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Disagree ... there must be an athority to substantiate faith ... otherwise it is blind faith, which is not faith at all ...

... but rather gullibility ...

Emerson was raised Unitarian and later accused of being atheist for discounting Christ as son of God. I doubt he was promoting gullibility.

... Brian, he contradicts the definition of faith as given in Hebrews 11:1 ...

I don't see how that passage is relevant to the Emerson speech, but he's not contradicting it.

He says that true faith does not stand on authority ... Hebrews says that faith is build on solid evidince (authority) ...

... and not just a blind acceptance ..

Wait, maybe I'm looking at the wrong passage: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

That is the right passage ... note the words "substance" and "evidence" ...

... maybe I interpret Emerson incorrectly ... I read his comment as meaning that if you need the weight of authority ...

... then your faith is not really faith ... this implies that one does not need extenal evidence ...

Another translation of Heb 11:1 - Faith is the assured expectation of the things we hope for, the evident demonstration of realityies ..

... though not beheld.

I take that as meaning faith is the manifestation of those things we hope for and don't see.

The aspects of 'assurance' and 'demonstration' is emphasized

Emerson is mainly talking about authority and words replacing actual faith.

Like specific authority: popes, preachers, and smart folks at dinner.

What does he actually say - could you paraphrase ... perhaps it will be more clear to me then ...

Our responses crossed - if he means authority of specific earthly agencies, like popes, etc, I can go along with it

I read it as meaning authority (any authority) ... including that of God and his Word ... and hence my disagreement

ah, I see.

You might have your own take on his essay. It's "The Over-Soul" from "Essays, 1st Series"

I just found it on Project Gutenberg

Thanks, I would like to read it. Do you perhaps have an internet reference for that?

www.rwe.org/works/Essays...

Found an easier-to-read version now that I know exactly what I was looking for

The quote is from the last paragraph.

And now that I finished the essay, I think it's the least interesting paragraph of the lot

Thanks a lot ... I looked at it ...looks terribly complicated ... but I will study it ...

By the way, are you a 'student' of Emerson, so that you could so readily identify the quote?

No, I just had an itch to get the original context of the quote.

I can be tenacious sometimes.

Maybe he's talking about more than a religious or spiritual faith. There's faith in your elders to teach you correctly, faith in your

children to keep up your legacy. Faith in your government to not become a tyranny and protect you from real harm, faith in your peers to

challenge and keep each other in check.

I'm just sayin.

Emerson would enjoy that his words are still making people think.

and quoting that passage without surrounding context does just that

Fascinating and thoughtful quote.

Conclusion: faith should not be based on the authority of any person, but there is no such thing as blind faith ...

... there must always be a solid foundation for our faith ...

Agreed?

No I don't agree, I think philosophically that you just described the opposite of what faith is defined to be!

Sometimes I just have faith that everything will turn out as it should and step out blindly into the world.

I am by no means the only person who does this.

There is nothing concrete which says "within in these parameters is exactly the proven definition of what I should have faith in"

I think faith is stronger if you don't have concrete evidence. People have stronger faith in a faceless god and an unknown heaven than

they do in a physical man voted into a Presidency and you say that is a "solid foundation"? I say that's pretty freaking blind.

There's nothing wrong with that, but you cannot hold up an invisible thing and say "I declare that there is an octopus in this space!" and

expect everyone to believe there is anything there, let alone that you are telling the truth. Those who believe in your octopus do so in

faith that you are not tricking them. For whatever reason they deem good enough to trust your word.

You could say it's a solid foundation of their experiences with you in the past which show that you are not a con - however, there is no way

to prove you hadn't been drawing them in on a false sense of... faith and trust from the beginning.

Therefore, in order to have faith - because we can never truly know the full extent of any one thing which is not ourselves - it must be

made blindly. There is nothing on which to build a 100% solid foundation. Not even God.

Moonkey, I agree with only **one** thing you say ... blind faith in a presidency (you can see a physical president) is usesless

... but I do not support the idea that we can have true faith in a faceless god ...

Of course. We are all allowed our own versions of faith and our own subjective opinions about all this. It's a favored debate topic

I didn't say we could.

..let my try and explain what I mean ... you cannot see God ... so what basis do you have in believing he exists?

I said that people have stronger faith in that than in something considered objective physical reality.

... if there is no basis, you become an atheist or agnostic ...

.. but now you start examining creation around you, and you are astounded by the marvellous design of everything ...\

We agree there, but yet faith is generally held to be the belief that God Is there even without seeing it.

... and now you are laying a basis for faith ... your faith is not just accepting a belief in a god because that is what you were taught ..

... but you have background evidence ... that evidence can now be strenghtened by information provided by ..;

... the holy writings ... in that way your faith gets firmly established ...

... and that is the point of Hebrews 11:1 ... evidence, solid foundation

Ah so you *project* that only a Divine Being could create these wonders, that there is no way this is all random - that is also blind faith.

You are quoting only one verse - give me a whole chapter or book Kobus. You are talking to someone trained in this kind of debate from 5yrs

old.

I was raised as a Southern Baptist's minister's daughter. I helped my father through Seminary. I know your arguments well.

This is no solid foundation in looking at nature and claiming it with God's flag just because you and some writers say so.

You must come up with something more solid in evidence than that. Otherwise you are only proving there is one kind of faith - blind.

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm attacking you. I just want you to see that using one verse as an entire basis for a belief is just as blind

as anything else.

Maybe that is not for me to do. My apologies if I went too far.

The one verse I quoted was merely to give a **definition** of faith.

... no, I do not think you went too far at all ...

... one needs to examine your own views in the light of the views of others ... it strenghtens the foundation of your own faith ...

... othewise it remains blind ...

... so I do appreciate your comments (even though we have hijacked the plurk of quotesnack)

... but I am sure she does not mind ... she gets karma from it!

... coming back to faith ... you want a chapter? Look at the whole chapter of Heb 11. A list of men and women who had true faith ...

... on examinining it closely, one observes that what they all had in common was a foundation of their faith ...

... they knew **what** they believed and **why** they believed it ... and to me those are the two critical aspects of faith ...

... and those things are critical for me ...

... too many people just accept some vague concept because someone told them, and they are too lazy to do own investigation and verification

... that is what I mean by a solid foundation for faith ...

Haha! We agree on many things. I could no longer follow my father's faith after researching the truth of Christianity's history and the

corruption of the scriptures and the True Path.

I do not believe in the scriptures you quote, there is my main obstacle to saying yes to your definition.

But this is my own path within faith and the divine, which does not define anyone else's but my own.

I believe that Emerson was saying that because authority is but a human whim of power and influence - to have faith in such a thing is false

You must step away from the definitions made by authority and believe in the infinite unknown in order to find that mustard seed faith.

It does not mean that your foundation is swept away, but it allows you to expand in your faith instead of stagnate.

(I use "you" in a universal way.)

Your foundation is finding the flaws in the authority and laying that down as not worthy of faith.

the conflict between faith that needs no authority and faith that insists on if is part of what powers both views. One needs the other.

Acknowledging the difference can strengthen your own faith, for both sides