Bet MacArdle asked in the Epistemology group on Facebook,

“It is my observation, as a psychotherapist for over 50 years, that ‘faith’ is always based on some sort of evidence or experience. Yet the word is used to suggest adherence when there is no evidence or reason to justify adherence. When my patients, or indeed any other person, uses the word faith, I look for what might be the basis of their adherence. There is always something. I have yet to encounter a case of ‘blind faith,’ even if the subject themselves declares it. Your thoughts?”

This is my response:

It’s funny you say this, I just had this conversation a couple of hours ago:

[08:06] <metayeti> the good thing about meditation and spiritual practices is you don’t really have to understand how they work 
[08:07] <metayeti> you just need a certain degree of faith that they do work
[08:07] <inhahe> yeah, i don’t need faith either, i can just go by the evidence that it’s worked for many others.
[08:08] <inhahe> what’s faith?
[08:08] <inhahe> belief without reason? 
[08:09] <metayeti> yeah
[08:10] <metayeti> you need a certain degree of it even if you don’t like the idea
[08:10] <inhahe> metayeti: well let’s say I wanted to adopt some degree of “belief without reason.” If there were no reason, how would I know which beliefs I should adopt and which I shouldn’t?
[08:11] <inhahe> how would I know I want to adopt strong determination meditation instead of, say, flat earth theory?
[08:13] <inhahe> there’s always a reason, even if the reason is ‘this knowledgeable guy says it works’
[08:14] <inhahe> ‘and describes how it worked for him’
[08:16] <metayeti> yeah, it’s a hard problem
[08:16] <metayeti> you use intuition
[08:16] <metayeti> and intelligence, i guess
[08:16] <metayeti> but there is definitely a degree of faith to the practice
[08:17] <metayeti> for example meditation won’t work overnight
[08:17] <metayeti> you have to have faith that it will
[08:17] <metayeti> but you do that will everything else anyway. exercise won’t work overnight either
[08:17] <metayeti> but you have faith that overtime it will
[08:17] <metayeti> knowledge, skill, anything that takes time and patience, needs a certain degree of faith
[08:17] <metayeti> even blind faith sometimes
[08:18] <inhahe> yeah, it’s more of belief that it will based on what you’ve heard, but you must stretch yourself to overcome the reluctance to try it for so long. that ‘stretching’ could be considered faith in some way.
[08:18] <inhahe> ‘faith’ is a rather dynamic word
[08:18] <inhahe> which is why Christians abuse it
[08:18] <inhahe> to justify their beliefs

————————–

So, even though faith ultimately always has a reason, it can tend to be a less valid means of knowing because it’s used as an excuse to accept things without much logical validation or evidence.

Though I would strongly say that another use of the word “faith” is to point to things that we only liminally know, say through intuition or some other transcendental means, such as the experience of countless past lives or of related parallel lives, but yet give credence to them. Mainly, such a thing we would have faith in is that things always eventually work out for the better, i.e., that the universe is a [thing i don’t have words for, sort of like ‘good’ or ‘successful’] place, and this would in turn give us hope, and the faith and hope would keep the back door open for good things to come.

• Uncategorized