The comment you link to gives a very interesting description of faith:
The sense of “obligation” in faith is that of duty, trust, and deference to those who deserve it. If someone deserves our trust, then it feels wrong, or insolent, or at least rude, to demand independent evidence for their claims.
I like that analysis! And I would add: obligation to your social superiors, and to your actual legal superiors (in a traditional society), is a very strong requirement and to deny faith is not merely to be rude, but to rebel against the social structure which is inseparable from institutionalized religion.
However, I think this is more of an explanation of how faith operates, not what it feels like or how faithful people describe it. It’s a good analysis of the social phenomenon of faith from the outside, but it’s not a good description of how it feels from the inside to be faithful.
This is because the faith actually required of religious people is faith in the existence of God and other non-evident truths claimed by their religion. As a faithful person, you can’t feel faith is “duty, trust, obligation”—you feel that is is belief. You can’t feel that to be unfaithful would be to wrong someone or to rebel; you feel that it would be to be wrong about how the world really is.
However, I’ve now read Wikipedia on Faith in Christianity and I see there are a lot of complex opinions about the meaning of this word. So now I’m less sure of my opinion. I’m still not convinced that most Christians mean “duty, trust, deference” when they say “faith”, because WP quotes many who disagree and think it means “belief”.
The comment you link to gives a very interesting description of faith:
I like that analysis! And I would add: obligation to your social superiors, and to your actual legal superiors (in a traditional society), is a very strong requirement and to deny faith is not merely to be rude, but to rebel against the social structure which is inseparable from institutionalized religion.
However, I think this is more of an explanation of how faith operates, not what it feels like or how faithful people describe it. It’s a good analysis of the social phenomenon of faith from the outside, but it’s not a good description of how it feels from the inside to be faithful.
This is because the faith actually required of religious people is faith in the existence of God and other non-evident truths claimed by their religion. As a faithful person, you can’t feel faith is “duty, trust, obligation”—you feel that is is belief. You can’t feel that to be unfaithful would be to wrong someone or to rebel; you feel that it would be to be wrong about how the world really is.
However, I’ve now read Wikipedia on Faith in Christianity and I see there are a lot of complex opinions about the meaning of this word. So now I’m less sure of my opinion. I’m still not convinced that most Christians mean “duty, trust, deference” when they say “faith”, because WP quotes many who disagree and think it means “belief”.