Part 3 - some words about faith:
Faith or doubt are opposite underlying tendencies that can be developed. Just as Buddha said, there are things that are a basis for faith and things that are a basis for doubt. For example a person might think "there are so many philosophers in this world, so many ideas, why would Buddha be the one that is right? " - and by attending in this way his doubt tendency will increase. Or he can think “everything else was refuted while Buddha was not” or “What I learned from Buddha until now is correct and nobody else knew it” and in this way faith increases.
In the case of a stream enterer, it is said that he has removed the fetter of doubt in regard to Buddha enlightenment. This is done because of properly understanding the non-existence of a self. (in my opinion, through this method: How is stream entry achieved? )
Imagine a budhman seen a car for the first time in his life. He will think the car is pushed foreward by a mysterious force or a spirit. Only after someone shows him the engine, explains him how it works and the bushman does some thinking - only after that will the bushman understand there is no mysterious force pushing the car. If somebody would come to you today and tell you the car is pushed by a spirit, would you have any doubt or inwards perplexity about it ? It is the same with non-existence of a self. Only after a person understand how the being really works will he understand there is no self.
After the person understands this, theories based on a self will look like people claiming cars are pushed by spirits. And since Buddha was the only one to not believe in a self from all philosophers, the person will have huge confidence in him and would never take another teacher other than the Buddha since nobody else knows this thing about no self existing.
The problem of postmodernism:
We all know that huge faith for things contradicted by logic can be developed. A person might attend in such a way as to develop huge faith in a theory, no matter how strongly refuted the theory is. Faith is a faculty, an underlying tendency and it can be developed for any kind of ideas, no matter how logical or illogical they are.
And there are theories in this world such as postmodernism that promote skepticism. The more skeptic the person, the better. But this only develops the underlying tendency to doubt in the person. The person might end up not believing even in obvious things like the sky been blue. No matter what evidence you present, the person will still remain a skeptic.
Only attitude one can have is logic positivism. It is only through logic that a person can traverse the jungle of views. And after arriving at some certianity from a logical point of view, then the person should develop faith - witch is one of the 5 faculties. A person might logically believe in buddhism but might lack enough faith to really take things seriously as to for example become a monk. So the person needs to develop this faculty. The eternal skepticism ideas of postmodernism are doing exactly the opposite. I mentioned this because I know postmodernism is nr 2 most popular world view in the USA (luckily nowhere else except US) so it’s good to keep in mind it’s going to be detrimental to us on the buddhist path.