RE: Christian "faith" vs. plain "faith"
March 28, 2015 at 6:27 am
(This post was last modified: March 28, 2015 at 6:35 am by watchamadoodle.)
(March 27, 2015 at 10:35 pm)KevinM1 Wrote:That's an example of "faith" and "belief" meaning different things in your usage and my usage. Christians - especially Protestants - follow Luther's "sola fide" which makes "faith"/"belief" the only attribute that determines a person's eternal destiny (heaven/hell). Heaven and hell have no middle ground, so "faith"/"belief" begin to have no middle ground. These words begin to mean something strange and irrational in the Christian vocabulary. In the real world we can have strong belief, weak belief, strong faith, weak faith, hunches, gambles, guesses. Also in the real world "faith" and "belief" are always involuntary responses to experiences, reasoning, evidence, etc. In the Christian world of "sola fide", "faith"/"belief" must be a choice so that God cannot be blamed when people go to hell. The Christian usage of "faith" and "belief" are totally unrealistic, and that is why non-Christians object now when these words are used in reference to science. Essentially Christians have stolen these words from our vocabulary.(March 27, 2015 at 10:22 pm)watchamadoodle Wrote: That seems sensible as long as a person is allowed to give up if it doesn't work.
Typically the believers say to the disappointed person that he/she needs to be patient, try harder, be more sincere, etc. The believers are unwilling to accept that the prescription doesn't always work.
The analogy isn't apt, anyway. Belief is not a tangible thing, and anything attributed to faith can just as easily (and more believably) be attributed to something more mundane. It is entirely unlike lifting weights, or practicing math (which has these pesky little things called rules that can be followed and existing results with which to compare), or anything else where repetition can increase performance.