It’s a difficult concept to get across, particularly when people are stuck in the notion that faith is “believing in” some supernatural characters or events or epistemic state. And certainly, with some people that’s exactly what it is. But in most religions, including much Christian theology throughout the ages, beliefs aren’t the main point.

The Christian theologian Paul Tillich defined “faith” as the state of being ultimately concerned. “Faith is a total and centered act of the personal self, the act of unconditional, infinite and ultimate concern.” If the ultimate concern is centered outside the self, such as in some supernatural creature or object, that’s a basic definition of idolatry, he said. A lot of that going around. The nature of the “ultimate concern” is something you have to work out for yourself, but usually we’re talking about the big ticket items like being and nonbeing, birth and death, time and matter, self and other.

For example, if you understand your existence as finite and you are OK with that, and accept mortality with full and centered presence of mind, that’s an act of faith. You don’t have to believe anything in particular, except that you’re going to die. If, on the other hand, you tend to shove death out of the center of your concern and avoid thinking about it, that’s not faith.

What’s the first proposition?

I don’t do propositions. Beliefs don’t interest me, except as an observable phenomenon — e.g., all the damnfool stuff people believe.

Now, I don’t have time for private tutoring. I understand you may not be interested in slogging through the whole Wisdom of Doubt series, but I hope you see it’s rather an imposition to expect me to take the time to re-explain it all to you.

The last two posts in the series might speak to your questions a little more directly.

IDers operate that way. It’s dissonant to me.

By the way, I went and read the first part of the series. Taken on face value, the one glaring omission I would cite is that with all that mention about faith, faith, faith, you never actually provide a definition of what faith is or is supposed to be, what it does or what it’s supposed to do—apart from being posited as the inverse of doubt.

Which only left me with another question before I even got to the 3rd paragraph: doubt about what impels faith in what?

What’s the first proposition? Does that come later in the series, because, yes, I’m not interested in reading an author who combats dissonance with just more dissonance. They don’t cancel one another out.

If this subject actually interests you, please read the “Wisdom of Doubt” series, and then if you have questions we can discuss. If this subject doesn’t actually interest you, then let’s not waste each others’ time.

And which “genuine” religious faith would that apply to?

Genuine religious faith does not require believing in anything supernatural.

What the point actually is seems beside the point considering both are expressions of a personality given over to magical thinking.

“Feel the Force, Luke”.

I’d say the principal point is what Paul Tillich called the “ultimate concern” of being and non-being, but right now I don’t have the time or strength to go into explanations.

The argument that religion is good because it makes people behave is a kind of post hoc apology that has been kicked around for the past three centuries or so, basically since the legitimacy of religion was challenged by people like Hobbes. However, I do not think that enforcing morality is the principal point of religion. Therefore, whether religion does or does not make people more “moral” is irrelevant to whether religion has value or legitimacy.

Someone wondered aloud what you, Maha, would say in response to Christopher Hitchens’ ‘riddle’. You said it was a straw-man because you didn’t feel that way. I mistook your statement to mean that Hitchens’ question was a straw-man in general, when, by the example you give in your link (Ratzinger, the f’in Pope!), it clearly isn’t. I’m glad to hear you don’t think morality has to come from religion. I’m also glad to hear you recognize how many people *do* think that — that was my point, anyway.

The idea, even, that *most* benevolent movement leaders were religious is, to me, yet another consequence of the phenomenon in which social forces prevented the ascension and independence of atheistic or naturalist spiritual, intellectual and populist movements for thousands of years. Hell, even token lip service toward agnosticism was enough to get you blacklisted, excommunicated or worse for a long, long time. Is it any wonder that atheists don’t own a city/country the way Catholics do?