To Roseweed's excellent challenge to name ONE ITEM of faith anyone is willing to act on:
Fred said:
When asked for a demonstration that their faith is more than wishful
thinking, we hear the usual “you can’t test faith”
response.
And Clinto obligingly furnished:
if you need to
test faith, then it really is no faith at all
This, in my opinion, is, as someone hinted at, yet another misuse of language. It parallels the misuse of language that yields the words paranormal and supernatural. This is coming together, for me anyway, as a sort of "unified theory" for understanding "believers".
Believers appear to misuse language (Pierre's First Law of Belief in the weird) and to have no problem with inherent contradictions. Interestingly, that doesn't impede their every day function as much as one might think it would because of the second part of their behavior which is that they really don't "believe" in what they say they do in the sense that they do not act on it (Roseweed's First Law of Faith).
First, let's examine Clinto's statement carefully. "If you NEED to test faith" it isn't faith! What does that mean? It reduces faith to the same sort of phenomenon as luck, probability or coincidence (not "synchronicity" which by implying supernatural causation constitues ANOTHER misuse of language as does the concept "spiritual"). Anyway, it means that faith doesn't change whatever is going to happen anyway because if it did, you COULD test it!
What do all these misuses of language have in common? They constitute wishful thinking about how the physical universe might be influenced by some nebulous, unspecified, undefined and undemonstrated "spiritual" universe which exists only in some people's imaginations. But the assertion is ALWAYS that they affect the physical world, Fred. Even believers recognize that the concepts are useless if they don't do that.
And the problem with ideas like faith and prayer is that they don't work. You can't show them to do anything (other than to influence the human psyche which is probably why they have been selected for evolutionarily).
If the paranormal and supernatural existed, they could be tested and the individual phenomena, like ESP, telekinesis, remote viewing and such would become another branch of the physical sciences probably closely linked to biophysics.
But believers have no problem with that because of "Roseweed's First Law" which is based on the observation that they don't act as if they believe any of the stuff anyway.
As I noted elsewhere, a perfect example of such "cognitive dissonance" in beliefs is the grief people feel when someone dies even if they "believe" that a) they will be reunited soon in heaven b) the person is only a vibration away in some "other side" and c) the person can still communicate though it might be haphazard and require a psychic medium. And the believers don't act on the belief, which would justify suicide and make life essentially trivial. Instead, they use weak (contradictory) rationalizations like that death is analogous to a separation from a trip overseas or that life is just lessons for some unspecified journey taken by an undemonstrable soul.
So to summarize, belief in anything "spiritual" is possible because of:
1. A misleading misuse of language -- attributing meaning to words that are devoid of it in any practical interpretation.
2. Tolerance of inherent contradictions.
3. A failure to act on anything which will in effect TEST the concepts.
Combined with the above are often more minor and less universal manifestations among believers which include:
a) resistance to discussing the issues with critics of any stripe (even other believers)
b) a tendency to confuse discussion of issues with personal attacks
c) a lack of understanding and appreciation for science and mathematics especially centered on a misperception of causation and a lack of study of probability and statistical analysis, the experimental method, controlled studies and the wonders of science in general.
d) belief not only in the "primary delusion" but also in OTHER weird, fanciful and unproven things-- things other than the primary belief system-- for example people who believe in psychic mediums usually also believe in ESP, telekinesis, remote viewing, past lives, auras, reincarnation and sometimes even alien abductions, alchemy and channeling.
Maybe after remarks and critique this will clean up enough to provoke CX's archiving skills again (they have been put to test many times this week).