I saw the following post, by someone I follow, on Google Buzz:
Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve..
Ah, I thought, more meaningless inter-web* bollocks. I cannot let that go unanswered. This is what followed:
Mysickbones - Faith = belief without evidence
Doubt = belief requires evidence
Are they not, therefore, mutually contradictory?Edit12:08 pm
faith is a supernatural gift of God
which makes us to believe without seeing
whatever God has said. (via the BIBLE)12:19 pm
Sakina Zehra - When Imam Ali was asked about Faith in Religion, he replied that the structure of faith is supported by four pillars endurance, conviction, justice and jihad. Endurance is composed of four attributes: eagerness, fear, piety and anticipation (of death). so whoever is eager for Paradise will ignore temptations; whoever fears the fire of Hell will abstain from sins; whoever practices piety will easily bear the difficulties of life and whoever anticipates death will hasten towards good deeds. Conviction has also four aspects to guard oneself against infatuations of sin; to search for explanation of truth through knowledge; to gain lessons from instructive things and to follow the precedent of the past people, because whoever wants to guard himself against vices and sins will have to search for the true causes of infatuation and the true ways of combating them out and to find those true ways one has to search them with the help of knowledge, whoever gets fully acquainted with various branches of knowledge will take lessons from life and whoever tries to take lessons from life is actually engaged in the study of the causes of rise and fall of previous civilizations . Justice also has four aspects depth of understanding, profoundness of knowledge, fairness of judgment and dearness of mind; because whoever tries his best to under- stand a problem will have to study it, whoever has the practice of studying the subject he is to deal with, will develop a clear mind and will always come to correct decisions, whoever tries to achieve all this will have to develop ample patience and forbearance and whoever does this has done justice to the cause of religion and has led a life of good repute and fame. Jihad is divided into four branches: to persuade people to be obedient to Allah; to prohibit them from sin and vice; to struggle (in the cause of Allah) sincerely and firmly on all occasions and to detest the vicious. Whoever persuades people to obey the orders of Allah provides strength to the believers; whoever dissuades them from vices and sins humiliates the unbelievers; whoever struggles on all occasions discharges all his obligations and whoever detests the vicious only for the sake of Allah, then Allah will take revenge on his enemies and will be pleased with Him on the Day of Judgment.
(Sayings of Imam Ali a.s.)
Mysickbones - Exactly - Faith = Belief without reason or evidence or doubt.
Just like anyone else, if you ask me, I can say anything I want to about "Faith in Religion" because there is no way of proving or disproving the validity of anything I say on the subject; you have to take it on faith!
If you do choose to have faith in what I say that still has no effect whatsoever on the factual accuracy of my statement. Remember when we all (in Europe at least) had faith that the world was flat...doh.
I believe that when you die that is the total and absolute end of your existence; no afterlife, no paradise, nothing...am I right?
I don't know. There's is no way to know because no one has ever come back from the dead to tell us and they are the only ones who would know (obviously if I'm right they know nothing because they don't exist but you get my point).
This is why I've no interest in discussing anyone's religion as I "believe" they are all an utter waste of time. I think "Dead is Dead" that you only get the one chance; maybe that's why I place such a value on life and why I wouldn't ever consider killing or hurting someone simply because they believed in a different invisible friend.
Anyway, the point I was making was that faith and doubt are logical opposites and are therefore incompatible. My point had nothing to do with religion in the first place.
I actually have no idea what Sakina Zehra point is. I thought the discussion was about Faith v Doubt so WTF does his "extremely long quote" have to do with that. I've read it a number of times and I'm still mystified other than it seems to say that Justice is based on evidence not faith i.e. doubt until the evidence convinces you...maybe.
I'll never understand Death Cults so long as I Live...Get It?
*Well everybody else seems to have started calling it the Inter-Web and I've never been able to resist peer pressure!
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