Paradoxical characteristics of faith

Answer 1

One paradoxical characteristic of faith is that it is reasonable yet it is also beyond natural reasoning. Other paradoxical characteristics are certainty and yet still obscure and a person is free yet they are morally obliging.

Answer 2

Believing something in the absence of evidence is paradoxical. The paradox can be resolved by realizing that people who believe something in the absence of evidence are simply idiots, and there is no validity to such a belief.

Answer 3

Belief is not paradoxical unless, of course, you believe in a statement that logically contradicts other statements that are known to be true; but herein lies the kicker: concerning the behaviours of natural things (i.e., the world you see around you) there are NO statements that are known to be true.

For example: say you drop a ball; every time that you have ever dropped a ball before it has fallen to the ground. Thus, physicists hypothesize that there is a rule in nature saying that this is what happens when balls get dropped (which gets called "Gravity"). However, there is nothing to suggest that after, for example, 6:48pm on 12 July 2012 that gravity will "switch off" for exactly 5 seconds and that any balls that are dropped will just float about. It's very unlikely that this will happen, but it cannot be ruled out.

So, "paradoxical qualities of faith?" Well, ultimately almost anything is plausible (but perhaps a bit unlikely). Take creationism: if you want to believe that God created species and not evolution, then that is certainly plausible. In fact, they might be correct (the argument in America was not about which was correct, but about creationists claiming that it was a science: it is definitely NOT a science). However, so is the belief that the Universe is controlled by invisible 20-foot intelligent purple ducks also plausible, but again unlikely.

Confused? Well, do not view Science as anything but a gift to society: it is one of the few things that modern society can be proud of. But, it is what it is: ultimately, a belief. Put it like this: imagine you are watching a game of Chess, and you're not familiar with any of its moves. So, you watch it and get interested in it and decide to learn as much about it as you can. However, you can't just go to a chess manual because one does not exist; you have to just watch and learn. After a while, you see some pieces that always behave in the same way; so, you guess that that is one of the "rules of chess". After a while longer, you learn more of what you think are the "rules of chess": some of which are simple, and some of which may be very complicated. However, because you can't see the manual, because you can't see what the ACTUAL rules are, and you can only watch and make intelligent guesses, you can never be sure that your rules are correct: you can never be sure that one of the pieces will not move in a way that you never saw before, or that there exists a "special rule" that one every 1000 games the rules all get changed. You can only say that you, "strongly believe that this piece moves like this based on all the evidence I have seen so far." Well, the Universe is the chess board, we are the pieces, and nobody has ever seen the rulebook. We can be confident; but, in the end, most things are a belief of some sort (although some are deemed more intelligent than others).

Answer 4

Paradox of Faith "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it." .

Answer 5

paradoxes of faith