responses to your post - only to have them lost when the website asks me to re-log in. I'll have to compose my response and copy it to a clipboard so I can re-post it after logging back on.

NORM

No problem, I can wait.

Peace,
FEB

[NormATive]

You said:

The nature of humanity, is "I am right, you are wrong." And that will never cease.

Were you excluding yourself from humanity? If so, it would have been better to have said "with the exception of myself, the nature of humanity is 'I am right, you are wrong'" to avoid me coming to that conclusion.

My parents raised us to have the exact opposite perspective - almost to a fault. Previously, I would always assume that I was in a state of ignorance and sought to gain insight from other's greater wisdom. I remember my father taking me alongside a very lengthy rack of books at the Library of Congress and telling me he wished that he could lean his forehead up against the end of the row and just absorb all of that knowledge.

So, you see, I do not agree with your assesment of the human condition. I am always willing to learn, which is part of the point of this thread. I am interested in ways to discover faith outside of supernaturalistic cause. Since I lack the ability to afix a belief in miracles within my soul, I really want to absorb the philosophy behind religious faith.

NORM

[NormATive]

I agree with you that people choose either Christianity or Atheism for either good or bad reasons. This alone would spoil your call for unity.

First, I am not calling for unity. I would hardly find a world where everyone agreed on everything a very enjoyable place. Rather, what I seek is somewhat of a common ground. There are things that most rational people will agree upon. That people come to embrace Christianity or Atheism for similar reasons is testament to that fact. We all want the love of family and the respect of friends. We all want to live life to the fullest, have food in our stomachs, enjoy the fellowship of mankind and reap the rewards of our industry.

How do we even agree as to which is good, or bad? Sure it is easy to imagine that we can agree on a mutual goal. But how is it attained? Perhaps we can ignore “some” of our personal belief/s indeed. But I submit that there is much to just holding these personal beliefs that even when we work objectively towards good, we come up unto different perspectives, and also different approaches. I, for instance, don’t view Atheism as good. I do not mean that atheists are bad people, or intending to be bad; and that for sure there are things that I can compromise with atheists. Atheism to me is not a good worldview and its approaches will lead us to chaos.

I never said that it would be easy!

But, we already DO agree quite a bit on what is good and what is bad. Atheists and Christians alike agree that murder, rape, theft, dishonesty, etc. are "bad" things as well as that honesty, integrity, hard work, loyalty, kindness and charity are all "good" things. Now, we may disagree as to where these notions come from, but we have this as common ground, nonetheless.

A Christian will tell you that he or she believes the above good and bad things are so because a sovereign deity has made it so. This is similar to what I believe. An Atheist, however, will tell you that human beings evolved into these beliefs as the need for self preservation diminished and the need to cooperate as a society emerged.

What is the difference for society in whether either is true? Or, maybe neither is true, and it's all just random machinations of our DNA that make us this way. It is only of interest as a topic of discussion. It certainly isn't worthy enmity one for the other.

I hope you won’t mind me convincing you in this post about my belief, which is close to deism, but rather more perfectly apt for us who have some similarities of beliefs. Of course, I will respect your authority if you stop me; as it is your own this thread. I will be very brief.

Since you believe that we are animals, I hope that you will also leave your belief that we can make ourselves responsible. Seeing you claim yourself rational, you can leave the thought that we have “free will.” And this would result that we are creatures void of virtue. And for this reason God is the ones who elect whom will he make into his image. You cannot change a person to disbelieve in Trinitarianism, we can be God’s tool for their conversion, but it is totally God’s work that even our action is being guided by God.

It sounds more like hyper-Calvinism rather than deism. At one point in my journey through Christianity, I had exactly the same philosophy. Rubbing shoulders with the Jews, however, has softened my stance a bit. I believe that a person's faith MUST evolve, and that it should evolve toward seeing this world and the present humanity as the cause for our charity and not the genuflecting to our deities. The lesson for the Jew over the past century is that we are on our own, we can no longer blame G-d for our troubles, nor should we look to G-d for the answers. All of our solutions are right here, within the potential of our very humanity. I believe this was the message of Jesus.

But more than that, God is really responsible of who will be part of eternal life. That is the reason why our salvation is called because of His “mercy,” and it is “not of our works.” Rather, that God, even before the foundation of the World, had already planned all things according to His plans on Jesus Christ.

Sorry I was not able to reread my post and see my error. I was speaking of any books they authored and are selling to promote their belief/worldview. What I am meaning you to see is that even these very people who claim to know better cannot just simply offer what they know as better for free. We are too entangled to our fleshly nature that we cannot direct ourselves to just do good for all humanity, without being rewarded.

Surely, I am trying to live in peace and harmony. But even my mind itself bothers me if I'll ignore to preach what I know is better, if not the best. But I had attained more peace knowing that there is a God who is in control of every little things of this world. I look forward to fulfill His promises.

I believe that we are already a part of eternal life. The gift of drawing breath each morning is the only miracle I need. I asked my grandmother once, whom I absolutely idolized as a youth, what she believed the will of G-d was for us. She thought about the question for a short while, and then answered "G-d's will is what he places at our feet each day that we are alive." My grandmother was one of those people who never stopped giving to those around her - both of her love, her talents and her personal wealth. She lived in a relatively poor side of town, and would see to it that none of the neighborhood kids went to school with holes in their clothes or missing buttons. An excellent seamstress, she worked half her days mending those clothes.

Your last paragraph is a comfort to me.

NORM

[FarEastBird]

First, I am not calling for unity. I would hardly find a world where everyone agreed on everything a very enjoyable place. Rather, what I seek is somewhat of a common ground. There are things that most rational people will agree upon. That people come to embrace Christianity or Atheism for similar reasons is testament to that fact. We all want the love of family and the respect of friends. We all want to live life to the fullest, have food in our stomachs, enjoy the fellowship of mankind and reap the rewards of our industry.

It’s true that we have many things that we agree upon, but the ability to do those things is the true problem, thus it made me more convince of my stance of faith.

I never said that it would be easy!

But, we already DO agree quite a bit on what is good and what is bad. Atheists and Christians alike agree that murder, rape, theft, dishonesty, etc. are "bad" things as well as that honesty, integrity, hard work, loyalty, kindness and charity are all "good" things. Now, we may disagree as to where these notions come from, but we have this as common ground, nonetheless.

I agree. But isn’t it also worthy of pondering why those who knows hypocrisy, dishonesty, etc., blatantly commit it in this forum as if no readers would know them? No amount of reasoning could change them.

A Christian will tell you that he or she believes the above good and bad things are so because a sovereign deity has made it so. This is similar to what I believe. An Atheist, however, will tell you that human beings evolved into these beliefs as the need for self preservation diminished and the need to cooperate as a society emerged.

What is the difference for society in whether either is true? Or, maybe neither is true, and it's all just random machinations of our DNA that make us this way. It is only of interest as a topic of discussion. It certainly isn't worthy enmity one for the other.

We have a close similarity of perspective. You wound up believing that man would come to its senses, while I wound up believing that man, being all that it is, being physical, just randomly evolve; not going better, but remains randomly.

It sounds more like hyper-Calvinism rather than deism. At one point in my journey through Christianity, I had exactly the same philosophy. Rubbing shoulders with the Jews, however, has softened my stance a bit. I believe that a person's faith MUST evolve, and that it should evolve toward seeing this world and the present humanity as the cause for our charity and not the genuflecting to our deities. The lesson for the Jew over the past century is that we are on our own, we can no longer blame G-d for our troubles, nor should we look to G-d for the answers. All of our solutions are right here, within the potential of our very humanity. I believe this was the message of Jesus.

Your getting it wrong, Norm. Christ message is that he is our salvation, through his offering of himself in the cross. Delving on that alone, it will give us a clear hint that our salvation has nothing to do with our willing and running; and that is the gospel that Paul preached, about Jesus. If our salvation be about ourselves, then how then that those dead would have need of Christ’s salvation?

I believe that we are already a part of eternal life.

Most, if not all, theists believe the same. But you know that narrow is the gate, right?

The gift of drawing breath each morning is the only miracle I need. I asked my grandmother once, whom I absolutely idolized as a youth, what she believed the will of G-d was for us. She thought about the question for a short while, and then answered "G-d's will is what he places at our feet each day that we are alive." My grandmother was one of those people who never stopped giving to those around her - both of her love, her talents and her personal wealth. She lived in a relatively poor side of town, and would see to it that none of the neighborhood kids went to school with holes in their clothes or missing buttons. An excellent seamstress, she worked half her days mending those clothes.

Your grandmother must be a wonderful person indeed? I also was looking after people for inspiration myself, and it is a wonderful feeling even just aspiring to have their virtue. There are indeed nice people from different religions, as well as atheists. I wondered why can’t just people be like them. Part of what I gained pondering those help shape my belief.

I also came to read and delved about Romans 10:1-3. Pondering of the differences of the good people I knew, it begun to walk me through in understanding the said verse.

Your last paragraph is a comfort to me.

NORM

Of course I do not only hope of comforting you. I hope that we come to the same knowledge of hope also.

Peace,
FEb

[Bernie]

I am weary of having to pretend that I believe in supernatural occurrence in order to practice my faith.

Unlike you, I put high stock in supernatural occurance and belief. Has it not occurred to you that the subject of belief and its relationship to salvation is just another of those things organized religion has taken captive and molded to their own liking?

I don't want to argue "reconciling the supernatural" as a standard of faith. The "supernatural" came looking for me, not me for it, and I don't feel I have the luxury of a faith placed in something unexperienced at this point. Am more interested in what "belief" consists in and how Jesus intended it to be understood.

Elsewhere on this board I posted the basics of my own impression of salvational belief, that it consists in a union of internal truth-information with external, supernatural or absolute Truth Information. This would be distinguished from factual truth which is a "lower" truth, the union of internal truth-info with sense experience. Where no concept of the mechanics of thought and its relationship to truth is factored in, it's easy to grab onto religious belief as a possession that produces exclusivity. In my view, non-Christians can have "saving faith" just like the believing Christian. I believe there's a proper argument embedded here that the conscious rejection of Christ is distinctly different than the possession by a non-Christian of saving faith, but these distinctions are not necessary here.

If "faith" is a union between internal and external truth, then any such union may properly be called saving faith insofar as the acts which proceed from this union bear the fruits we know to be "good moral behaviour". Good follows only from truth, and anti-good from falsity, at base. Thus, the athiest who has compassion and feeds a homeless person, though organized Christianity loathes the idea, is practicing the faith God gave him. Faith proceeds from being what we call "born again", and since the true precedes and is the substance of all goods, it follows that many even who denounce Christ exhibit signs of being born again.

Actually, degrees of the expression of good can be seen in all humans, hence all humans are, to varying degrees, born again or regnerated and display the fruits of this state. This places salvation where the organized Christian cannot stomach it: it lessens (not removes entirely) the notion of exclusivity, and places salvation (the removal of falsity and its replacement to a purely true state) itself in a fragmented state. One therefore possesses, at any given point in time, only a measure of salvation. The religious mind hates this notion, though the Bible attests strongly to it, Christianity refuses to see it. The atheist, though she displays moral good (seen in her belief that she ought to help others in certain situations if her help is needed), does not possess the fullness of faith (and its accompanying salvation) as the Hindu who leads an even more Godly (good-bearing) life, and the Hindu may not possess the fullness of faith and salvation as a Christian who produces even more fruit, though all may possess more treasure than some Christians who possess only a superficial faith. In all cases the inner state produces the good, not the other way around.

Bottom line, there is a logical connection between saving faith and belief, but it doesn't lie in the purposeful directing of the will to moral good, as the Arminian believes, but correlates to a state of inner cleanliness (union of true with Truth) which allows one to decide for and perform good. Good follows from the inner state, it is not directed there by the intellect. Back to belief in supernatural occurence, the degree to which supernatural occurence is genuine, to believe or disbelieve would be a product of the aforementioned union or lack thereof.

[robrecht]

Norm, I agree with you on a great many points. Yet I still have a very high regard for mysticism in a nonpejorative nonobscurantist sense. For me, some important mystics have allowed me to transcend some of the limitations of religionists who treat revelation and their own religious philosophy and theological preferences along the lines of a professional sports team or political party. I used to call them K-Mart Christians, those who are content with a very cheap, shoddy intellectual product because it does not require any real expense of actual thinking.