Hey all, I just have a question or two for those of you whom are willing to read further.

What does the word 'faith' mean to you? One can easily Google it to find its first definition to be: "complete trust or confidence in someone or something", and the second being: "strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof". However, I feel as though many people toss this word around a little too easily, or have it too easily; and if it's had too easily, then wouldn't it be too easily abused as well? You can call me biased on the subject quite easily in fact...

You see as I've already hinted at in some of my other posts, I've experienced quite a bit of abuse with the church being involved as a child (I'm not here to detail what happened), and one of my distinct memories before any of it began was a sermon given by the priest/father about how 'we as a congregation need to have more faith in our fellow neighbors, for if they have faith in God above, then we should also have faith in them to do right'. It wasn't but a week later that my abuse began with people who attended that church and one or more of the clergy, right under my parents' noses. Years later after I talked it out with a therapist, I personally believe that that sermon was meant to mislead my parents into putting faith above trust in leaving me in the 'care' of those people... and then once I actually opened up about my traumas and created a police investigation, once again, it was the fact that they swore to God that they didn't abuse me which kept me from ever having my day in court, since there were no eyewitnesses or physical evidence, it was my secular word vs their swearing to God and they went free...

It can be easily seen now how much biased I have over just a 5 letter word like 'faith'. Sure I've made great strides in overcoming my traumas, and sure I can more easily speak about it to people, however this 5 letter word still troubles me and keeps me up at night from time to time. I've often times refused to let anyone tell me to 'have faith in X' because of the strong connections to my past it's had.

However, over the past 2 LSD trips I've experienced, I've had quite a compelling shift in thought over this simple to pronounce word; after my second LSD trip last week (roughly 500 micrograms, still working on integrating, I may post a report) I can say for sure that I definitely felt something rather compelling, a strong feeling of a connection to the life around me and an even stronger connection to myself the likes of which I've never felt before. The more I think about it, the more I want to say that it was a spiritual experience for me. I've had some back and forth with labeling myself as an agnostic, deist, atheist, to refusing to label myself as any definable means. However, with these latest experiences, I can say that I can remove the possibility of calling myself 'atheist' off of the table. However, to me, that means that I may or may not then have some form of faith, no?

Is it that I still hold onto my past which keeps me from saying I have faith in something more than just this life? Is it possible I'm misusing the word 'faith'? I mean, it had gotten to the point where in the past I was considering telling whoever marries my fiancé and I to not use the word faith during our ceremony, but now I'm just not sure anymore, maybe using that word would be appropriate when we get married. Hence why I feel compelled to begin a conversation with you all, I wish to see how others view the word and usage of the word 'faith'.

Thanks for reading

Just my two cents WEM, but to me, real "faith" is an incredibly deep "knowing" that is distinct & all together different from "belief" ( which has the word "lie" as its root, i.e. "to lie to yourself" ).

Faith, to me, is something that grows stronger the more integrated one becomes.

Integration, I have found personally, comes from more or less constantly working on oneself by means of contemplation, meditation & entheogenic experiences (not necessarily associated with any type of religion).

I find your OP an incredibly interesting topic; one that I have contemplated for many decades.

The use of the word "faith", in my not-so-humble opinion, is over-used & completely abused by sheepish followers & their power-hungry religious leaders, most often confusing "faith" with simple "belief".

Another way that I see to put it is: "Belief" derives from some one else telling you something or reading something or seeing something on tv or the internet, etc. & taking it as the truth even when one has no direct experience with that something.

Whereas "faith" derives from direct experience, so that one "knows" something without any external input influencing that knowing.

^^^ That!

Just cuz they called it 'faith' don't mean jack. It's only faith if you find it yourself. Freebies in the mail don't count.

Sounds like you're doing good on that front, so keep up the good work

Hmmm.... your differentiation of belief and faith intrigues me Doc, so to be clear: it would be fair for me to say that I have a strong belief in the big bang theory (as I've only ever read about it and be told about it), but faith in gravity (as it keeps me grounded to the couch I currently sit on)? Or would that be a bit of a stretch?

It's nice to hear that others have contemplated this as well

Thanks for your replies

Yes, that's what I was getting at...Lol, I wouldn't have thought of applying that particular analogy to it, but it still works in the way I was trying to relate.

I love this ^^^^^^^^^^


Thanks Man From Chan Chan!!!

You're more than welcome, Doc, thanks!

As for gravity, WEM, you already have experience of it, so I don't know if that's the perfect analogy... Maybe more like the person who says they'll be waiting at the station (or altar), is actually there...and you know that already?

Try not to dwell on the evil deeds of others any longer, clearly, they are already gone from your life, so this is you, now.

I'm coming from a hardcore religious background, who tossed it all at the first opportunity, and is slowly making my way back towards the Source (which isn't an angry man with a beard, FWIW)

Everything, begins here...

That's a bit closer to what I was attempting to relate.

Alright then, I think I have a better grasp at what it means to have faith vs to have a belief. I can see the station/altar analogy making more sense to me... my fiancé is going to have faith in me to be there as she makes her appearance and walks down the isle during our wedding ceremony, as I will have faith in her to show up and walk as I stand there... I can see that being a more reasonable analogy than with gravity

Thanks for your help! If anyone else feels like posting more opinions feel free!

Faith, hope, and belief:

Faith is what remains when you believe you have no hope.

contexts change as do usages in our ever growing capacity for puns, sayings, dichotomies, double entente, innuendo and other unorthodox mischief both intended and unintended. rather than treating each word in the language as significant pretext in itself to a certain clause, subject or meaning, I prefer to consider the source first and hazard guesses later.

faith is five letters which alone can mean anything as far as I am concerned

Faith is an emotional attachment to a belief. Make no mistake faith can have much power in/over our lives, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. However, real power comes with knowledge which leads to understanding which leads to wisdom. Therein lies real power.

faith leads to fear, fear leads to anger anger leads to hate hate leads to suffering

I define it as any belief that can't be proven (or disproven). i.e. all beliefs. So, for example, the belief that physical reality exists is something I take on faith (sometimes). Admitting faith is a mature concept. It is one step beyond claiming to know something for certain. Faith to me comes with having the spiritual humility to admit that we can never really know anything. That being said, I think some people use the word "faith" to convey false humility, when what they mean to say is that they "[think they] know" such-and-such. In that sense, I'm not actually sure how the word "faith" differs from the word "hope". Anyways, knowledge + humility = faith

I would call your new-found spirituality "faith", and whether you call it "faith" is determined by how you define the word and how you feel about what you've experienced.

For fun:
Let's say humility in the above equation equates to doubt of knowledge. Then, defining an operator DoubtOf, we can write what we'll call first-order faith as faith1 = knowledge + DoubtOf*knowledge = (1 + DoubtOf)*knowledge.
We could therefore define second-order faith as faith2 = (1 + DoubtOf + DoubtOf*DoubtOf)*knowledge = (1 + DoubtOf + DoubtOf^2)*knowledge, and so on. The third term, DoubtOf^2*knowledge, is doubt of doubt of knowledge. It's second-order humility. It's saying "I think I know this but I could always be wrong, and I could always be wrong about the possibility of being wrong".

Anyways, I guess I have to write it: faithN = [sum(over i from 0 to N) of DoubtOf^i]*knowledge.
Note that faith0 = knowledge. So, the obvious questions are:
1. What is faith-N? (Negative-order faith)
2. What is, for example, faith1.5? (Fractional faith)
3. What is, faithi? (Imaginary faith)

EDIT:
Oh God. I just realized that infinite-order faith, which is
faithInf = (1 + DoubtOf + DoubtOf^2 + DoubtOf^3 + DoubtOf^4 +...)*knowledge
can be rewritten as knowledge/(1-DoubtOf), because 1+x+x^2+x^3... = 1/(1-x)!

*facepalm* I finally get what Wittgenstein said about the meaninglessness of philosophy.

I'm intrigued by everyone's opinion over their view on faith.

In a way this thread is showing what I was anticipating, but also some very different views than I expected.

gibran2: that isn't the first time I've heard that view point before, I feel like I can relate to that interpretation.

thymamai: I like your view of considering the source first, it seems everyone has their own personal interpretation of what it means to have faith, so if you were to take what someone says about it out of context, that I can see where confusion can cause trouble. (by the way was that a Star Wars reference or am I looking too deep into that?)

poonja: I definitely relate with your description of faith, I see people all the time being emotional bound to their beliefs/faith in or of something. I feel like wisdom is one of those things that one hears about all the time (with the stereotype I've seen most often being the monk at the top of a mountain and someone who just reached the summit asking them "what's life purpose"), but you don't really hear about wisdom in modern day context, it's like society views wisdom as some quasi-obtainable thing or something.

hixidom: I'm intrigued by your mathematical view on things, it puts an interesting spin on interpreting faith for sure!

Thanks for more replies! It's nice to read other views on this matter.

it was! gooood, goooood! feel the power of suggestion!

not only personal interpretation, but context varies from one instance to another by degrees. it is all a matter of relationship and therefore the reality is never even welcome only suggested. my point being that language is god, and it is changing every day, every hour.