Originally Posted by sordavie

I don't get it.

No, I don't think you do. I don't think Faith as a concept really fits with your world view at all. Its just contrary to the way you process the world, so I'm most likely wasting my time here, but I'll give it one more shot.

So you think you have reasons to believe in God. And do you think those reasons are good? If you do, why have you given up on demanding to believe based on reasons. It sounds like if you have a belief and you think your belief is backed up by good evidence, then you shouldn't claim that you believe on faith.

The faith exists prior to and independant of the reasons. First I believe on faith. Then, after having faith, the reasons illustrate to me that my faith was not misplaced. Or if I was to discover different reasons, the reasons might illustrate that my faith was misplaced, but so far I haven't found any of those.

The closest analogy in human affairs is probably a combat situation, where soldier 1 dives into a situation that will be certain death unless soldier 2 completes his task of securing the exit, but once soldier 1 runs in, he can no longer directly see what soldier 2 is doing and won't find out until he either gets shot or doesn't get shot on the way out. They may have practiced the maneuver before, but soldier 1 can't really know if soldier 2 will come through for him until it happens. So soldier 1 goes in only because he has Faith that soldier 2 will be there for him ... and then the Reason he gets to support that Faith is that when he comes out the other side, he doesn't get shot. But he cannot first examine the Reason and then decide whether or not to have Faith -- the Faith must come first.

Now, not all of my Reasons are contingent on first having Faith: many of them can exist independantly. But neither is my Faith contingent on first having Reasons. I had my Faith first, before I had any Reasons at all, and as I have become older and wiser I have steadily added new Reasons but always kept the Faith.

To use a different analogy, imagine someone extends their hand to you and says, "trust me". You have no independant way of confirming whether this is someone you SHOULD trust or not, you must simply choose to grasp his hand and find out, or to walk away. I have grasped the proffered hand, and have never yet been disappointed in my trust. So far you have chosen to walk away, but the hand is still there waiting should you ever change your mind.

In any case, if it is your claim that your belief in God is based on faith, what about your belief that the Bible is correct on the issue of homosexuality? What do you believe there? Is that based on faith or do you think you have independent reasons hold whatever stance you hold on issues of homosexuality?

It is very difficult to believe in the God whose word is contained in the Bible, and then not believe in that word itself. Yes, I believe that the Bible is correct on this issue, as on every issue that it addresses. However, I am not at all certain that I properly comprehend what the Bible says about homosexuality. Given that, yes, I can attempt to fill in the blanks with independant reasoning on the subject -- but my independant reasoning will necessarily be colored by a biblicly-founded view of morality, so it will only be independant to a certain degree.