Believing in Faith vs Practicing Beliefs

How labeling faith more accurately may reduce the strength of religious conceit—

Religious believers of every fashion you can imagine cover the globe in a philosophical, often self-satisfied smugness—that the believer actually knows something. I would prefer they start using the term, “embracing ideas”, since the stigma associated with the words “faith”, or “belief” connotes too much religious autocracy. Having a personal relationship with a supernatural god you can’t comprehend, see, touch, even imagine, also just sounds so…crazy. Ok? But I hear it’s worth it…only later.

Embracing a good idea, relieves one of the burden of delusional psychopathy, may actually calm personal nerves, reduce anxieties, defeat self depreciation, and promote good behavior. Regardless of this new trend (as of now) faith and belief are terms that should be absorbed back into the cosmos, stricken from the record.

That’s an idea I can embrace, espouse, grasp, and hold on to—without faith hijacking the conversation with a damaging, self-imported debasement that is no longer useful. Belief is not an honorable trait, nor is faith worthy of accolades. It’s simply a decision, a conviction of thought in one’s own weakness to believe in something that is not around to help.

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

36 thoughts on “Believing in Faith vs Practicing Beliefs”

  1. Now that’s an interesting idea, and one with a great deal of merit. Terms like belief and faith imply that the person using them has no actual factual proof to support their statement, just vague feelings or opinion. Saying something like “I believe in human caused climate change” is, essentially, meaningless because the use of the term “believe” undermines the statement because it implies you are stating a mere opinion rather than an actual fact supported by research. Stating that you embrace or accept an idea is a far better way of expressing it.

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    1. Absolutely. I see what you did there. You just applied an idea evenly between religion AND science and it works both ways. Therefore, it has some merit. Not too many ideas espose both sides and come out reason.

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    2. Actually, to a layman, believing in human-caused climate change is technically right–we are believing the scientists who tell us their studies show this to be factual. We have faith these men and women are giving us Truth, not just truth as they know it. How can we be so sure they are being truthful! They are humans, and humans are fallible.
      Meanwhile using belief in this statement is nothing similar to believing someone else that gods exist, since there can be no evidence that such a statement could be true. Most certainly, in no way can anyone state it is True. That involves a faith that cannot approach fact, but only truth as they think it.

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      1. I think I’ll embrace some of your ideas here. We do believe the scientist and put a lot of faith in their expertise and data trending. But we can also see with our own eyes (something religion does not afford) the pollution and the fire seasons, the dirty waters and the oil sands. The earth has taken a beating pretty well, but to think 200billion tonnes of coal smoke alone is harmless. Open the eyes please! There religion won’t save the world. We will.

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        1. I suppose I get bogged down in semantics sometimes. In real life I tend to use the word “believe” as rawgod points out. It isn’t until I start to think about how the term “belief” is strongly associated with the irrational that I start to split hairs and get nit picky about terminology.

          Frankly, I’m surprised I’m even semi-rational in most of these comments. Most of these are written around 4 AM after the dopey cats have woken me up. I am engaging in a discussion with the little buggers right now, as a matter of fact. They believe that if they sit outside the bedroom door and make enough noise at 4 AM someone will come out and feed them, while I am attempting to convince them that if they keep this up there is a good chance they are going to become farm cats and get moved out to my brother-in-law’s farm.

          It is obvious from their responses that they are extremely skeptical of my ability to enforce those threats and have even escalated things, and are now demanding not only their breakfast, but treats and back scratches as well. Sigh…

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          1. I’m with you. I’m not usually a stickler for terminology, but read a lot for intent/content. So many apologists immediately critique the writing style and try to point out “4am writing skills” vs address the idea. It must be in an apologetics 101 handbook somewhere. Comments like “oh that’s ridiculous”, then never address the idea or propose a better one.

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        2. Do religions want to save the world, or do they want all their followers to be in heaven, or paradise, or wherever, laughing their guts out at the suckers in hell! Little do they know…
          Yes, it is up to us to save ourselves, and, by extension, them. They won’t appreciate it if we succeed. And if we fail, who cares?

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          1. When the vast silence shrouds the earth empty of life, who will be to notice? Why should we care at all to cling to existence when the inevitable is inevitable? When the next generation of hominids arise from the indigenous pools and start digging through the fossilized trash they will coin their first acronym —WTF?

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            1. If we don’t leave at least the cockroaches to notice, there will be no hominids to rise from the primal soup. There will be no primal soup to start life.

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            2. When conditions are met it will arise as well. Multi-million year gaps separates us from other rises and falls. These weren’t our people. Life comes and goes.
              We’ve got quite a ways to go yet. Humans can live in squalor quite a while. We’ve proven that with our policies on poverty and the indigenous. The end is a long ways off.

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            3. Unfortunately, Jim, my imagination goes both ways. Life is hard to destroy, I agree, but the wildfires in our back yard right now show how quickly life can be wiped out. The northern part of Alberta is covered by wildfires, spreading faster than firefighters can slow it down. If a couple of fires join together, there may be no where left for people to live. Wildlife has already been destroyed. This is climate disaster at its worst. It is not looking good…

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  2. I came across a question on Quora this evening – “Is it accurate to say atheism is not the absence of belief in God but belief of God’s absence?” Neither, I replied. Atheism is not a belief, you can’t wrap it in religious ideology and expect it to fly. Then I came across your post, sighing with relief that I’m not alone in recognizing the value of things that actually matter. 🙂

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    1. Thanks. I have spent a lot of time dismantling the psychology of faith, plus I field tested it for many years. “Just hang in there” doesn’t cut it any more.
      On a side note, maybe you already know this, after submission and repetition the neurons become hardwired. We now argue against belief, but in fact are arguing with the persons physiology. There is no other explanation how, before you can even finish a sentence they’re hand waving the facts and defending contradictions. An actual, physical, hormonal response initiates the fight or flight—over challenging someone’s belief, which is an affront to their right to have hope.

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      1. I hadn’t considered neural programming, but your comment explains a lot. You nailed it with “their right to have hope”.
        If only they understood we respect that hope provided their faith is a personal matter, where they plan to spend the afterlife makes no difference to me. Sigh.

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        1. Those that find spirituality in their own sphere and interact with the universe in intuitive ways is ok by me. Through the religions though,they try to force you and make laws (which they are right this minute) to inflict their mere belief on everyone else. Even though the outcomes aren’t what they want, through faith they still push it.

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            1. Ooh! That is a great observation. Dammit man I was supposed to think of that. Religion staked the claim on morality…That is certainly profound in many ways.

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    1. I am making this change for them! I’m not sure why we can’t change their terminology to suit our needs, when they inflict their beliefs into laws I have to follow. But I see your point. But, I’m not doing this for points. Ha ha ha

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  4. Some of us understand that the existence of spiritual beings can only be hypotheses. It would be sensible (IMO) to develop religions as ways to deal with these beings only after we know they are out there. But no. We (most of the people on earth) concoct ways to deal spirits before we know they exist. The effort we put into spreading this good news would solve world hunger and might abate climate disaster. Worse, even non-believers place a high moral premium on being religious and a man or woman of god. Hoomins is crazy, man.

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    1. It comes down to our glaring inability to take care of everything is waved out of our control. God knows what he’s doing, so we turn to him and people keep starving

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        1. I am surrounded by people praying for god to lead them to his will. Contemplating, waiting, and then believing in the end god is going to rescue us. Gods will is this: if you see a need, fill it. If someone needs help, help them. God doesn’t care who you marry or where ou work, just do it honorably.
          Imagine another 2-3 billion people being proactive.
          The other half of the equation is religion and it’s fight against social equality, digging in its heels and legislating its beliefs, ostracizing those who don’t believe, while controlling breeding in the name of a failed and failing morality. The entire premise puts one group of people above another.

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  5. Embracing a good idea, relieves one of the burden of delusional psychopathy, may actually calm personal nerves, reduce anxieties, defeat self depreciation, and promote good behavior.

    It’s certainly motivational. Once you realise help (or salvation) isn’t coming from some magic spirit, you get busy solving problems.

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  6. Another metric for assessing the integrity of one’s “beliefs” is this: Are you living as if your “beliefs” are true. From where I sit, such integrity seems seriously lacking among “the faithful”. (Note” Whether or not one’s beliefs are true is, of course, still the most important bit)

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  8. “Faith hijacking the idea …” Bingo! In one instance these people say that their god is ineffable, unknowable, unfathomable … and in the next, that they know what god wants, intends, and will do. I do wish they would make up their minds.

    What they do, not their god, is hijack any ideas they can use to further their interests. The invented the “God of the Gaps” but have to wait for scientists to point out the gaps for them. They hijacked morality, saying it came from their god, who didn’t bother writing it down or sharing it with anybody for 3000 years (using their chronology, not a valid one). They are both Liars for Jesus and Hijackers for God.

    On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 11:05 PM TheCommonAtheist wrote:

    > jim- posted: “Religious believers of every fashion you can imagine cover > the globe in a philosophical, often self-satisfied smugness—that the > believer actually knows something. I would prefer they start using the > term, “embracing ideas”, since the stigma associated wit” >

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