Why Didn't Anybody Ever Tell Me What The Hell "faith" Really Means?

[freeasabird]

This is just some musings I've had recently as I continue to process and re-process everything I've experienced over the last few months.

 

Through my church years whenever I heard the word 'faith' I always took it to mean being faithful to god, as in fidelity. Never did I understand faith as blind faith, or lack of evidence that god even existed. The wife and I were talking the other day about faith and I mentioned that even though I had so many unexplained and unanswered questions growing up, I believed because I didn't think I had a choice. I didn't even comprehend the concept to not believe, or that it was possible that god was not real. I assumed everyone believed; there were just people who went to church and those who didn't but they all believed in god. Ministers and pastors always said atheists were people who worshipped the devil. They were always talking about modern miracles of people being healed and saved from traffic accidents. Never did I stop to think why god didn't just prevent the accident or illness in the first place. I always thought that Randy Travis song Three Wooden Crosses song was sweet and a powerful display of god's message, now when I think of that song or similar news stories I only think about the argument from incomplete devastation. I mean come on, how rediculous is it for him to allow hundreds of people to be killed in say, a plane crash, just to allow one to survive so they can profess they are the result of a miracle. It really is laughable when sit down and think about it from the other side of the coin.

 

Never, and i mean never, did it enter my brain that the word faith was even remotely in the realm of the definition of blind faith, believing despite evidence, or even in the face of contradictory evidence. I can't believe people actually believe this shit. I feel like if I had had access to the information, the truth that there are no real miracles today, I could have gone through this deconversion much sooner. Shit happens, and sometimes people get lucky and sometimes they don't. There was that guy on the news I saw recently (youtube video so it may actually be quite old) who took half of his chemo treatments for cancer and says he stopped taking them because god told him he would heal him. Are you fucking serious??? First off, my mind now asks the question, well what is half? Is half 50/100, or is it 3 out of 5? Second, I want to know his dosage and the recommended duration. I mean I could take half my Z Pack the next time I get a cold and I'd probably still get better. That doesn't prove divine intervention. Besides, if god was really going to heal him why didn't god tell him before he even started the chemo? He could have saved everyone a lot of time, money, and effort. What qualifies for modern miracles are fucking jokes. How do these people even get on the news? Oh yeah that's right it was Faux News.

 

Thanks for listening to my rant, and feel free to chime in with your own comments and musings.

[florduh]

"Faith is something you believe that nobody in his right mind would believe." ~ Archie Bunker

 

"Faith is one of the world's great evils." ~ Richard Dawkins Source: THE NEW YORKER, Apr 2, 2006, p. 80.

 

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.

"Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." ~ Richard Dawkins

 

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."

"Faith: not wanting to know what is true." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

 

"Faith is believing something you know ain't true." ~ Mark Twain

[Eugene39]

Since leaving the faith, Hebrews 11:1 and 6 have taking on an entirely different meaning than what they held before.

 

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

 

6: And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

 

My former pastor tried using verse 6 on me - to just believe. Just believe? Just believe. Must be all they have.

[andyjj]

I always thought I must be missing something with regard to faith. Surely 'blind' faith is indistinguishable from superstition.

 

When I went forward at an altar call many years ago and said the sinner's prayer, I expected to somehow, in a spiritual sense, to 'see' Jesus, and that faith was a kind of inner knowledge gifted by God. Unfortunately, this never happened.

[freeasabird]

When I went forward at an altar call many years ago and said the sinner's prayer, I expected to somehow, in a spiritual sense, to 'see' Jesus, and that faith was a kind of inner knowledge gifted by God. Unfortunately, this never happened.

 

So true. I mean, I thought I'd at least 'feel' something, some sort of rush, sensation, feeling, whatever. Nothing ever happened, before or after. There is no holy spirit.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Since leaving the faith, Hebrews 11:1 and 6 have taking on an entirely different meaning than what they held before.

 

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

 

6: And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

 

My former pastor tried using verse 6 on me - to just believe. Just believe? Just believe. Must be all they have.

 

Indeed, it is all they have, and it's no different from what can be argued about other religions.

 

Just believe Allah. Just believe Zeus. Just belive Thor, Ra, or ___(fill in blank with whatever deity)___.

 

"Just believe" is a cop-out for having no evidence.

[YellowJacket]

"Trying to argue against faith with logic is like trying to nail Jell-O to the ceiling; it's using the wrong tools for an ultimately pointless task." -some guy on snopes.com forum

 

 

"Faith is what your preacher says you must have so that you'll believe all the other stuff he wants to tell you" - Unknown source, quoted from That's Soulless!

 

 

"Faith is what you have in things that don't exist" - Homer Simpson