The insistence was on faith, actually, but "faith" was defined as uquestioning belief in a particular dogma or doctrine.

To me, "faith" is trust in a spiritual dimension that I feel and experience everywhere, in me and around me.

Yes Arminius.

I  would call "unquestioning belief in a particular dogma or doctrine" pathological credulity. To insist on that sort of credulity as a prerequite of "faith" pretty much obliterates all of Jesus' teachings and credibility at a single blow.

To call it "faith" is either a deep misunderstanding or heinous misrepresentation. Neither reflects well on Protestantism. Moreover, it has turned "Christianity" as it's widely seen and experienced into such a sad, judgmental mass of introverted sects.

Faith, as you and I experience it, indeed as a great many people experience it, is something significantly different: an elemental dynamic of life, and that is something that many churches keep at a distance perhaps becuase it is not tidy, controllable or necessarily experienced especially keenly by church leaders, strategists or committee members. A "church" with a "business plan" is likely to be a church that has misplaced its faith… an oxymoron?

Great posts.

Cheers from a

A... uh ...panenthiest...sort of....

Vice except in the exception of a few flexable extensions of inner and outer dimension when it comes to abstract imagination ... and the dawning to the Golden Rule as shimmering belief in also caring for the other! Anti-socialism is not allowed on the other side of larger perspective ... something not allowed by loched in perspectives ... closed pools? Moses opened that with irony and allegory ...

Sometimes one has to be a real pain in the donkey to the unthunk population in arid realms ... and the Piscine Confrontation begins as Robert Fulgum's trustee leads that donkey up the aisle on Christmas Eve ...

Tell me this is not dark humour! The result of the command from mortal gods that common people shouldn't know. Such demands still go on in sacred gilt form you know ... chimerii coverup as tarnished talent ... must be returned for final polishing after the annealing process ... the only way for mortals to know the truth is get beyond the presence elf ... an expression poorley understood by the misunderstanding crow'd ...

Thomas Aquinas lived and worked at an interesting time in history. He, together with the Hellenist William von Moerbecke, translated Aristotle into Latin at the Papal School, and tried to reconcile Aristotolean rationality with Christian thought.

The so-called Rationalists, a small albeit powerful force within the Church, were led by the three great Dominicans: Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Eckhart von Hochheim, also know as Meister Eckhart. The rift between the Traditionalists and Rationalists threatened to split the Church in two, so the Pope called a Church Council (the Second Council of Lyon) to try to heal the rift.

Unfortunately, Thomas Aquinas, the most eloquent spokesman for the Rationalists, died on his way to Lyon, and it was left up to the aging Albertus Magnus to defend the Rationalists. Alas, the Traditionalists won, and dominated the Church from then on. The Protestant Reformation, which initially seemed to revive the Rationalist movement, did not.

The term "Rationalist" is a bit misleading, for the Rationalists were also mystics. They relied on mystical or spiritual experience as the essential element of faith, and were in favour of rational explanations rather than traditional Church dogma to explain the experience.

"Rationality" is interesting. It, too, has attracted its "gotta BELIEVE" groupies: thinkers who exclude from "reason" anything that they do not consider mechanistically obvious. It's a naive view that considers what's observed but excludes the observer.

The observer's assumed to be impartial and objective, and to possess the means of perceiving every possible phenomenon and, at the same time, an intellect that's capable of analysing and understanding every significant phenomenon. It should be clear that this is, at best, wishful thinking.

It also tends to assume that language can accomodate the whole of experience, something we know from experience simply does not happen.

That's fine in itself, as a kind of personal security blanket. But it makes for an enthnocentrism that becomes indistinguishable from supremacism. What is "different" is held simply to be "wrong". And aything that is not materially evident to the "rational" mind is held to not exist or, more belligerently, to not possibly exist.

Collectively, we do not seem to have progressed as much as we'd like to think, intellectually, emotionally or spiritually, from the "ancient of days"… and, for all of our technological "progress" the World is not much safer, healthier, more kind or more wise. Some folk are just a whole lot more powerful (in a brute force kind of a way).

And the false allure of imagined "certainty" — betrays us all into idiocy, and at all sorts of levels. "Certainty" is the false god of fundamentalist rationalists and of fundamental religionists. Power and money are sought as nothing more that paths to certainty, I am sure… neither has instrinsic value of its own.

Nothing can be as sure as our false hopes imagine. Nothing will be controlled except superficially and seldom for very long. It's not for want of vanity, but we human beings are never going to run things the way we would like.

So, if we are at all wise, we find it's best to trust. When we do, we start hearing the wisdom traditions of our elders and, hearing Jesus, we realise that, better than simple trust, is love. When we start opening to love, to give and receive, we discover that love can be learned from the fabric of existence itself. It just depends on what we go looking for, what we go giving… we can find every imaginable horror, or… within every imaginable horror we can still find the pulse of a love that ultimately is the greater force.

We just don't need to try so damnedly hard to mould stuff into our flawed images of happiness. And just talking about Jesus and Love and hanging out with the head stuff and the literal word of gospels, or with scientism, doesn't make anything good happen.

It's trust that turns to love (and a bit of courage) that makes goodness and fullness open to us.

My Christmas hope is that this kind of awareness … awareness of hope and love… is catching on, in growing a new consciousness. I think it IS… I see it in growing numbers of people…

Beleif preculdes faith?  I am not sure if that makes any sense.  Beleif is not knowing.  In fact, beleif disappears in the presence of knowledge.  An accumulation of beleifs might lead to the formation of faith.  However, both these terms rest on not knowing.  Faith also disappears in the face of knowledge. 

We have this scenario where I tell you the ball in my pocket is red.  You can beleive or not beleive me.  The point being that you don't know what color the ball is.  When you.see the ball whatever your beleif or disbeleif might have been disappears.  Your beleif has been supplanted by knowledge.

So Jesus said "for some it is given to know...".  I, myself, would rather be a knower than a believer.  So how does one get to know?  I suspect that it requires faith to get me though those time when I don't know for sure.  Thus having faith could be considered useful as a means to an end.

That is why I am bemused by those who spout beleif.  They are joyously broadcasting the fact that they don't know.  Some of them are real goofy in that not knowing they also feel it is their job to convince you to not know either.  They are always running around trying to convert people into beleivers.  I suppose the principle being that if you keep people ignorant and ensure that they actually desire ignorance then they are easier to control.

Regardless, bekeif does not preclude faith  Beleif is a neccessary ingredient of faith.  Without beleif faith faith can not arise.  However when knowledge arises both beleif and faith vanish.

So be careful the next time you proclaim your beleif in Jesus.  It really means you don;t know for sure.

Another way to look at it is this:

There are two kinds of people in this world and three of each kind.  That makes six kinds of people in total (2 X 3).  The two kinds of people are those who know God exists and those who don;t.  Of those who don't know there are three kinds.  They are those who beleive, those who disbeleive and those who neither beleiver nor disbeleive.  We call these not knowers beleivers, atheists and agnostics.  But they all fall into the category of those who don't know.

There are also three kinds of people who do know. See if you can name them.  There is a prize for the winner.

Your Buddy on the Path - Poguru

What about people who know they cannot know but who learn to trust, and through trust experience the growth of faith and the impulse to love?

Sorry… but I don't get into classification systems.

A true story:

When Europeans first reached the Highlands of Papua-New Guinea, they found an extrordinary array of new plant and animal species which they began collecting, classifying and naming in the classical Linnaean way.

Then an anthropologis friend of mine realised that the local people had their own conception of the arrangement of things and helped a local Kalam guy to write an account of the indigenous way of identifying birds — a native classification. The result is a book that clasifies these birds on the basis of their habits, habitats, foods, uses, and mythology.

Then along came DNA analysis and redrafted the Linaean system.

But the only approach that enables you to go to the Highlands of PNG and survive, and catch the birds that are good to eat, and interact usefully with the people is the thousands-year-old native classification system.

I think we often make poor choices when we categorise things… and especyially when we categorise people.

Birds of my Kalam Country by Ian Saem Majnep & Ralph Bulmer)
(1977) 

Mike ,

Would such knowledge of high flighty things make a person crazy?

It appears to in people that eliminate reason altogether in faith that they know when faith is better applied to believing you will know more down the road.

The road is said to be ruagh and windy ---that Lindsy chap!

Some psychologists have gone crazy trying to firmly catagorize mental classes ... when they failed to observe these are floating systems (decimated; decimale) of passion and intelligence ... when one comes the other departs ... something that can be observed mystically ... as generally according to Heiseinberg ... such is a method of of loosing IT; when you accept that the entity is moving or motive! And thus you know it was but no longer is ... such is the realm of pas thought! Just beyond us ...

Such is like trying to gather loose leaf reading material in a Babyonian windstorm that'd stir any waters ... thus dissonant pools of what we call Eris ... the hermenuetic soul? Such follows reasonably ... as the great cow waters the land with fertility; gravid humur about (Piscine) all that we don't know and don't wish to as this raises the sense of consequence that Robert Hare says is missing in psychopathy? Therein is a subtle or supple dark message ... black Mail! Real people will absorb nothing they believe they already know even if they don't know the depth of IT ... as IT lithe 'ere ...

The gods couldn't pass by such an opportunity ... thus emotion was arrested for an incident in time that screwed up all things ... only thing that escaped was nothing ... what we now refer to as far out thought or hypnotic winds ... pneumonous humur? Perhaps divine --Dante! That's when love presents something to die for ... and an isolated being becomes something else ... mortals will say the object and subject are dazed ... and who really knows? Nobody in myth this is yet beyond us ... the becoming goes on as a genre of attraction ... a Beautiful Mind? John Nash ... common darkness in MicMaq ... like the Nashwaak ... there's de rivation for yah ... something to ponder as it goes like Mrs Hype ...

Belief is not "not knowing" so much as "thinking it is so based on personal intuition rather than empirical evidence". A believer knows, but they have no way to prove it objectively to others.

Faith is trusting in something. We can have faith in a person that is absolutely justified by our knowledge of that person. Scientists, to be honest, have faith in the scientific method and empiricism. That faith has been borne out by our experience doing scientific research so, again, it is faith that is justified by knowledge but is still faith. So, no, faith does not disappear in the face of knowledge and is sometimes, perhaps even often, supported by it. However, gaining knowledge can change or eliminate faith in some things. A sudden, spontaneous change in existence that cannot be explained through observation and experimentation could, potentially, change our faith in the scientific method though it would have to be something pretty dramatic and obvious (e.g. the Monty Python hand of God coming down).

One can have faith in something that one believes in. E.g. a theist believes there is a God and has faith in that God. These are not the same thing. I can believe in God and not have faith in God (if, for instance, I see God as being against me or trying to test me for some reason then I may not trust in God). If one stops believing in God then the faith is gone, too.

Can belief preclude faith? I think that what Mike is getting at is that a religion that focusses on the specifics of doctrine and theology may be so focussed on "belief" that it is does little or nothing to engender faith and the action that arises from having faith. So it is something that happens at the organizational level and not necessarily on the individual level.

Mendalla

Although I have an unwavering faith or trust in a creative power or force, and feel that power in me and around me, and do believe that this power has saved my life and my sanity and keeps me in a more or less exalted state of mind all the time, and I would not hesitate to call this force "God," I do not unquestioningly believe in any definitions of God.

In other words, I am not a doctrinal believer in God, but I have absolute faith in God.

Sorry, double post.

(I must have been so excited about my statement that I posted it twice)

More thoughts:

I feel the creative power of the universe to be limitlessly creative. By limiting it to this or that doctrine we are confining it. This is contrary to its limitlessness.

But isn't limitless creativeness a doctrine?

Well, its a non-doctrine doctrine. It is the doctrine of being beyond doctrine.

The two classification systems convey different information about the natural world.  As such they are useful for different things.  So it is with all classification systems.

If you wanted to know how those species of birds were related by descent to others, which classification scheme would prove more useful?

Actually Azdgari… there are THREE classification systems there. And ther coukd be as many as people had a mind to devise. 

The point is, none of them, by its own standards, is "wrong".

Each, by the standards of another, is less than relevant.

Agreed on all counts, then. :)

Hi Mendalla:

Re your: "Can belief preclude faith? I think that what Mike is getting at is that a religion that focusses on the specifics of doctrine and theology may be so focussed on "belief" that it is does little or nothing to engender faith and the action that arises from having faith. So it is something that happens at the organizational level and not necessarily on the individual level."

Christian "belief" commonly asserts, for example, a literal resurrection, a literal virgin birth, that "god is love", Jesus "died to save us" from judgment… and accepting such stements at face value inhibits the very sort of openness that feeds the dynamic development of faith.

Maybe my "faith" is something else altogether (as some Christians and atheists have told me). But a statement like "god is love" — perhaps the most widely held Christian assertion — seems to imply that my understanding of "love" helps to reveal the essential nature of "god".  

But — though I am loved by people close to me, and love them in return, and I loved and was loved by my paraents — my experience of "god" remains an ever-deepening mystery.

"God" is not "out there" , seeing, recognising and being "loving" towards me. Nor can I see, love "god" in any unique, defining way. I can't begin to talk about "god" apart from my experience of "godness" . I limit that experience by my selectivity, my distractions, my emotional and perceptual capacities.  I feel totally lost in "god" and sustained by "god" — but if I say, for example, "god is existence itself" I'm again enclosing "god" in a seriously limited view. Besisdes, I have only the vaguest idea of what "existence itself" really means. So, not only is it bullshit, it's a view that invites me to sit in the shadow of a wall built from my own boundaries, my own limitations, my own ego… "god" is there, to be sure, but the wall is just an illusion.

I can't find ways to describe my experience adequately, but it led me to an acceptance that everything expresses and is united by "mystery". Within that accptance, my trust grew and still grows … the illusion that I am my "self" is what frees me to grow that trust into faith.  

So I see "Jesus" as illusion as well… it's one that encourages companionship,  not doctrine. The snippets about Jesus-of-the-Gospels (the full corpus of known gospels) reveal a tremendous will to enage with others in unique ways: each encounter with Jesus that's described is remarkable for its own quality and character… before all else, Jesus SAW the individual before him and responded to that. (The one time he failed to do that — in the case of the Syro-Phonecian woman — we're told he was upbraided and corrected himself.)

I find that depth of observation hard, even impossible, to emulate. I make the error of grouping people and entertaining stereotypes. And, in failing to see and respond to that unique essence of individual people, I fail to see "god"… 

Then, when I talk with Christians who "believe" I find I am in "error" (as I am in failing) to communicate with most atheists… both of whom seem to be rooted in habits of excluding whatever is "other" simply because it is "other"…

The challenge of faith lies in its absolute need for discernment, and discernment is a function of the illusory "self"… it comes, for me, through immersion in diversity, not through conformity (conformity too readily casts errors in concrete). My need for diversity was probably shaped by rather a lot of multicultural experience from my childhood on… so I am surely missing something in the mainstreams of life.

But my experience-rooted conviction that I "know" nothing of "god" frees me to experience "god"… sometimes very vividly. And that is the source of my faith. 

I'm not making a case for ignorance here. My view would be that I need to learn and study, read and "know" far more than I can fit into my lifetime… knowledge is spread so lavishly that the most voracious seeker can never embrace more than a thin slice… and so is experience. More passes me by in a minute than years of engagement could begin to explain.

If that's true for others, then there's something suspect about our willingness to make unqualified assertions about "god", "Jesus" or "nature"… or anything else.

Unequivocality has a clear social  and cultural value… a kind of collective utility. 

It gives us all the benefits of technology, comfort, convention and communty… but it doesn't help us to experience the universe or our personal existence in it. And it obscures or denies our experience of "god".

Within the Christian tradition, as within other faiths, there is a wealth of potentially helpful spiritual development resources. It would be nice to see them made more readily and routinely available.

To me, god simply is the creativeness of the universe. Feeling the creative power in creation, in me and all around me, and thinking and acting creatively, is living a godly life.

What about the destructive power? I think I'd see that and creative forces totally intertwined… mingled within some far vaster reality.

Yes, the flipside of creative power is the destructive power.

When we exercise our creative/destructive power without godly awareness, then we are more likely to exercise it egocentrically and destructively.

If, on the other hand, we are aware of our innate godliness, then this awareness necessarily entails unitive awareness and unitive love. Then we create from that awareness.

By imposing on us doctrinal explanations of a separate god rather than guiding us to an experience of our at-one-ment with god, traditionalist church actually encouraged destructiveness rather that creativeness.

Could this be illustrative in the icon of the Latin Caduces (double dervish)?

Leaves us in the position of knowing nothing and everything to learn!

Many would deny this right to the infinite degree and prefer common folk need nothing to learn ... so they could have their will with what's common!

What do we learn from what's common? A lot of things not to do and care for ...

Then there is Einstein's comment about light ... it can be warped by gravid things ... the fecundity of will? I would say some common sense could be stirred into that bubbly lot ... as a quantum froth!

Then of course I always see things diferently and thus folk believe me  an ode thing ... like Dangerfield someone receiving no respect for odd thoughts! The thinking medium is thus shunned and closed up ferme inde tome ... that's the word ... bottom land prop Ur!

We have one life (as far as we can possibly know), Buoy.

With growing awareness, we find ourselves plunged into the midst of an amazing, spectacular, horrifying , beautiful, hideous, gorgeous and extrordinarily varied orb of awareness.

Finding relationships, gaining insights, learning what we can, baring ourselves to joy, pain, exhilaration, fear, love, experience and excitement… engaging and and giving back all that we must and all that we can… these are ALL-IMPORTANT priorities. 

We don't have the space in these little lives of ours to waste in inattention, distractions and diversions, appetites, vices, sloth and safety: they pose such threats to us and the World we inhabit. Comfort isn't the big goal life is.

We can use each other's help and companionship.

Maybe our church helps light our fires?

Hi Mike

Thoughtful post… Not sure how much difference there is between faith and belief, but in either case: faith is nothing without the object of the faith, nor is belief anything without the object of that belief. As I see it, someone whose belief and faith has unrestrained belligerent aggression as its object, will just not get any affirmation for their faith from me. The object of faith does matter. One faith is not as good as any other. On the other hand, if I have a ‘good’ object of faith (believe in helping, charity, kindness, loving, etc.) it will serve me well even if I have come to it with blind assent. What needs critiquing is the object of faith. This also drove the early reformers.  …some did go astray in their critiquing.

I think belief and faith require a grasping of reality, which is grasped in the process of living or existing. I have been hurtful, I have been kind. I have been selfish, I have been generous. I have hated, I have loved. From my experiences I discern, (let me call them spiritual objects) and from my experiences I find that existence is affirmed when I engage those spiritual things and when I exist through those things in being who I become and am. I take the experience of spiritual things to be experience of reality itself --- a particular reality. While we can exist through many diverse realities (my example of the aggressive, unrestrained belligerent being who has faith in that reality and who becomes and is through that reality), I believe we can exist through a spiritual reality which is in human terms that we can align to and engage with.

I think it is not about religion as much as it is about personal reality. We need to draw from as much resource as available to us from everywhere we can find resources, to come to terms with existence in ultimately significant and meaningful ways. But we need to be cautious.

I think it is important to note that not all life is spiritually affirming. The mundane does not become spiritual because we decided to consider it so. Yet, many seem to suggest that anything can be sacred. What do you think?

In a sense, faith and belief emerge from existing. We need to trail and test or experiment that existence in order to discern the spiritual and sacred, so we can fashion our faith and belief according to what we are to become. In our existence we experience such things as kindness, generosity, helpfulness, hope, etc, as real things; which I take to be the experience of  real spiritual things (John 3:1-21). My existing is through those things, not through other mundane things such as despair, fear of death, hate, etc. The object of my faith and belief are those spiritual things which are from and of God. I take those spiritual things to be real, accessible and differentiated from mundane things.

As you may notice, I am working through things in the process of dialoguing…

Creation and Destruction

Life and Death

They are parts of the same neverending cycle. Sometimes, the destruction of something becomes the opportunity for the creation of a new something. Think of the Cretaceous asteroid ending the time of the dinosaurs and opening the door for mammals. Not that it was purposeful, but it highlights how destruction need not be an end to creation.

Mendalla

Nor does creation  end destruction… everything, it seems to me, is about this sacred principle of transformation: spritually, transformation's embedded in the character of every faith's necessary bedrock of faith.

Yes, of course, transformation.

Transformation is the most profound creation because it transcends what there was and creates something totally new.

To me, the creative power of God is transcendental, transformative power. When we humans feel empowered by that power, then the mundane becomes divine.

And therein lies the failing of conventional church: it rendered only Jesu divine and left us mired in the mundane mud; it prevented us from transforming ourselves into the divine beings that we innately and ultimately are; it failed to facilitate the divine union.

Failing to connect the mundane thought patterns to the emotional body!

Was this rift imperfect, leaving some people thinking archaically ... with their soul drifting in time?

God would that be mis-understood by those that process only emotionally and don't know it? They can't captivate thoughts ... or get grips on such odd things! Thus the expression; "I can't grasp that" ... as metaphorical as it can't be real! That'd be the emotional context of alien words to those that do not inverstigate the food/fu'd of the intangible soul!

Thus all the forgoing is lost to what follows ... consequences! If one realizes they know nothing about everything it is easier to absorb ... the concept of everything which's god in (go Din; travelling storm) some linguistic lines of communication! Some juddling and conjuration will be required when working with nothing in the first place ... start with 2 Ba'aLs ... and work up to 7 or even 11 ; which is still 2 but an illusion of a Big Balled up personality ... the human state of socialization ...

Now that's perculiar ... to the isolated looking in from outside!

Altruism, universal love and compassion, some variation of the Golden Rule, they are taught and practiced by almost every religion. This, I think, is due to the fact that the divine mystical union compels us to be altruistic, transcends doctrine, and is at the root of most religions. Moreover, the Divine Union can also be achieved outside of religion, just by practicing contemplation or meditation. What's more, altruism has evolved as an instinct in our social species. Even reason alone tells us that altruism makes sense. The secular ideal and philosophy of humanism is a result of that.

There is hope for our species.

If, as I believe, nonduality is the ultimate state of being, and the nondualistic totality is a singularity, and is all there is, then every one of us is an inseparable or intrinsic part of this Holy WHOLE. Then every one of us is a unique focal point at which the Holy WHOLE becomes consciously aware of itself.

The experience of this awareness is the Divine Union. The Divine Union is, or ought to be, the highest goal of every religion and the personal goal of each individual, within or without any religion, because it makes us aware who and what we ultimately are.

Some people can't gather the function of fused cults and sects ... too much aD'm -ism for their overblown desires ...

So they just desire to remain separate ... that's A'B'D in Hebrew that translates into abba'd thing ... that's out there in the kohl ... a spark to be drawn in as outside thought/intellect hated by the institutionalized?

Kind a makes one head spin in vert-Egos ... that fresh spin as like lying under a tree with a chaotic sort ... bo'tri? Buddha's domain as purely natural if you can escape the cement into a growing dimension ... a'MIR icon on Semites? Many religious sorts are iconoclast ... they destroy words for unknown reason ... that be their destructive desire with not constructive sol' th 'ere ... poe mice ole it's there inde Wahl ... as Aries space a cunning device!

It's sar Rae's objective silly ... considering that sar was once the head ... that was devoid've thought ... a deep place for druids and drawing from as alien pool of ET-ICS ... not frequently seen down 'ere ... filling that space in the moral pool of unseen dimension ... integral-Eire as compressed thought? So the point will not be observed by the dis-possessed of thinking ...

Is this not biblically catagorical that has connects with alle' gory in string theo'sis?

Perhaps it is just an abstract ... eug noe imaginary device that's not really there but chased not chast as IT's been pursued around everything ... especially passions ... as known from outside observation ... many don't look that well into the subjective of sol' ace ...

Believers do not know.  That is the point.  If they knew, they would no longer be believers, they would be knowers. 

A person can know and stll not have the ability to prove.  Knowing des not rest on the ablity to prove.

Your Buddy on the Path - Pogur

Believers have no interest in proof ... they just desire to tell you the way it is when there is no way of knowing things beyond mortal intelligence ... a far out phenominon!

This is the dimension of abstract, or imagination ... sort of mythical to absolute sorts.