Does it take just as much faith to doubt as it does to believe?

Question

Does it take just as much faith to doubt as it does to believe?

Answer 1

when you have faith you have no doubt you just have to believe to achieve.

Answer 2

No. And don't try and tell me "well, then you have faith in science or reason or that everything came from nothing." I don't claim to know where everything came from, and science/reason do not require faith because they can produce demonstrable results, i.e. evidence.

The whole point of doubt is that it doesn't require irrational faith.

Edit: Actually, it's extremely easy to just believe whatever the h**l you want and run with it. It's *difficult* to remain skeptical and uncertain, but it's the only intellectually honest way to be.

Answer 3

I don't think so. It's easy to be skeptical, but it takes a lot of faith and courage to put your beliefs into something and trust it completely, whether it be real or not.

Answer 4

Both Atheists & Christians think an eternal unchanging Logic ( the Logos)  runs the Universe & created man.

Atheists call it Physics or Natural Selection. Christians call it God.

Atheists are certain the Logos lacks intelligence.

Christians slap a beard & gender on it and presume it makes all manner of choices & judgments.

So here's the irony. The Atheistic presumption that the Logos lacks intelligence, when it clearly compels energy-space-time to create intelligence, is a matter of faith.

Just as the Christian assumption that the Logos has intelligence, when the complexity of the universe boils down to a handful of laws, is also a matter of faith.

When I lost the faith needed to be a Christian, I also lost the faith required to be an Athiest.  And so I am Agnostic.

But the answer is NO.  True doubt means you have less faith.  However,  as a matter of faith, the belief that the Logos lacks intellegence is quite similar to the belief that it does not.

I don't know if the Logos has intellegence.  But I do know that IF it has NO intellegence, it compells the Universe to create it.  This is the essence of Darwinism.

And all you smug little Athiests can shove that in your pipe and smoke it.

Answer 5

Doubt is based on "fear" and "apprehension" - of not knowing, of not having, etc.

Faith is based on understanding that what we hold one-pointedly before our conscious mind, this image will eventually be brought into being whatever it may be.

So I'd say No, it doesn't take as much faith to doubt, because doubt de-energizes the thought to the point of eradicating it; whereas faith requires consciously directed thought and that involves energy to a necessary degree.

Answer 6

In a way. A true atheist probably can not be said to doubt, because he simply doesn't believe. He never thinks about it. Thus, he has no faith. Someone who doubts can be said to have faith enough to scare them. They believe in something, but are scared within themselves.  Hope any of that made sense.  

Answer 7

Faith is easy.  Doubting is difficult because one has to find the energy to find fault in faith.

Answer 8

Having the ability to look at the same thing from different perspectives would help doubt a believe.

However, faith to me, is intuition of personal experience.  It applies as much to science as to religion, the difference is the extended methodology used in science allowing corrections and confirmations of the hypothesises and theories -- both of those are lacking in religion(s).

Answer 9

Only for fanatics and there are a lot less fanatics amongst the doubters.  Most who doubt do so because they have been given no reason to believe.  Those who believe must do so blindly and in the case of pretty much all religions deal with questionable man made ideals that get credited to god.  The doubters don't have to worry about those questions that cannot be answered and can rest easy knowing that the reason they do doubt is because of the lack of answers.

Answer 10

I think that if you decide to commit to one side or another of an issue you are going to put just as much time and energy into either way. I think this quote is interesting:

"For those who believe no proof is necessary, For those who will not, none will suffice."  

Answer 11

Faith is a trust. We hold faith if we are able to trust. If we have the presence of mind and expanse of spirit to hold belief in some indeterminate and disproven fact or being.

To doubt is to be uncertain, you cannot faithfully be uncertain. Because certain is trust and un is lack. An absence of faith where faith plays a part but is diminished or removed.

Answer 12

No. Take the examle of the Heaven's Gate people who killed themselves because they believed that by doing so, their souls would board a spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet. Likely you think that their belief is not true. Does your doubt take as much faith as their belief did?

If doubt and belief really did require equal amounts of faith, we would live in a very strange world. There would be no such thing as a burden of proof, people who came up with the most wild, unbelievable stories would be just as credible as those who told mundane stories, there would actually not be any point in using evidence at all, and so on.

The idea that doubt takes as much faith as belief doesn't have any ground in reality. The only source I have ever found for this claim is very ignorant fundamentalists who rely on their audience having as little a grasp on reality as they do. Don't buy in to that nonsense.