What is the basis for faith?

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This is really interesting. :lol

I too have thought that "belief in" any one/predominant thing/power/quality/"super-reality" could be classified as religion because, ( I believed ), this sort of belief was a kind of "worship of" or "faith in" ... But tech's and Joker's comments have got me thinking, that not only are belief and faith totally and utterly different things, ( belief is an act, whereas faith is a state/condition, however fleeting/ephemeral, or quality/property of an act ) but also that believing in ( or "worship of" ) any thing/power/reality/quality because of, or based on, x, y, or z evidence/arguments/report is in fact an act of "bad faith", the opposite of faith.

So what is the basis of faith, as opposed to "bad faith" ( in which state people need/must always have "reasons", evidence, other people's support/backing, logical arguments, etc to support and justify their acts, including their beliefs )? When I decided to believe in god in early spring 2008 I did it because I had been reading about fluid intelligence and theories about our human tendency to see patterns, create meaning, ascribe cause and attribute agency etc ... and how this creates a sort of mental "space" which in perhaps many, perhaps most, people needs "filling" because otherwise it causes chronic anxiety, etc ... and I thought that perhaps it would be "good for me", for my mental health, etc to believe in god. I did *not* believe that god "existed". I simply chose to "believe in god". I decided to "try" out this totally unfounded belief, to see what effect it had on me. This might sound trivial, as if it could hardly have any effect at all, but after the first couple of declarations it registered, and I felt as if I had been a scout in enemy territory finally coming home/into safety after years and years without rest. It was bizarre, and amazing, and I cried.

Part of why I chose to do it was because I had felt and acknowledged "need" which I seemed to be unable to answer with the usual logical sort of solutions, but I was also ready to try something totally new and strange. I had been excluding gluten and dairy from my diet for about 4 months, consistently, and I was feeling unusually "strong", or stable, or courageous, steady, "solid", "secure inside my body/skin", "calmed" in some way.

I wonder if the basis of "bad faith", a state in which believe only in things which are peer-reviewed/backed up by evidence/argument etc, etc, etc and act in correspondingly limited ways, is a sort of existential/visceral fear, ( which may have roots in physical ill-health/chronic inflammation ... in a persistently overstimulated/excited/exhausted vagus nerve/enteric nervous system for instance ).

And if the basis of faith is courage ... or *guts", ( the sort you have if your intestines are calm/peaceful, because not invaded daily even hourly from earliest infancy by substances causing constant inflammation, and your inner being/body is safe because not eating foods like wheat/gluten which increase intestinal permeability thus enabling large opioid molecules to enter the blood, reach and influence the brain, and trigger autoimmune reactions which attack various internal organs ... but perhaps for other reasons too ! !! :lol ) ...

How much are they tied together; physical health and the "spiritual"/religious, or simply psychological, phenomenon of faith?

And I am suddenly wondering if this discovery about "bad faith" is what some believers/theists/christian members of WP :lol have been referring to in the past when they have said that you can "accidentally", and with the best of intentions, believe in the demiurge for instance, or in the "wrong god", etc, ... because if your belief is an act of "bad faith", ie. is a belief based on argument, evidence, proof, other people, tradition, etc, requiring constant bolstering with quotes from the bible or elaborate archeological/paleontological interpretations, etc then the god you believe in probably isn't god of the "green pastures" etc. ( PS. Ref. I love the book "I am David" by Anne Holm ).

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Last edited by ouinon on 05 May 2012, 3:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was reluctant to include that bit about monotheism, and I'm willing to withdraw it.

I'm not an atheist. I apologize if this offends anyone, but I do see atheism as "belief" - a faith that there's nothing more than material reality. To me it's obvious there's more than just that, but that's me and based on personal experience.

That's easy. Saul of Tarsus purportedly summed it up thusly:

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

A clear description of a mental dysfunction.

ruveyn

I see atheism as the same thing as you do how ever many of them claim otherwise.

...or, perhaps, unflagging optimism.

Either way, I've contributed all I care to. I lost my passion and interest for in-depth theological discussions long ago.

Clever fellow.

ruveyn