Faith is the excuse we give ourselves to believe things without good reason

[Joseph8th]

120. On belief and faith...

... we need well-defined terms to make any dialectical progress (see above subthread on faith-as-choice). Part of the problem is common language is too ambiguous, and common words like "faith" and "belief" are additionally loaded terms. Dictionary's multiple definitions are the very definition of ambiguous. I suggest the following clarifications in the context of debate and discourse on topics religio-philosophical ... wha'cha think?

Belief - a rationalized emotional state.
Faith - a system of beliefs.

If for the sake of argument (literally!), we start with these more clearly defined terms, then the question of choice vis-a-vis faith is rooted in belief. That is, whatever conclusion we reach about choice v-a-v belief can be extended to faith, reducing the problem to a more manageable size.

In my opinion, the problem of choice is the problem of free will -- do we have it, or no? I might as well weigh in with my 2 cents:

We're living beings -- highly organized matter -- and we live collectively in the sense that all living beings are collectively alive (we're in the set). So we're collective beings, comprised of other living beings (we're only some 10-20% human genetic material, the rest is microbes and mites, each 90% water), and we comprise the set we call 'life on Earth'. Shades of Gaia Theory, here: we're increasingly complex, increasingly organized collective beings continuously along the scale from single-cell to collected set.

Do the microbes in my gut, without which I'd be long dead, CHOOSE to comprise me? Do I choose to comprise humanity with fodder for its existence? When people (and some animals) commit suicide, they have chosen to leave the set we call life, with all its organization and all the demands that order demands from us. The question is legitimate: are the demands of life really commands? We can't choose to not eat and live, like we can't ignore gravity. But we can ignore the speed limit.

So it's not a black and white problem, this free will thing. If there's a more intractable existential open question, I'm unaware of it. Personally, I just sort of classify and reclassify each node of my personal decision tree without crying over spilt milk or pining for the days of yore -- an approach that I find minimizes existential angst. Not much self-recriminating "Damn, I shouldn't have trusted that new cars' brakes would work."

But the fact that we have decision trees at all suggests to me that free will exists. I think the problem is too much freedom, myself. I could jump up right now and toss a chair through the window. I could choose that, but I don't -- it would take too much effort to rationalize that behavior and defend it or face expected punishment, later.

Hm. The problem of free will is analogous to writer's block: Life is staring at a perpetually blank page, wondering how to write the next chapter.