The Capacity for Faith

[liveonearth]

I'm listening to an interview on NPR with an author (C. Beha) who is talking about the loss of his Catholic faith, and his subsequent exploration of the question of faith. (You can listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=3&islist=true&id=13&d=07-26-2012) He appears to be drawing an equivalence between having faith, and having a personal experience of God. I think that this equivalence is mistaken. I do not have faith, and yet I have mystical experiences on a regular basis. I do not Believe that these experiences are God because I know that there are too many other explanations to be sure of that attribution. I remain agnostic: I've had and heard of no mystical experiences that cannot be explained by other phenomena, yet there could of course be a spirit manipulating it all. I suppose that puts me in the camp of the faithless.

Comments

[madman101.livejournal.com]

perhaps "faith" essentially hoping that the chosen mythology - or church - is the correct, winning ticket

why do you think they call it "dopamine"?

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Ha! Don't tell the neurologists.

Faith is not hoping, it is believing. And we are capable of believing all manner of nonsense. Strong religious faith requires the ability to continue believing in the face of a continuous stream of evidence that your belief is problematic.

[madman101.livejournal.com]

one can only hope

;)