RE: What is "FAITH"
June 20, 2013 at 11:51 am
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2013 at 11:53 am by orogenicman.)
I hate to break the wishes of the OP about definitions, but in any discussion about any issue, it is helpful to have an understanding of the terms of discussion.
Faith is, in it's simplest meaning, a belief in something not in evidence. As such, one can not have faith, for instance, that the sun will rise in the morning. It is an astronomical certainty that the sun will rise in the morning, and as such, doesn't require faith.
When religious people tell you that you have to have faith it is because they cannot prove that their first personal revelation is true for anyone else. They want you to trust them that their experience is real and true. They have faith, they say, because of this revelation that they believe they have received. But since revelation is, by definition, first person, no one is under any obligation to believe one person's revelation over another's.
Sometimes our intuition tells us that something is true even if we don't readily have evidence of the truth of the matter. But intuition is a fickle bitch, and gets people in trouble at least as often as not. In my opinion, without unambiguous supporting evidence, it's speculation, and most likely, lazy/wishful thinking.
Faith is, in it's simplest meaning, a belief in something not in evidence. As such, one can not have faith, for instance, that the sun will rise in the morning. It is an astronomical certainty that the sun will rise in the morning, and as such, doesn't require faith.
When religious people tell you that you have to have faith it is because they cannot prove that their first personal revelation is true for anyone else. They want you to trust them that their experience is real and true. They have faith, they say, because of this revelation that they believe they have received. But since revelation is, by definition, first person, no one is under any obligation to believe one person's revelation over another's.
Sometimes our intuition tells us that something is true even if we don't readily have evidence of the truth of the matter. But intuition is a fickle bitch, and gets people in trouble at least as often as not. In my opinion, without unambiguous supporting evidence, it's speculation, and most likely, lazy/wishful thinking.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
