Atheist faith

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Just take a look at how the Bush regime conned the country and tell me that reason prevailed.

What has the dumb cave analogy got to do with anything. It's just a wild misconception of how the mind creates abstracts. Poor Plato thought the abstracts were reality when they were merely his mental filing system.

You should have offered that earlier, Magnus.

Thomas Aquinas was a great philosopher. The Atheists would probably be more on the side of Aristotle. I don't ever get to a point where I can be satisfied with saying, "I don't know" when it comes to profound matters such as this. The virtues are beyond the ordinary mind which only sees through the animal senses. To grasp the concept of God, one has to meditate. Praying is like wishing. Communing with God is meditation.
When a person meditates, the brain waves become more active and this is how we can transcend our limitations.

http://brainwaves.corante.com/archives/ ... tation.php

Here is another question for the Atheists. Would you be willing to meditate on NOTHING?
If you meditate on this concept long enough, you will find "God".

that's because you suffer from god of the gaps syndrome. you fail to comprehend reality around you and so you adapt and create myths to soothe your troubled mind because you fail to accept the world for what it is.

You suffer from the know it all syndrome.

The more you know the more you realize how much you don't know.

i realize exactly what i don't know. that's why i'm an agnostic.

Gollum and Frodo.

I got it, I got it, I got it ! !!

Both are necessary to destroy the illusion/delusion of objective knowledge/wisdom, the ring, with which believe that one can know/see everything without being "seen"/part of the picture oneself.

Frodo, "mine not to reason why; mine just to do or die", is faith.

Gollum, obsessed, but finally disappointed by, the knowledge that he thinks he will find in the darkness under the mountains, is doubt.

Gollum essential at the end, to do what faith/Frodo can't quite do alone, because has become too attached to the ring/delusion of "perfect" objective knowledge.

Just two weeks ago it was doubt that enabled me to work out what faith is, what purpose it serves. And since then faith is enabling me to do something I've been trying and failing to do for almost 20 years, when doubt/questioning was all that "counted".

Definitely companions. Both of them essential for wisdom. ( either of them without the other; pretty insupportable!)

Last edited by ouinon on 16 Oct 2008, 9:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

Doubt/questioning which is unrelieved/unaccompanied by faith is as destructive/dangerous/bad for you as unexamined faith, ( faith unaccompanied by doubt ).

I suspect that whereas many NT's may suffer from an excess of unexamined faith, most AS have a tendency to excessive doubt unrelieved by faith, each state/condition as dodgy as the other.

Last edited by ouinon on 17 Oct 2008, 11:58 am, edited 2 times in total.

Cant I have faith in both?

You're asking if you can have faith in doubt?

I guess so.

I think that many on WP do, as if salvation lay in doubting/questioning everything, and the fires of hell/utter contempt are reserved for anyone who dares to take anything on trust/have faith.
.

Last edited by ouinon on 17 Oct 2008, 11:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

I thought they were asking about having faith in both God and science.

I can and do have faith in both. I have respect for science and technology, but I also believe in God. This is not an impossible combination. However, I do not believe that science trumps faith. Faith does not trump science, either. We need both, but in different ways and in different areas of our lives.

I have always understood that many people believe the same.

Ounion said:

I suspect that whereas NT's may suffer from an excess of unexamined faith, AS have a tendency to excessive doubt unrelieved by faith.

As such atheism can not be called Faith, but its opposite, Doubt, each as dodgy on its own as the other, each as vulnerable as the other to being en-thralled/enslaved by the illusion of perfect objective knowledge.

I suggest that it is the experience of doubt, unrelieved by faith, ( as much as faith unexamined by doubt ), which is most likely to lead someone to embrace anything, ( such as the illusion of perfect objective knowledge ), which seems to promise an escape from doubt.
_________________

In the Gnostic scriptures it says over and over again, "He who has ears, let him hear."

[b]To a person of the world it may simply mean, "yes, I have ears so let me hear." But, to a person of faith, truth rings clear.[b]

It's worthwhile to examine what you mean by "faith" and "doubt". Insofar as I can see, faith is acting as if something was true with no proof. Doubt is acting as if all things, proven or not, have the possibility of being true or false and must be evaluated on accumulated data. When enough data indicates a strong possibility of something held to be true and all tests indicate it is valuable as a premise, then it can be treated as true until new data proves otherwise. Just because an idea makes you feel good is no reason to assume its truth. I am a doubter. It seems a safer and more reasonable way to live.