Yes, but faith is informed in some way in most circumstances.

- If you step outside in the morning and you see cloudy skies and a stiff breeze blowing, you might grab an umbrella. Not because it's raining, but signs point to the possibility.

- If your friend agrees to a particular appointment, your level of certainty that he will show up (faith) depends on his reliability.

- If someone wrote god's thoughts in a book thousands of years ago, your level of certainty that they are true depends on what you were told to believe about it by someone else, who was similarly convinced to accept a book for which there otherwise isn't enough evidence to differentiate it from the other ancient books that other people believe were written by god, but which you are convinced are false.

Hopefully you can see the difference in those three examples.

Really enjoying all the questions. Thanks. Off to work though. Damned materialistic societal necessities.

(June 17, 2015 at 9:37 am)popsthebuilder Wrote: What did I give up?

Reason.

How? elaborate please

Sounds like you had a near death experience (NDE). It's possible to have them without being close to death.

Atwater Wrote:The International Association for Near-Death Studies sent out a questionnaire in 1992 inquiring about those who considered themselves to be near-death experiencers. How close had they been to physical death when their episode occurred? ... 37 percent had theirs in a setting unrelated to anything that could be construed as life threatening. ... The 37 percenters claimed to have experiences every bit as real, involved, and life-changing as those that happened to people during death or close-brush-with-death crises; and their reports duplicate or parallel the same spread of scenario types and a pattern of psychological and physiological aftereffects.

— P.M.H. Atwater, The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences

(June 19, 2015 at 8:55 am)popsthebuilder Wrote: How? elaborate please

You have no evidence, just your feelings, yet you claim to know that God visited you.  Your conclusions are not reasonable.

There are simpler explanations based on psychology.

(June 19, 2015 at 10:07 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: Sounds like you had a near death experience (NDE).  It's possible to have them without being close to death.

Fascinating. I'd love to know what is going on in the brain in these instances.

What is going on here? Don't tell me our best atheistic scientists still haven't settled all the questions regarding the origins of the universe.

Sound the alarms! Lets get our best and brightest on it immediately. We can't just sit here and let the theists kick our asses like this.

Your judgment is clouded in that the see everything through the looking glass of science when science is in it's infancy and has yet proven many things. There are many good hypotheses though. Open your minds. Ancient were doing the same as you. Describing things to the best of there ability. Everything is know doubt connected. How can I prove it? Through experience. How can I prove to others? Maybe I can't if they strictly see things one way.

We're using the looking glass of science when we should be what... believing everything you say based on nothing, when even you admit it's based on no evidence?

Science is about finding out what is true. Faith is about believing whatever you want regardless of whether it is true. I'll stick with science. Not that atheism and science are the same thing of course.