"Faith is the basis for my belief"

Faith can be used to prop up any belief..even those which are demonstrably false. This makes "Faith" a completely worthless basis for belief.

Not to the individual, it seems to me.

Seems to me that faith doesn't always appear out of nowhere, it usually occurs out of some persons experiences in life, or way in which they see life.

Reminds me a bit of instinct.

Not that I'd say follow every instinct you have, or that instincts can't be tricked, false, or misleading.

But instinct is worth paying attention to, I think.

But maybe flawed dichotomy in my example.

If something else is needed determine if faith or instinct is a valid basis, then faith and instinct aren't the basis.

Almost any position can be justified by saying "I believe it's so, so it's so." Faith is not a reason to believe in anything, it's wrong far more often than it's right. Many people take on faith that one race is superior somehow to another. 

Eh, maybe not 'the basis, but 'a chair leg is 'one of the bases for the chair standing up, even if there are other legs.

Some people just identify strongly with one reason or another.

If my eldest brother had been charged with the crime of trying to murder him, my faith in him would be a strong 'reason for me personally, in believing that he would not commit such an action.

Sure I could be wrong,

Sure you can't much expect other people to accept your beliefs just because you believe them.

Sure, I hold such a belief because of positive and loving interactions with him.

And sure maybe my opinion could change with enough evidence.

But the faith would remain a strong basis, I think.

Faith is inherently good

Why?

Faith cannot be used to prop up any belief. That is like saying our legs prop up our legs. It makes no sense. Faith and belief are the same things. They are synonyms along with the word trust. 

Faith or belief or trust reflect our understanding of a particular fact.  We sit on a chair. The chair is an object of reality. We are an object of reality. We sit - or choose to sit on the chair because we have faith or trust or a belief that it will hold us up.  Now it is not our faith which holds us up. It is either the chair - or the principles of physics which allow us to sit our weight on it which holds us  up. Is it the principle of physics that holds us up? Probably not - principles don't really do anything, they are merely articulations or expressions of something more objective. Yet the outworking of the principle which when put into action enable a chair to be built and then used sat upon. So what holds us up? Is it the wooden stool or is it the expression of a principle? 

Yet I could say I have faith in the principle of physics - which allows me to trust that if I sit on this chair then I wont fall down.  

PGA2 position above is that faith or the trust he has in God comes from hearing a message.  In other words it did not arise from nowhere. Most people see a chair and automatically sit on it. It is  not like they consciously think, do I trust the principle of physics?  No they look at the chair - and assess it based on their own experience - their own weight and the way the chair looks. If they don't trust their gut feeling, they wont sit on it.  PGA's faith in God is based in part upon the message he has heard and weighed up based upon his own experience.  

People don't stand on faith alone - no one does. Yet faith is part of every human's life. And not only that - PGA is not saying he bases his life on faith - but on Jesus. Jesus is the object of reality. He has weighed up the message based upon his own experience - and it rings true for him.  On the other hand you probably could be accused on basing your life on less than that. You simply look at the world around you based on your own experience and form the conclusion that you are alone. The faith you have is in yourself. You trust yourself - but based on what? It is not as though you have never made errors of judgment or mistakes. Yet, despite that knowledge, you still trust yourself. Now the question is why? Why would you think that trusting yourself is ok - but that if someone else says that they trust God because they have come to this conclusion based on their own experience it is wrong - such that you have to argue the point?  After all, they are not perfect, just like you are not perfect. It seems a bit hypocritical to me. 

Why not have faith in our creator?

Wait, so "lemming" is Leaning on DDO?

Jah.

Faith is not needed. You can either prove he exists or you can’t. Why have faith when you have facts? 

Hm, you made a post titled "Facts are fundamentally just feelings", though. . .

Faith is belief or trust and is something we tend to place in our origins and things we can't verify empirically, or with certainty. None of us were there to experience the origins of life, existence, or the beginning of the universe if it had a beginning. We cannot confirm scientifically origins in such things by repeating the process to confirm it.

Our worldview start with core presuppositions, for instance, either God is and He is our Creator, or chance happenstance is why we exist would be two such beginnings that we build upon. Another would be whether God is a personal being or impersonal such as "Mother Nature," such as a force, even though we give it human attributes in describing the natural realm.  It requires faith for such core or basic beliefs since they are outside the scope of scientific verification in the sense that we are in the present looking back into the past. It is not repeatable or verifiable in that we can recreate the process to confirm it. Thus, for many, the present is the key to the past. This belief assumes that we can fathom how things were and their timeline from what is available to us in the present. For Christians, the biblical God is the key to the past.

Faith can be rational, irrational, or blind. We can have good reason for why we believe what we do, we can have poor and illogical reasons for our belief (or a reason that does not add up or make sense), or we can have no or very little reason, or blindly accept that we are here and that is enough for us.  Although not all Christians have a rational faith based on reason and logic (some believe without question), we believe God has given us a rational mind to know Him and discover His majesty and the magnificence of what He has made and revealed not only in the created order - the universe - but also in the biblical testimony. And there are many confirmations that His word is true. Thus, we are capable of reasoning with God through His word. Thus, the universe is a reflection of our God. It pours forth His knowledge in the mathematical precision of the laws of nature we discover. It reflects His wisdom in the moral nature He has given us as reasoning beings. We can't adequately explain morality without first presupposing God as the source because morality is a mindful thing yet not every mind is necessary for the existence of morality. I would still function as a moral being if you did not exist, and visa versa. If morality is preferential (relativism) it begs the question of whose preference and what makes that good? It also begs the question of how there can be "better" or goodness if there is no best or ultimate measure/reference point. So, you derive values, meaning, and purpose that constantly impose themselves on your mind. You are constantly searching for meaning, you seek out and create purpose and values, but in a chance happenstance universe ultimately they are meaningless. Ultimately, there is no purpose. Thus, you are delusional. Thus, that worldview is inconsistent with your belief. Why do you still hold it? The atheist or agnostic keeps borrowing from the Christian worldview that gives such thinking a solid basis. You as a human being are drawn towards meaning and purpose. You would not be on this forum in this discussion if that were not the case. You continually find meaning and purpose when you investigate the workings of the universe (anthropic principle) for there is information in things in the universe. The logical reason is that God made them. Information hints at mindfulness and design. If you saw the words, "Welcome to England" on a billboard as you enter Heathrow airport you do not think that it just willy-nilly appeared over millions of years but that someone designed it to convey information to you. DNA is an informational system. You also find a causal tree of why events happen that you trace back to a point in time for everything that has a beginning seems to have something (or someone) behind it that gives it a reason for its existence. Everything begs intentionality and knowledge in our investigation of it, but again, blind indifferent chance happenstance is not intentional or mindful in any way so once again the atheist or agnostic is inconsistent from their core beliefs. Their core beliefs (what everything else rests upon) do not add up. Thus, the atheist or agnostic clings to a blind faith for their starting presuppositions that can include 1) there is no God, or 2) everything is a result of blind indifferent chance happenstance, and do not add up.  

Your first sentence is muddled.  Belief and faith are interchangeable words.  In other words, your belief is your faith.  Your second sentence is illogical.  There are no facts that can prove a negative.  In other words it is impossible to prove a negative.  Your third sentence talks of discovering God.  Please explain to us what facts you would accept as evidence of God being discovered and then justify why you have this knowledge about God.  Your fourth sentence is curious as it seems you have not explained your third sentence. 

Thanks for your thoughts by the way.  Yet if it please the court - I have not yet seen any evidence anywhere that presents sufficient reason to disprove God exists. In other words every fact I observe actually demonstrates the existence of God.  Faith is not the means of discovering God.  God is the means of understanding faith. 

I'll have to disagree with you there. I think I could have qualified my statement better. After all, knowledge is a belief - a justified true belief. So, perhaps in a limited sense, faith and belief can be the same thing, but not all faith is the same thing as all belief.

I also object to faith being equated to trust. If nothing else, there is a religious connotation to faith. Beyond that, trust is something that is generally earned (based on evidence) and faith is trust without evidence....if you have evidence, then you don't need faith.

Hopefully this clears up the definitions I am using and allows us to communicate a little better.

And you liken a dead piece of wood to the human mind that can be tricked, manipulated and coerced. 

Faith is meaningless as a justification for a belief. Try to name one belief which cannot be held on faith, and maybe you'll understand where I'm coming from.

Oh jah, I was totally saying the human mind is a dead piece of wood, how insightful you are in reading my arguments.

Hm, I don't quite get what you're saying in post #18. . .

Religious faith and trust are not synonymous. That's an equivocation. Trust is built on evidence, whereas faith is trust without warrant. Often when a believer is unable to describe a reason for his belief "I just have faith" is the justification. "I just have trust" (for no reason) won't work in the same way because the words don't mean the same thing.

That being said, there is nothing that cannot be believed on faith ...demonstrating faith is not a path to knowledge. 

Your last paragraph is a gish gallop wall of words. I'm cool with honest conversations, and that's not it.

I'm saying faith cannot be any part of the foundation of a justified belief. If you have a four legged chair missing a leg, it will be unstable. Faith provides no legitimate justification or support.

Can some one believe in Allah on faith? What about Zeus? How about believing on faith that black people are superior to white people or that atheists don't deserve to be alive? Unfortunately, faith can be used for any of these beliefs. 

Furthermore, given that some beliefs contradict, if faith is on both sides (Jesus is lord/Allah is lord) then it is meaningless.

So I still don't really get what you're saying by,

"there is nothing that cannot be believed on faith"

I'm saying anything and everything can be believed "on faith". 

Faith and trust *can* be synonyms, but not in this context. A religious faith is 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen'. Meaning faith is is not just trust, but, per the Bible, evidence.

Sigh, you press my memories farther than I care about really. . .

Still,

There 'is some real history in the Bible,

If I can believe in American history now, I could believe in the Bible back then.

There are Biblical lessons that taught practicality in life,

If I can believe in game theory now, I could believe in Biblical practicality back then.

There are parts of the Bible that contain humility, kindness, empathy.

If I can believe in nature and nurture, humanity and habit, now, I could believe in those parts of the bible then.

There are religious families which lead through example, who show themselves to their children, as people worthy of their trust in them.

 If I can understand human nature, patterns, and such now, I could believe in my parents as worthy of my trust then.

Though I'm an atheist now.

My faith back then was not unjustified, did not appear from nowhere.

It was. . . Bah, I'm rambling.

Faith's a justified belief in itself, to my thinking anyhow.

People can possess many beliefs, based at least partially upon faith I think.

And contradictions aren't an end all be all I think.

Courts and debates have two sides of a case being argued. And sometimes there's parts that don't clear up, but remain in contention, but a decision is reached none the less.

Well, I believe that what most people believe is true, and the only way to make an unpopular popular is to justify it to make people believe in it, given that we do not have memory-editing technology. 

So far, what I believe is true for me until I find a better response that surpasses the old justification. This is how we, and the world change beliefs. I, too believed the earth is flat when I was 5, but after stumbling upon thousands of NASA pictures and homemade rocket camera proof(before it was even taught in class!) have proven curvature and thus the earth is round. The latter surpasses the former in terms of authenticity, so that is why I now prefer the latter.

Truth change. Back then the truth is God 100% exists. That is what most people believes. Those who justifies their atheist belief will be punished for some reason. What people believes, there lies the truth. We don't know whether we are actually encountering the truth, or we are just encountering one false attempt trying to explain real stuff. There is a chance that our entire science system is completely wrong. You might say, why are there so many justifications? Well back then where God dominated, the scriptures explain as well as science do here, within the role.

There is no such thing as 100% true. Only between 0 to 100. Albeit very small, there is a chance that everything we know is purposely wrong, told by our family and friends because they want to fool me out of life.

You might see people blabbing on the streets. The elders might be convinced by their "health pills", but you, as a young fellow, do not. 

They list a lot of biological knowledge that the common man would be convinced but any bio major would pat their head and shake it.

It is not "Is this evidence true?" Instead it is "Is this reliable evidence to you?"

You only believe in whatever you think is true. If you consider this evidence unreliable, then you won't trust it as true information.

Not necessarily just feelings. What I am trying to convey is that truth is subjective to all people, and it is impossible to justify objective truth. truth, at this point, is just what the common person believes.