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Replying to chriss in post #172]
I can accept that there are times when the mind appears to come into contact with something real through an experience. Our definitions of faith are probably different here. Having had an experience then I would say that you need faith merely to accept a particular experience as a reality.
I don't think faith is necessary in order to
accept an experience as a reality. That makes no sense to me. Rather, one might require faith if one is
conflicted in regard to devil/god ideas, wherein the experience had, one believes on faith to being from 'god' rather than 'devil' [and visa versa I suppose] but the
experience itself did not require ones faith to have happen.
[The experience might have to do with ones beliefs in that it unfolds as one believes it should - but while faith and belief might be in the same category - one does not require faith either in order to experience something, or to record that experience .
It is only by faith that one can assume that our minds can actually think and perceive reality.
No. It is only through conscious awareness that one can think and perceive reality. In relation to the physical reality of being human, it also requires a physical form.
Also assume that you have 5 different experiences of frogs and in each experience the frog is green. One might think that it is true that all frogs are green but one can only do this by faith.
Which goes to show how limiting faith makes things. Even if in each experience the frog is green, why would you care to assume by that "all frogs must be green"?
If one had an experience of a frog which is not green then one would abandon one's belief that all frogs are green but until that happens than one can keep believing (having faith) that all frogs are green.
Personally I understand such type of thinking as wasteful. There was no reasonable reason to believe/assume anything. It is better just to accept that;
1: All the frogs one has experienced have been green.
2: A yellow frog was then experienced
Rather than assume things about the experience, just accept the experience as it reveals itself to you.
It is not possible to prove that all frogs are green since one would need to check every frog in the universe which is impossible, at least to be sure that have found them all.
It is not necessary to assume all frogs are green in the first place. Even if you have only ever experienced green frogs.
For me, when I say that I have faith in God, it is more complicated involving a comparison of things which support belief in God against things which support believing there is no God, then choosing whether on balance I believe that God exists. Here I am exercising faith in my own judgement.
I would say in relation to "God" (and assuming you mean Christian ideas about The Creator) you are exercising faith in other peoples mythologies and judging them acceptable to your understanding. Acceptable to place faith in.
I myself have examined the Middle Eastern ideas of gods and found those ideas unacceptable to my understanding, and potentailly dangerous to place faith in.
On the main question about whether having faith means not seeking knowledge, I still come out strongly against that idea.
I tend to agree. Faith does not prevent someone from seeking knowledge. What it does - I have observed - is dictate what knowledge one will accept and what knowledge one will reject.
The more knowledge that one has the better one can make decisions as to what is true and false, right and wrong.
It can work that way, but what is to say ones knowledge is
correct on those subjects? So you are really arguing that one requires faith to believe that the partial knowledge one has, is correct.
Whereas, the process of science which also deals with partial knowledge regarding the physical, can make statements about that partial knowledge but does not rely on faith and within the process allows for the fact that more information
will bring changes to the current understanding of the physical.
Faith on the other hand, makes
no such allowances, so is more a device to retard/hide knowledge than it is a device to bring fuller knowledge out into the light.
