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Question about "faith"
#1
Question about "faith"
If "faith" is defined as "complete trust or confidence in someone or something".(dictionary.com) As an atheist, do you have complete confidence or trust in anything? or anyone? If so, what is the foundation for that "complete" faith.

I'm not looking for an argument, so you don't have to be guarded. I'm simply wanting to learn more about your belief, or absence of belief.
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#2
RE: Question about "faith"
(September 10, 2020 at 7:54 pm)rockyrockford Wrote: If "faith" is defined as "complete trust or confidence in someone or something".(dictionary.com) As an atheist, do you have complete confidence or trust in anything? or anyone? If so, what is the foundation for that "complete" faith.

I'm not looking for an argument, so you don't have to be guarded. I'm simply wanting to learn more about your belief, or absence of belief.

Probably we all have faith in the consistency of nature. Like, I don't have any worries that the law of gravity is going to reverse itself. I know, intellectually, that it might. We have no absolute proof that it will be consistent. But nobody goes around bolting down his furniture in case it happens. 

Then on a lesser scale I have faith that certain things will happen among people, based on experience. The US government will continue to be mostly terrible for the foreseeable future, stuff like that. This is not to say that change is impossible or the current state is eternal -- just that for now we can trust that it will go on as usual.
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#3
RE: Question about "faith"
I agree with Bel regarding having faith in the consistency of nature.

There's no reason for me to think the sun won't come up in the morning. It may be cloud-covered but it will be there. Ocean waves will ebb and flow. It will rain when the weatherman says it won't and vice versa.

Faith in people? I think it's more a matter of having trust in certain people that is based on their past actions. I think trust is a more fitting word then faith.
  
“If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.” — Confucius
                                      
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#4
RE: Question about "faith"
I believe in the separation of religious faith and secular faith.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
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#5
RE: Question about "faith"
My faith in someone that's living is based on experience. Falls along the same lines as trust. 

You'll need to narrow down what you mean by "something". Is this thing natural? Concrete? Abstract?
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem.
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#6
RE: Question about "faith"
Faith is a belief without evidence. If one had sufficient evidence to warrant belief in a particular claim, then one wouldn’t believe the claim on the basis of faith. "Faith" is the word one uses when one does not have enough evidence to justify holding a belief, but when one just goes ahead and believes anyway.

For example, let's assume Jesus existed and was buried in a tomb. One can believe the corpse was missing for any number of reasons, like one can believe the body arose from the dead and ascended to heaven, one can believe aliens took the body in their spaceship, or one can believe a ghost haunting the tomb merged with the corpse and animated it. Belief in any of these claims would require faith because there’s insufficient evidence to justify any one of these particular options. Belief in any of these claims would also disregard other, far more likely possibilities - for example, that the corpse was stolen, hidden, or moved.

If one claims knowledge either in the absence of evidence, or when a claim is contradicted by evidence, then this is when the word "faith" is used. "Believing something anyway" is an accurate definition of the term "faith."
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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#7
RE: Question about "faith"
“Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals"

-Christopher Hitchens-
"For the only way to eternal glory is a life lived in service of our Lord, FSM; Verily it is FSM who is the perfect being the name higher than all names, king of all kings and will bestow upon us all, one day, The great reclaiming"  -The Prophet Boiardi-

      Conservative trigger warning.
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#8
RE: Question about "faith"
I have faith that there is no Grand Plan. I have some faith in science, medicine and the general power of education. I have a great deal of faith in Chaos.
Where are we going and why am I in this hand basket?
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#9
RE: Question about "faith"
Sometimes I have faith that things will be okay despite indications they will not.  It serves to keep me focused on performing tasks that increase the likelihood that things will be okay.
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#10
RE: Question about "faith"
As others have pointed out, faith is what you need if you have no evidence.
The meek shall inherit the Earth, the rest of us will fly to the stars.

Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups

Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud ..... after a while you realise that the pig likes it!

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