Why so friggin' confident?

Note that his question could just as easily apply to followers of any religion, and even people who read a conspiracy theory on the internet and take it as completely true without any real reason to do so. If you don't want to have a discussion, why are you posting? The question asked in the OP doesn't require specific knowledge of the Bible. All it requires is knowledge of the fact that large groups of people accept the writings of their particular religions or cults or conspiracy theories as completely true without any further support for their confidence. It sounds to me like "right answers" is code for "answers John 10:10 agrees with."Why don't you actually address the topic of the thread? Do you feel confident in your religious beliefs? If so, why? Are ancient writings collected in an old book sufficient to grant you your faith with enough confidence to tell scientists backed with objective data, "you are wrong because God says so?" Is there more to it than that? Why do you have faith in your particular religion (I presume Christianity by your posts and username), but not in any other religion? Why have faith (defined as a belief not based on proof) at all? Surely you have a reason (and an appeal to "salvation" or "fear of hell" would be irrelevant, because those are based on the same faith).

Well, to be perfectly plain, faith is defined by the dictionary as "a belief not based on proof." As to the reason...Human beings have evolved to recognize patterns. It gives us the ability to read, to rationally examine the world around us, to recognize that there may be a predator stalking us, and to see fluffy bunnies in clouds.Unfortunately, sometimes we're too good at recognizing patters, and we see what isn't there. We commonly refer to this as "the mind playing tricks on us."Religion combines this pattern-recognition with primitive mythology "explaining" various unknowns to create a self-perpetuating meme that infects humanity almost literally like a disease.For example, when the world around us is explained as being created and controlled by an all-powerful, all-knowing deity who has a plan for everyone and works in mysterious ways, a confirmation bias is established whereby all events, positive or negative, regardless of rational examination or contradictory evidence, are taken as evidence of that deity's direct hand. If you pray for a sick child and it lives, it's a miracle, praise God. If the child dies, God works in mysterious ways, praise God. Small events in an individual's life (especially small coincidences, like hearing an appropriate song for what you were just thinking, especially if the thought and song were faith-based, a likely occurance for the extremely religous) "confirm" the established belief over and over again.Memes like this are typically passed on to children, meaning they are literally brainwashed from birth with confirmation-bias beliefs, to which is added the fear of social stygma if you don't believe like everyone else does. In teh case of Christianity they're raised going to church at least weekly, where they are taught stories from the bible (and told they are true). This is of course met unquestioningly most of the time, because they're children. They sing songs that just so happen to repeat certain phrases over and over again, drilling them into their young minds, They practice repetative rituals and respons by rote repetition, not by a thoughtful response.Christianity (and others) add the not-so-subtle threat of divine wrath for unbelievers. This means that rational examination fo those beliefs is actively discouraged to the point that even thinking about questioning the truth of those beliefs causes fear and apprehension. "Oh no, I won't be saved!" "My faith isn't strong enough!" "It's the devil trying to lead me astray!" These fears are often addressed by a renewed zeal as the individual attempts to purge themself of doubt by investing more time, energy, and thought into the teachings of the religion (attending church mroe often, Bible studies, somethimes even joining the clergy). Joining a community that holds similar beliefs where individuals will confirm the faith of the one feeling doubt serve to re-establish the doubter in the faithful community. This, of course, restarts the cycle and again strengthens the confidence of the faithful - "God saved me from my weakness," etc.There's more than this, of course. Many religions offer a reward of some sort for accepting their beliefs - heaven for Christianity. Scientologists have their "Manifested Thetan" (I think I have the name right). Others have Nirvana, or a positive reincarnation. Christianity's offer of a "personal relationship with Go" is also attractive for many - who doesn't want to feel loved by the Creator of the Universe Himself! These would all fall into the "wishful thinking" category, and it's extremely strong. Challenges to such beliefs provoke fear - such challenges are felt to threaten salvation and their cosmic father figure, after all. Children don't like giving up their imaginary friends, either. As a guy who used to have faith and now has none, the above is what I think goes on in the minds of the faithful.Some of my words were harsh (brainwashing, disease), but that's my honest appraisal, having been a participant in the process for my first 20-some years.

You just explained the basics of what the Bible says. That doesn't tell us why you believe it. Do you believe everything you read? If I showed you a different holy text that told a different story for the creation of the Universe and mankind's purpose, would you believe that one? Why Christianity and not Islam or Hindu or Buddhism or Taoism or the traditional Norse\Greek\Roman\Egyptian\Sioux\Iraqois\Aztec\Incan\etc beliefs?Does the Christian version simply appeal to you personally more? Why? Do you believe it to be more true than the others? If so, why? Do you value salvation and fear eternal damnation? Other religions have mutually exclusive beliefs regardign such things - why do you follow Christianity's path to salvation and not one of the others? Why do you even believe that salvation and damnation exist, since those are also only suggested by religious beliefs?You mentioned Biblical prophesy that is fullfilled within the Biblical texts, but the same can be said about the Harry Potter books, which obviously have no ties to reality beyond the names of a few locations. Why are you so confident in your beliefs when you have to take them on faith?So far, you're a perfect example of what I discussed in my other post - trapped in a self-confirming meme and trained to respond to challenges with rote repetition of the meme's main tenets without any intellectual self-reflection. Have you ever even thought of why you believe what you believe?If you haven't, you're not alone. I didn't seriously consider such questions myself while I was Christian - I simply believed. "Proof infinitum?" Just a reason is all we're asking. I'm not asking for proof - that wouldn't belong in Faith and Belief, because we'd start discussing biology or physics or cosmology or archeology or other scientific topics. We jsut want to know the reason that you believe the Christian version. Did you have some sort of personal revelation? Were you simply brought up as a Christian and cannot bring yourself to consider an alternative? That doesn't make sense, John. I, too, once believed in the Christian faith. I accepted Jesus into my heart, I believed that I had received forgiveness for my sins through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, etc. And yet I no longer believe. Do you consider it impossible to re-evaluate one's personal beliefs? If so, why? Is this unique to Christianity? If so, why was I able to do so?

It's interesting to note that in this thread various Christians have insisted that they do have evidence for their faith. Clearly this is at odds with the very definition of faith, but I think it's interesting that they feel that their beliefs are supported by evidence at all.Note especially Buzz's typical examples of the "evidence" behind his faith. He usually refers to fulfilled Biblical prophesy, both internal to the Bible and out here in the real world. You'll also note that, in every single thread he's ever brought up on the subject of fulfilled prophesy, he's never once been able to convince anyone that his interpretations are correct.This is a perfect example of the cyclic self-reinforcement of the meme of religion utilizing the human predisposition for pattern over-reognition. Buzz correctly determines that, to verify that his beliefs have a connection to reality, the prophesies in the Bible must have some sort of veracity. Unfortunately, Buzz (and others like him) is not objective - he's not following the evidence where it leads, he's searching specifically for that which seems to fit with his already-determined conclusions. Combined with the rather vague nature of prophesies in the first place, it's no wonder that a loose interpretation and a biased mind could easily find plenty of "Evidence" to support and reinforce his beliefs.You can see the same mechanism in almost every case of interpretation of prophesy or other paranormal phenomenon. How many people of faith (not just Christians) have predicted the end of the world within their lifetimes, and been wrong? How many times do religious leaders predict "trying times" or natural disasters in a sufficiently vague manner as to make "fulfilment" inevitable, thereby reinforcing the meme when natural disasters that happen every year repeat their usual cycle? I'm sure we've all seen examples of "cold-read" psychics who prey on the same thing to make it seem like they've contacted a deceased loved one. When people want to believe something, they'll find "evidence" in support of their beliefs. This is why none of these things have ever stood up to serious scientific scrutiny. Even loose scrutiny, as demonstrated by James Randi (do a youtube search and watch him expose fraudulent psychics, prophets, dowsers, and the like), will handily dismiss the utility of such "evidence"Christianity specifically also contains a large number of self-referential prophesies - that is, "predictions" are made in the Bible which are "fulfilled" later in the Bible. Now, any person of sense can see that any novel with a bit of foreshadowing can do the same thing - but exception is made for the Bible because it's somehow more "real."John 10:10 is also a perfect example - nearly all of his replies answer the question "why do you believe scripture" with scriptural references. In effect, he's answering the question "why do you believe your fairy book is true" by saying "because my fairy book says it's true." The premise requires the conclusion - classic circular reasoning.Their reasoning isn't really about evidence. They honestly believe they have evidential support, but what passes for "evidence" for them would be laughed out of any scientific institution as unfalsifiable nonsense. Instead, the reason for faith is as I stated before - confirmation bias and pattern recognition combined with such things as wishful thinking and social pressure. It's their desire to view themselves (and be viewed) as rational human beings that causes them to try to validate their beliefs with real-world evidence, and their commitment to those beliefs and general human failings that causes them to find that evidence where none really exists.

This is exactly what I've been talking about. Here we see a reference to a prophesy in the Bible which is later fulfilled in a different book of the Bible.Bertot correctly points out that this is not the same as, say, a fantasy novel where Chapter 1 contains a prophesy and in Chapter 13 the main character fulfills it.Unfortunately, the prophesies of the Bible still contain no outside verification (admittedly difficult with birth records and so on, but not for the more major historical events that were supposed to fulfill prophesy). Without true outside verification, the stories of the Bible are impossible to differentiate from fiction, regardless of the fact that the Bible's multiple books were written by different authors over a long period of time.If I wrote a sequel to a 50-year-old novel by a different author, and in my story I fulfilled a prophesy made in the first book, we would have a situation identical to the Biblical case - an internally fulfilled prophesy that has absolutely no outside verification.It's a simple case of double-standards and circular reasoning. Most of these cases are unfalsifiable to boot, so they match perfectly with the confirmation-bias reasoning and pattern over-recognition that causes faith.

And neither am I claiming that religious folks cite fulfilled prophesy as the only "evidence" of their position. It was simply an example on-hand. False. Other religious texts contain historical data as well. Purely fictional stories even contain similar references to real-world historical events and geographical locations. Furthermore, uniqueness does not equate to veracity. And Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone supports Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban. Or more accurately, the original Star Wars trilogy supports the many books written over 20 years later by different authors, which each support each other as well. Self-consistency across multiple authors and long periods of time (particularly when the authors were almost certainly aware of each other's writings and were all working from the same source material) does not translate to authenticity.The Bible has many rivals, Bertot. The difference is that you attribute special meaning to the Bible, meaning it is different to you. A most amusing admission, considering that many of the historical events in the Bible (the Flood, the Exodus, the resurrection, etc) have exactly the same amount of outside corroboration as Smith's little fairy tale. The Quran is the religious text of an Abrahamic religion, and like the Bible is a collection of works as opposed to a monolithic source. Referring to similar events as the Bible's Old Testament is unsurprising - if Islam and Christianity were biological populations, we would say that they both evolved from a common ancestor. But again, the question is why? Why does the Judeo-Christian belief set inspire faith? Your claim seems to be that the belief set is somehow unique...but Pastafarianism is rather unique and I don't suppose you'll worship His Holy Noodliness any time soon.My assertion is that your faith, and that of others, is a meme caused by confirmation bias in the basic belief set combined with the human propensity for pattern over-recognition, supported by social pressure and wishful thinking. I'm led to this conclusion by looking at the reasoning used by religious people to justify their faith in the absence of evidence (or the presence of contradictory evidence), and by my own experiences as a person of faith. The entire practice of Christian apologetics supports my assertion.So I agree that the Judeo-Christian belief set establishes a platform for faith: it causes a thought process by which all evidence is considered evidence of God (where both answered prayers and unanswered prayers are "God's will"), and it discourages questioning the beliefs with social pressure and threats of supernatural punishment as well as containing contingencies to restore faith when the beliefs are questioned. Again, uniqueness is not equivalent to veracity. I can find other unique belief systems that you would immediately dismiss. Further, omnipotence, divine intervention, miracles, inspiration, none of these are actually unique to the Judeo-Christian belief system in the first place.Your premise is false, and even were it true, your logic is flawed making your conclusion invalid.Again, you're demonstrating nothing more than circular reasoning - the beliefs themselves prove that the beliefs are true. I assert that your true cause for faith is recognizing patterns that don't exist, as in the Biblical prophesy example in my previous post, combined with a set of unfalsifiable beliefs containing a confirmation-bias where every result is taken as support of the preconceived conclusion, strengthened by wishful thinking and social pressure.

It's perfectly sufficient to demonstrate my point - "fulfilling prophesy" is easy when you know the prophesy and are writing a story to fulfill it, and modern-day "fulfillments" are invariably examples of pattern over-recognition or "prophesies" that were so vague as to apply to almost anything. Scientology's utter tripe is sufficient to establish faith. Hell, Santa Claus is sufficient to establish faith. Unfalisifiable gibberish and mythology have always been "supportable enough" to establish faith - because they incorporate confirmation-bias and unfalsifiability, and prey on the human tendency for pattern overrecognition as well as wishful thinking and social pressure. Bullshit. Apparently you cannot grasp a simple analogy. Let's spell it out for you:The Bible is a set of texts written over separate periods of time by separate authors who were aware of each other. That each book supports the others is hardly surprising, just as it's unsurprising that Star Wars novels are supported by the original films. Further, fulfillment of prophesy in such situations is suspect at best considering the unsupported nature of Biblical claims and the fact that the texts incorporated in the Bible were chosen specifically because they seemed to support each other while scores of other texts (regarded to be just as much non-fiction as the Canon texts and still used by some denominations) were excluded.When cherry-picking which books go into your collection, it's pretty damned easy to assemble a final product that appears to validate its own prophesies - but the fact is, we're constantly talkign about unsupported claims. There is no reason to believe the outlandish claims of the Bible given the utter lack of support outside of its own texts. And most if not all people in ancient Greece really believed that Hades was lord of the Underworld, and that the Sun was Apollo driving his golden chariot across the sky.We know that their stories were fiction. Why does the Bible receive special treatment?Oh, that's right. Because you believe it already, so you're stuck in the cycle of confirmation bias, and trapped by your own wishful thinking and social pressure. You're taught that the Bible is right, so it must be right. even if you can't give an actual reasonable response and need to resort to special pleading. All of it fictional? Likely not. I'm sure that a rabble-rouser named Jesus actually could have existed - "messiahs" around that time were hardly uncommon. That he walked around, pissing off local authorities (particularly the Jewish religious powerbase) until he was eventually executed to prevent a riot is a believable story. Without outside confirmation I have no reason to believe it, but no reason to disbelieve it either. It's the fantastical claims of curing leprosy and blindness, of being the Son of God and resurrecting after execution that I disbelieve - they are extraordinary claims without any supporting extraordinary evidence.So first you don't understand my analogy, and now you take it too far. I was not insinuatng that the entire Bible is as fictional as Star Wars - the Biblical stories at least refer to real places and often to people (like Pilate, or Herod) who can be verified to exist externally.But of course that doesn't mean the fantasy elements in the Bible are true, any more than the Harry Potter books referring to London makes them true. That's a bold assertion, and it's false on its face. Every other religion has had a cultural impact in its own region. That Christianity spread better than most has no bearing on its veracity. Islam, for example, has shaped "whole civilizations" as well, and it has affected "nearly every society and culture since its inception." Doing so would simply be outside the scope of this thread. We've already had such discussions where the individual "prophesies" were picked apart. You call it silliness, and I call it "not being a gullible fool who beleives every single thing he reads, becasue the authors couldn't possibly be lying." Bullshit. Each flood myth is different in significant ways fromt he Biblical version, they arent nearly as widespread as you insinuate, and we tend to find such myths where normal floods happen, and we would expect such myths. Many ancient mythologies had stories about the Sun, or the end of the Earth - that doesn't mean anything as far as reality is concerned. Again, human beings have a tendency to want to explain the world around them, and we also tend to see patterns where none exist. When we don't know the answer, we come up with stories to explain them and make us feel better. Over time, those stories can grow into a belief set that resists challenge - a religion. Smith's fairy tale is worse, because it makes specific claims that are easily falsified (such as Native Americans being of Judaic descent).Of course, the Flood is exactly the same...Noah and the final resting place of the Ark cannot be "found or located in any respect," and the geological evidence wholly contracdicts the entire notion fo a worldwide Flood. "The New Testament is a body of works that relies heavily on the scriptures themsel[ves]. It was necessary to do this to change the facts as contained in the scriptures."Special pleading much? That last statement rather shifts the goalposts, but I'll bite anyway.Hinduism and Buddhism have both shaped entire cultures, and in the case of at least Hinduism, has lasted even longer than Christianity (and possibly older than Judaism). They rely on none of the Biblical scriptures at all. That's a rather falsehood-stuffed paragraph.The evidence shows that man is a product of matter and evolution (which admittedly is not the same as chance, but I can hardly expect you to maintain accuracy), the Bible is not a historically verifiable collection (containing many falsified stories such as the Exodus and the Flood as well as Creation itself taken ltierally), is clearly the product of men, has prophesies that are no different from otehr prophesies (including ones made in the modern era), is no different in its longevity and consistency of teaching than several otehr popular religions, has no more support for its outlandish claims than mythology (and appeals to popularity don't work any better for the Bible than they do for anything else), has influced cultures and civilizations in much the same way other religions have, because it is clearly understood by millions to mean compeltely different things (and repeated appeals to popularity still don't work)...I think that's sufficient. Although I'd like to address this part: I just like to argue and debate, and I tend to learn a lot by participating on this board. As for what I hope to be true...I used to be a Christian, bertot. Losing my faith was one of the most difficult and painful thigns I've ever experienced, and I still have to deal with extreme difficulties relating to my family because of it. I wish I could maintain rational integrity while being a Christian. I wish there were an afterlife of paradise waiting for me. I wish there was an all-powerful benevolent God watching out for us. To say that determining that these things are highly unlikely was disappointing would be a vast understatement.You seem to think I and other Atheists are like what we're portrayed to be in Chick tracts - wretched, pathetic, fearful people who desperately hope the bible is wrong so we won't burn in Hell.That's not what motivates me. I'm motivated by my persuit of intellectual self-honesty and the fact that I enjoy debate. In other words, assertions are not proof? That's true. It's unfortunately that real, physical evidence contradicts the biblical account in several ways. That is demosntrating that the Bible is untrue in a literal sense. You realize that this statement didn't actually address my assertion, right? You just said "nuh uh, and you're an ignorant poopy-head."Oh my, I'm quivering in my boots from the strength of your fantastic argument! The Christian willingness to respond to challenges is a facade, typically used to generate new converts.I have supproted my assertion. The Christian faith involves a confirmation bias whereby every result is taken as a confirmation of the established beliefs. For example, if you pray for a sick child, recovery is a miracle, and death is "God's will." When asked why natural disasters strike when God is benevolent, the answer varies between "punishment from God" and "God works in mysterious ways." Regardless of any outcome, every result is taken as confirmation of teh existing belief set. Questioning the belief set is considered a "lack of faith" and a "weakness" to be purged, or possibly even temptation from the "devil." Serious thoughts of leaving the religion are met with concerns over being ostracised from the community and even family. The belief set furthers this fear with threats of Hell if you leave the faith, while offering the reard of Heaven if you strengthen your conviction and stop questioning Jesus.I'm not making these claims in a vaccuum, bertot. I WAS a Christian. I know how the meme defends itself from criticism, how it spreads, and the rationalizations and thought processes that drive the faithful. Many, many faiths include stories of divine intervention - the Greek and Roman myths contain almost nothing else. Omnipotence isn't unique, though it's less common because monotheism is a rather small subset of beleifs (small as in there are fewer monotheistic religions than polytheistic or animist or even deity-less religions like Buddhism). Inspiration and miracles are prevalent in Grecko-Roman mythology and others as well (I'm using examples only from religions I'm at least a little familiar with, so this is not an exhaustive list).And I didn't say there were "other unique beleif systems." I said that Christianity is not unique. Other faiths include resurrected saviors, salvation, an afterlife, deities, virgin births, FLood myths, creation stories, end-time prophesies, etc. I also noted that even if Christianity were unique, being unique doesn't mean it has any connection to reality. The Flying Spaghetti Monster's religion, Pastafarianism, is pretty darned unique, for example. What topic are you arguing? When did I assert that Christianity was not believable and sustainable? This isn't just a strawman, it's a strawman from a parallel universe!Believability and sustainability neither have any bearing on the veracity of a belief, nor does it have anything to do with the topic. What question are you even answering "yes" to?! The problem is the physical evidence does not support the Biblical account - we have devoted countless threads to showing that the Flood never happened, for example. And your claim that the historical content supports the miraculous claims is ludicrous - that's identical to saying that the real existence of London supports the miraculous claims of Hary Potter. Then provide an example of something that would falsify your faith. What would prove that Jesus was not the Son of God? What would prove that he didnt heal the sick or rise from the dead? If you cannot provide an example of something that could falsify your beliefs, then your beliefs are unfalsifiable. Oh please. Many Christian denominations have a policy of shunning those who leave the faith, but even those without such a stated policy will still leave former members feeling alone and cast out. What would the reaction of your comminuty, your friends and family, be if you were to openly reject Christianity? Every single day you are encouraged by your community to continue to believe. That is social pressure. This isn't a thread about justifying Atheism, so discussions alogn that line would have been off-topic. The thread is about the reasons people have faith at all. Honestly, you and I have already been skirting close to the edge of the topic because we've been talking about evidence and the speficit beliefs of Christianity, where the topic is really why people accept "faith" at all.Maybe I can ask the question more directly than the OP. I;ve already given my answer several times.Faith is defined as belief that is not based on proof. In other words, the belief that God exists is a belief based on faith - it is not supported by objective evidence. This is nto intended to spark discussion on how you believe that the existence of God is based on evidence, nor is it intended to spark debate on the Flood or the Exodus or any other bit f physical evidence surrounding a particuar faith's beliefs.The question is, why is it acceptable to believe somethign when you have no objective reason to do so? Why believe that God exists if there is no evidence that he does? Why beleive in fairies if you cannot support their existence? Why believe in Santa Claus as a child, or that "everything will be okay" as an adult when such beliefs have no supporting evidence?The question was asked by a person who has no faith - that is, the OP said that he does not believe anything unless that belief can be supported with real-world objective evidence. Try to explain why "faith" is a reasonable thing to have to someone who has never experienced it.

Perhaps Bertot has indirectly answered the question in the OP:Believers tend to think they do have evidence, and that their evidence trumps yours. Hence the rejection of the dictionary definition of "faith" and the inevitable discussions on evidence as it pertains to their beliefs.

Discussions of what does and does not qualify as evidence are most definitely not simple "yes it is," "no it's not" blather. It would, however, be outside the scope of this thread. If you'd like to discuss it, feel free to create a new one where it would be on-topic. Unfortunately I don't think we're going to get anywhere in this particular thread - you believe your religion is based on evidence, and Percy has already ruled that evidence is out-of-bounds in this thread. If you stop making bullshit arguments, I'll stop calling them bullshit. Until then, if you're threatened by "naughty words," you can feel free to ignore them, or even me. Explitives are not indicative of immaturity - rather, complaining about the sort of language used in an argument is indicative of attempting to avoid responding to an argument. You don't get to dictate the sort of language I can use. Language is irrelevant. Only the argument matters. If you would like to respond to my arguments, please do so. If you fell horrifically offended and threatened by specific words to the point where you are unable to address my arguments, then feel free to say nothing at all. That goes completely against the dictionary definition. Do you use the word "faith" out of attachment to the word despite its actual meaning? Clearly you think your beliefs are based on evidence, which would make them not "faith" but "knowledge," and yet you continue to use the word "faith."The definition of "faith" was provided at the beginning of this thread. If you don't feel the definition is appropriate, feel free to take it up with Mirriam-Webster. But the definition given is the "faith" we are discussing. If you feel it doesn't apply to you, why are you posting? Redefining the key term of the thread certainly counts as shifting the goalposts. Don't ask me - I'm perfectly fine with the definition for "faith" given at the beginning of the thread. Why would I choose a different word? I don't dictate the English language, though you seem to believe that you do. Obviously you don't realize how fallacious such a train of though is. You're making an argument from incredulity - you are incredulous that "material things" can exist without a supernatural agent. Argumetns from incredulity are logically fallacious. "Common sense" is neither common nor has anything to do with the veracity of claims as they pertain to the Universe as a whole. Quite frankly, the Universe is not required to make sense to you, and your "gut feeling" is typically going to be wrong. That's why we investigate such things with the scientific method, and it's done pretty well so far by avoiding such intellectual failures as arguemnts from incredulity. It's not my contention. it's the dictionary's definition fo the word. Again, take it up with Mirriam-Webster, and if you disagree with the definition in use in this thread then there's really no reason for you to continue posting. The dictionary definitions of the words "faith" and "belief" apply perfectly to Santa Claus and Fairies. You're simply trying to dispute that definition because you don't want such a connotation associated with your faith-based beliefs. Again, if you have an issue with the definition, take it up with Mirriam-Webster. Since your definition of the word "faith" is the one that differs from the English dictionary, I would suggest that it is your definition of the word that is faulty, and not the OP.I wonder what other English words you'd like to redefine?

So you read the Bible extensively as a child, and when you were 9 you simply put your trust in the book you'd been reading and your preacher.But that still doesn't tell us why.Why did you trust the Bible and the preacher? Was it because the Bible was the only book you were able to read? At 9 in the 40s and on a farm with no real additional exposure to books, it's not like you could test the claims of the Bible against real-world evidence. Did the stories you read simply "make sense" to you? Did you just accept them unquestioningly because you were a child and adults you trusted verified that the stories were supposed to be true?You mention being challenged by the devil, but you didn't really answer the question of whether you had questioned your beliefs or not. Did you ever question them? meaning, did you ever ask yourself why you believe what you believe and whether your beliefs match to reality? Have you ever reasoned out a way to falsify your beliefs so that you could test them?Why are you confident that your beliefs are true, and the beliefs of a Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist are not? Why are you confident that your beliefs are more than fairy tales and mythology?You mention "experiencing God's love and mercy," but what do you mean by that? Clearly it's not an objective experience or everyone could see it. So what is it about this subjective experience that makes you do sure? How do you know you aren't delusional?Let me qualify that last question. "Delusional" carries a significant amount of contextual baggage, and typically carries implications of mental illness. That's not what I'm talking about. When you're alone in the dark and hear a noise and become absolutely convinced that someone is with you when nobody is there, that could be described as delusional. Human beings can believe things very strongly based on incomplete or incorrect information, or even based on confirmation bias or false pattern recognition. Are you confident that your beliefs are accurate, and not based on human error or inaccurate cultural traditions? If so, why?

This is too interesting a topic to pass up. You just responded to a question of why you believe by stating what you believe. That doesn't answer the question, ICANT.You head some Biblical verses running through your head - okay, that happens to me with songs and books and TV quotes all the time, and yet I don't believe them.Why did you believe that God even exists? Why did you believe that Jesus died for you? Why did you believe the condemnation, lake of fire, and salvation spoken of in the Bible are real in the first place?I understand that you do beleive you're trusting your soul to God. I understand that you do believe you were saved by the Holy Spirit. But why? That's the point of this thread, and I don't think I've seen an answer from anyone yet that isn't a simple summary of what they believe.You've come closer than some by giving something of a chain of events, but you haven't said why you believed the things you read in the Bible and the things your preacher told you in the first place. You believed that what you had read in the Bible and heard from your preacher were the word of God, and trusted God. I know. But that means you had to believe the words you read int eh Bible first. You had to believe that God exists first. You had to believe that what the Bible and your preacher were telling you were from God first. Why? Why did you even believe there was something to put your trust in in the first place? The point of asking you that, ICANT, was for you to tell us what questions you asked, what your answers were, and how/why you arrived at them. Definitely a long bus ride. It used to take me that long to get to/from work when I took public transportation, so I feel your pain (and I don't even live in a rural area!).So the Bible wasn't the only thing you read - I assumed you had read a few books at school. But were you ever exposed to something that disagreed with the Bible before that moment when you were 9? Evolution isn't taught in grade schools even now - in the 40s you'd likely have needed to be in college to even hear the word. Was the Bible the only explanation for life, the Universe, and everythign that you were exposed to at that point in your life? If you've never questioned them, never tested them, how do you know they're accurate? I assume your answer will boil down to "I trust God;" but God's existence is part of those beliefs. It's like asking a Buddhist why he follows Buddhism, and the Buddhist replying "I trust Buddha." The belief that Buddha is real at all is part of those beliefs, and so the logic is circular and the question remains unanswered. So you've questioned God's existence? What was your reasoning for determining that he does exist?As for those that you haven't questioned - why? Have you seriously never said "I wonder if I'm right, how can I test my beliefs to see if they're accurate?"Again, I assume your answer will boil down to "I trust God." But your belief in God is part of the set of beliefs being questioned, and so cannot answer the questions posed in this thread. Can you elaborate? Do you mean that the Holy Spirit communicates to you via a series of revelations, or what I would likely deem "coincidences" that answer your questions and reassure your faith? But from what you've said, you haven't even questioned several of them.Let me tell you what my experience as a Christian was. Maybe seeing my perspective will help you answer my questions.My parents were raised in extremely religious households. They attended a Christian high school (where my maternal grandfather was an administrator), my father attended a Christian college, etc. They raised me and my brother in teh Christian faith from birth. I was read Bible stories at bedtime. We went to church regularly, and I was a member of the choir when I was around 7 or 8. I attended summber Bible Camp.As a child, I never questioned any of these things. My parents and my entire community were tellign me that what I was hearing was true. I trusted my parents and the other adults in my community to know what they were talking about, just as I did with other topics, becasue I was a child and they were the grownups. The Earth was Created by God in 6 days, culminating in the creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I beleived that the stories of original sin (including the talking serpent), Abraham, Noah, and Moses were literally true. I believed that the firstborn of Egypt had all died, I beleived that the world had been Flooded and species preserved in a large boat, and most importantly I believed that God existed and had sent his son to die for my sins, and that he had risen from teh dead on teh third day.In my adolescent years I started reading the Bible directly instead of just what the preacher or my parents or grandparents would read to me. I still never questioned any of it - I had never been confronted with a competing belief system. My community was so homogenously Christian that I actually thought Jews were characters in the Bible until I was 11. It never even occurred to me that a person could not believe in God.My initial reason for my faith was my trust in my parents and the other adults in my community. I beleived in God for the same reason I believed the Earth revolves around the Sum - my parents told me so, and they wouldn't lie. I never even considered that they could simply be wrong.Later in life obviously this didn't suffice...but by that point my beliefs had been deeply ingrained by years of indoctrination. One of the ways we test whether our beliefs are delusional is to compare our beliefs to the beliefs of others in our communities, to gain validation. Christianity, especially where I grew up, enjoyed more than sufficient validation. Everyone shared my beleifs, and so I was confident that my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. I felt God's love as a deeply spiritual peace and comfort. When I prayed, I beleived my prayers were answered. When I first met a few people who didn't share my beliefs, I was still absolutely convinced that mine were correct, and I was afraid for their souls. At this point, I had "evidence" to support my faith - the feelings of peace and reassurance I had because of my beliefs. I "knew" God was real because I could talk to him, feel his presence, and he would answer me in various subtle ways - as you said, in his own time.Whenever I "questioned" my beliefs, I was reassured by the validation I received from my community and from the personal feelings I had. I couldn't show God's love and peace to anyone else, but I felt it, and so it was real.Clearly, I eventually questioned my beliefs in different ways, and these are probably more relavent to this thread, while what I wrote above is likely more similar (but not identical, I'm sure) to how you're thinking.I eventually asked myself why I believed any of this at all. I asked myself how I knew that my "feelings" weren't just the result of my mind playing tricks on me and nothign more than self-delusion. I asked how I knew that my beliefs were true, and that those of others were false. I asked why I was Christian instead of Muslim or Hindu or Atheist or anything else. I asked myself if God actually existed, and whether the Bible was actually as true as I thought it had been.When I answered those questions, I no longer had any faith, and in fact rejected faith entirely as a means for supporting a conclusion. I tested my beliefs against the real world. The literal veracity of the Bible (the Flood, 6-day Creation) fell apart. At first I established a liberal interpretation fo the bible, where it still contained "truth" and many true stories, but also contained myths intended to "teach lessons." I eventually determined that, if the Bible was not literally true in several instances, I had no reason to beleive any of its extraordinary claims. Without the Bible, I had no reason to beleive in "salvation" or even the Hell I was supposed to be saved from, let alone Jesus or God himself. I realized my feelings of peace and love from God were self-delusional, and I felt them because I had convinced myself that I should. I had no real-world, objective evidence supporting God's existence, or differenciating my beliefs from those of any other religion or even made-up fantasies like fairies. I realized that, had I been brought up as a Muslim, I would be a Muslim with jsut as much confidence and certainty that I had as a Christian. The same would be true of any other religion. My faith was the result of confirmation bias, where when I got what I prayed for it was a gift from God, and when I didn't it was all part of God's plan. I recognized patterns that weren't there, seeing "revelations" and "answers" in coincidences like a certain song playing at a certain time on the radio that fit with my thoughts at the time. I continued to "believe" anyway for a short time because I reasoned that my beliefs didn't hurt anything, they weren't falsified, and I really, really wanted them to be true. Soon after I lost my faith entirely.Those are the sorts of questions we're talking abotu here, ICANT. "I trust God" is one of the very beliefs we're talking about when we ask why you're so confident. It's not a full answer. So you feel loved when you believe that God has forgiven you. But how are you so certain that your feelings are from an external source (God) as opposed to a simple self-delusion? People feel loved all the time from people who don't actually love them. Emotions and feelings are subjective, and as such can be caused by wishful thinking and delusion. Delusional beliefs can be comforting. They can make you happy. But that doesn't mean they're accurate. How do you know that your beliefs are accurate, and not simple self-delusion that makes you feel good? The question is why do you beleive they are accurate? I fail to see how any of that is relevant. The culture you grew up in was Christian in nature - as you said, you went to a Christian church and read the Bible regularly. How do you know that those traditions are not the root cause of your faith, ie, you are Christian becasue you were raised by Christians and reading Christian texts and attending a Christian church? How do you know that those traditions did not lead you to false beliefs? Again, feelings of peace (and especially their source) are subjective, and subject to wishful thinking and self-delusion. Why are you confident that they are actually from God?

It's also worth noting that the Bible contains at least one instance where God did directly tell someone to commit murder: Abraham was told to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in a manner nearly identical to the question asked of John.That God later stopped him is irrelevant - God used it as a test of Abraham's faith.If John were given an identical test (sacrifice {person} to me), would he obey the voice he identifies as God?

The answer to why some religious people are "so friggin' confident" is a litany of the flaws in human thought patterns.The simple answer is "their beliefs require them to be."The detailed answer is that religious beliefs are a meme.

quote:

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meme

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noun
a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation); "memes are the cultural counterpart of genes"

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In this case, the meme is self-sustaining, self-confirming, and extremely resistant to being discarded by individuals.The beliefs of the faithful rely on false pattern recognition, confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and social pressure to support themselves, and simultaneously require the faithful to spread their beliefs to unbelievers and their children.False Pattern RecognitionEveryone can look up in the sky and detect patterns in clouds, making them look similar to other objects. It's pattern-recognition, and it's one of the hallmarks of human thought processes. We can recognize the patterns of letters that form words, or patterns in soending habits, etc. Unfortunately, we also frequently detect patterns that don't actually exist.For the religious, this can take many forms. One of the more obvious forms is the phenomenon of "pareidolia," as discussed in this thread. It's a startlingly common phenomenon that groups of people will claim to see the "Virgin Mary" in a water stain on cement, or "Jesus" burnt onto a bit of toast. This is literally no different from children gazing a clouds and comparing them to terrestrial animals, except that religious people are predisposed to see their own religious icons (particularly if they already have a belief that the divine occasionally reveals itself in such a way - yet another meme). False pattern recognition like this acts as "objective" evidence supporting and confirming the person's beliefs.There are other forms, however, and some of them are rather subtle. Which brings us to...Cognitive DissonanceCognitive dissonance is a feeling of discomfort that arises from becoming aware of a contradiction in beliefs and/or actions. This is typically expressed as a feeling of guilt or shame or other such uncomfortable emotion. For example, an animal rights activist may enjoy eating meat, but then feel guilty from the apparent contradiction between believing in animal rights and the act of eating meat. This frequently results in rationalization - in this case it could take the form of "the animal was going to be killed anyway, nothing I can do would change it, and I didn't kill it myself, so I feel better."Let's tie this to religion using another example of false pattern recognition. Imagine a boy who's been told by his religious parents that a certain action or thought is sinful. It can be masturbation, lustful thoughts, stealing, the act or thought itself isn't important. When the boy does or thinks something "sinful," he then has a "bad day," and attributes the negative consequences to his unrelated sin. TO be more specific, perhaps the boy has lustful thoughts about a girl in school and then gets a poor grade on a test that he took the previous week. Obviously the events cannot be related - he took the test long before having his "sinful" thought. However, he feels guilty and shameful about the contradiction between his beliefs (that sexual thoguhts about a girl in class are wrong) and his actions (having those thoughts anyway). Cognitive dissonance causes him to rationalize that the poor test score was a punishment for his "sinful" act - this is applicable not only to typical Christian beliefs, but all Karma-like beliefs in general. This then causes the boy to recognize a pattern - "when I sin, bad things happen to me." The "sin" and the "bad things" have no actual correlation except in the boy's mind. Bad things happen to him even when he has not "sinned" (although granted the Chrisitan belief set includes so many things as "sinful" that it's admittedly difficult to go for 5 minutes without "sinning"), and good things happen to him when he has as well. Regardless of the real-world result, all results are taken as confirming the existence of the false pattern, with conflicting results completely discarded and ignored, or taken as "reward" for some other "good" he's done. Which takes us to our next subject...Confirmation BiasConfirmation bias is the tendency to search for or interpret information is such a way that it confirms a pre-existing conclusion. Essencially all of Chrisitan apologetics falls under this umbrella. It is a flaw in human critical thinking, where the bias of the individual taints any test of a hypothesis. Only rigourous 3rd-party testing, double-blind methodologies, and special effort to remain objective regardless of pre-existing beliefs can minimize its effects. Religion, unfortunately, utilizes none of those techniques and in fact encourages confirmation bias.Take for example prayer. A rational person would say that prayer on average should have a measurable effect, and that if no measurable effect is detected over a large number of participants in double-blind studies, then it can be concluded that at best no deity responds to prayer and at worst no deity exists. However, despite the existence of such studies and their consistent conclusions that prayer has no measurable effect when the patient is unaware of the prayer, belief in the "power of prayer" persists. It persists so strongly that various snakeoil salesmen can convince people that they've been "healed," even after being exposed as a fraud on national television and when the ailment inevitably "returns" after the adrenaline wears off, frequently to the extreme detriment of the sick person who has now exerted himself or who even stops going to his doctor for treatment.Why such powerful belief in the effectiveness of a ritual that has shown time and again to have no effect other than to make us feel better when we're helpless?Confirmation bias. When you pray for a sick child, if the child gets better, it's an answer to your prayers. If the child gets worse, it's a "test of faith." If the child dies, "God works in mysterious ways." The actual result does not affect the preconceived conclusion. All results act to "confirm" the beliefs of the faithful in a neverending cycle.Social PressureFinally we have the religion meme's defense mechanism: social pressure. When rational people want to determine whether their beliefs are rational, they look for confirmation or denial from their community. When a shadow is seen moving inthe corner of one's eye, one asks a nearby person, "did you see that?" Confirmation suggests that something was actually there. Denial means you may have been mistaken.But what happens when an entire community is convinced of a delusional belief? All of your fellow churchgoers may report being able to "feel the love of Jesus," or confirm your mistaken suspicion that the "bad things" in your life are punishments for your "sins," or that the burn mark on your slice of toast really does look like Jesus and it's a "miracle." They'll confirm that the sick child's recovery was miraculous (with no reason for saying so other than a sick child got well, an event that occurs frequently and with no suggestion of supernatural intervention), or that the child's death was "part of God's plan."Once a belief reaches a critical mass of adherents, it becomes self-confirming, and it becomes nearly impossible for an individual to break out of the belief system without also leaving the community - which raises the additional stygma of rejection and the desire to "fit in."The combination of all these things is the cause for religious confidence. They believe they have "evidence," but one can only see that evidence if one already believes because of its subjective nature and teh requirement for confirmation bias to eliminate objectivity. They believe they're right becasue all of their friends agree with them (and in some cases the belief system warns that they will be "persecuted" for having their beliefs - meaning critics will be ignored as "misguided" or "unenlightened). They see patterns that don't exist and rationalize solutions for their cognitive dissonance all to confirm that what they already believe is true.The whole cycle breeds confidence and rejection of criticism. The meme defends itself, and continues to be spread.