[ARCHIVED] - Evidence Vs Faith

[Edwardo Piet]

A small request - would you mind putting a carriage return after quoting me/ before your line of text please.


Sure, if perhaps you could help explain what 'carriage return' means?

I googled it and went to wikipedia, as far as I can tell it just means to return key on the keyboard...so you mean you want me to leave a line gap after I quote? If so, okay I'll do that in this post. If not, then please do explain what you mean - I've never heard of the term before.

[quote='EvidenceVsFaith' pid='31361' dateline='1252406146']
Yeah sorry - I really meant you won't entertain the idea without being able to accept it ...seemingly.

I happily entertain the idea of believing in God, given that there is rational support for such a belief: I.e. Evidence. That's what evidence is. I just don't accept it, I don't believe it - because so far, I don't know of any such evidence.

I also happily conceive of the idea of believing in God without evidence, but as soon as I do I am just reminded by the fact that it's irrational by definition. Beliefs are rational when they are based on evidence, that's how you know when a belief is rational. This doesn't apply with "Faith".

It's perfectly explainable but every time I explain it you bounce back at me over the evidence issue, which has nothing to do with it. So you see you're asking me to describe what I don't ever address.

You say it's nothing to do with it. But it's enitirely to do with my question on why you believe a belief can be rational without it, without evidence. Why is God different? Why is the fact there's no evidence for him a good thing? If evidence isn't possible for him...how does that make a difference? If there's no evidence, then how is it rational, full stop?

Thankyou

I appreciate that.

By definition to me, faith is entirely the reason I believe.

By definition? How are you defining faith then? I define it as simply 'belief without evidence', if you do too, define it as exactly that, then I might ask how 'belief withotu evidence'=rationality? In my view that's irrationality.

To arrive at that point, reasoning on a wealth of ideas comes into play. Still the point of faith has to be a leap. Why the leap?

So here you are saying that it all relies on the 'leap of faith', and that there are reasons for making it, correct?

I believe that Jesus is fully God and fully man. How is this possible with reason? The reason lies on the other side of the belief. Believing as much gives you access to God (I'll assume you understand that and the benefits).

Here you are supposed to be answering your question of "Why the leap?" right? But it seems to me that you have answered it by saying that believing is what gives you access to God to know the true reasons for believing...or something like that?

In which case, you're saying that it's important to make the leap of faith, and that's important because of certain reasons, and those reasons come through making the leap of faith beforehand, believing in God and therefore having access to such reasons. So if this is what you are saying, it seems kind of circular to me.

But my point would be, if any of these reasons are valid to the matter of the reality of God, of him being real, of him existing, as opposed to not existing, as opposed to there being no God - then they would be evidence for his existence, by definition. So faith wouldn't come into it. And if the reasons are invalid to this matter....then there are no such reasons for believing God is real, that he exists, that there's a God at all in any real sense.

The sky

With "What's up there?" I was referring to the fact on the one hand you say there can be no evidence for God, but on the other hand you have said you will accept some definitions, such as non-empirical evidence, etc, but you will never explain or reveal them. You have switchined between these - and also you have said that Jon Paul and Arcanus, for instance, have given 'proof' of God's existence, logical proof - in which case there's a big contradiction there. Because proof is the strongest evidence you can get, so if you accept any real, valid 'proof' for God, then you are seriously contradicting your whole notion of 'there can be no evidence for God'.

EvF