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September 22, 2020 at 8:20 am (This post was last modified: September 22, 2020 at 8:21 am by Belacqua.)
(September 22, 2020 at 7:57 am)Nomad Wrote:
(September 21, 2020 at 1:14 pm)tackattack Wrote: Has the word salad been settled yet? Honestly, it's probably a good read, just far too many pages to catch up on. I have faith in God. I have faith that this chair will hold me up when I sit on it. They are the same faith. I believe in God and I believe in my chair. I do not have absolute faith that all people are good all the time. I do have faith that most people can be good.
Why do you believe in your chair? You have sufficient evidence to prove it exists, and nobody has a reason to doubt its existence. Belief is not needed.
As far as I can see, the word "belief" has three main meanings, and they tend to get conflated in discussions like this one.
It can mean that we hold a thing to exist or hold that it's true. So "she believes in Santa Claus," or "I believe the world is round," falls in this category. This is for anything we hold to be true, not only things which are undemonstrated. "He believes in ghosts" is in this category, but also "I believe that dinosaurs were real."
I don't think it's correct to say that belief is only for things which are not sufficiently demonstrated by evidence. It applies to anything we hold to be true, well-demonstrated or not.
"I believe in it" can also mean that we support or hope for something. So we can say "I believe in equal pay for women." In fact the world doesn't have equal pay for women, so we can't say we believe in it the way we believe in oxygen, or some other thing which is well-demonstrated to exist. We say we believe in it because we hope for it.
And third, if a friend is losing confidence before a difficult undertaking, we can say "I believe in you." This is not to reassure him that he exists. That's not in question. It means that we have confidence in him.
Some people here are making belief/faith/trust into a question of God's existence -- the first type of belief I mention. Others, who believe in God, are using belief/faith/trust to refer to confidence, the third usage I describe. This is what tackattack means when he says he has faith/trust/confidence/belief in his chair. Its existence is not the issue.
(September 22, 2020 at 9:24 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: If you don't believe him, would you explain why? 'Clear thinking demands careful language' isn't exactly a controversial claim.
I'm just playing their same game with the word 'believe', because my post can be interpreted more than 1 way ...
The claim that "faith in chairs is as the same faith in god" is a demonstration of such obfuscation played upon in Bel's post #241. I don't know if he does this intentionally or not, or if it is just a result of confusion or maybe even just not getting it (or if Bel is being dishonest, and saw an opportunity to obfuscate, but he has given me no reason to think that) - the effect is the same: ambiguity.
It is not my problem that the English language contains so many fucking ambiguous words, it is for anyone trying to understand what someone is trying to convey to themselves.
Also, 'Clear thinking demands careful language', is a just a re-statement of this problem in recognizing ambiguity, in a futile attempt trying to resolve the usage of the word 'believe'. 'Faith' even more so.
I can't believe you are unable to see the problem with this!
You can take the chair to any culture, with any religious belief, or no religious beliefs. You can explain what it is for, you can teach cultures that don't have chairs, how to build them so that they are structurally sound. YOu can show them chairs made out of wood, metal, wicker, bamboo, etc, etc, and you would have no problems convincing them that they are all the same thing, with the same purpose. And most importantly of all, you can easily demonstrate to them that the chairs exist.
Please show how you can do the same thing with your god? Show them how trusting that the chair will hold them up, is even in the same ballpark as trusting that your god exists.
...
I don't have faith in these things. They are what I am presented with. I am forced, pragmatically, to accept them.
They have shown to be reliable.
I have never been presented with a god in the same way that I have been presented with my memories, reason or senses.
You can take spirituality to any culture, you can explain what it is for, you can teach cultures that don't share your views of spirituality. It's the very definition of Church outreach and missionary work. I can show you how trusting in God has supported my life and improved it. It is in the same ballpark, it's just not a materialist only ball park, although all are welcome.
Secondly you do have faith in those things. You just refuse to call it faith because of it's connotations and your bias. It's very hard to drive a vehicle without faith in your
eyes. Apparently the word salad isn't over yet and the descriptive definitions here are too far to be reconciled and no one is willing to accept a prescriptive definition.
Listen, I know people have biases and that I personally don't understand fully 100% of the things in my life. I know senses can be tricked and memories can be false. We don't go through life worrying about that without copious amounts of experiences with mind altering substances. Nominally we trust our day-to-day senses and recent memories to understand the world around us.
(September 22, 2020 at 7:57 am)Nomad Wrote:
(September 21, 2020 at 1:14 pm)tackattack Wrote: Has the word salad been settled yet? Honestly, it's probably a good read, just far too many pages to catch up on. I have faith in God. I have faith that this chair will hold me up when I sit on it. They are the same faith. I believe in God and I believe in my chair. I do not have absolute faith that all people are good all the time. I do have faith that most people can be good.
Why do you believe in your chair? You have sufficient evidence to prove it exists, and nobody has a reason to doubt its existence. Belief is not needed.
I have faith in my chair and my God because I have sufficient experience that they both will support me. You doubt one's existence and it's completely understandable, but I don't. I don't know why belief is needed or not, but typically belief is a threshold reached from certain inputs accepted as facts. Belief would naturally follow faith. You walk outside, see a tree and have faith in your eyes, thus you then believe it is there and avoid it while riding your bike.
@The Grand Nudger @Fake Messiah @Sal - I have no problems disbelieving in fairies and unicorn, not from their lack of physical-ness, but because I haven't experienced them. If I woke up tomorrow and (without psycho-reactive drugs) started seeing faeries floating around or unicorns galloping, I would have to seriously rethink my beliefs on faeries and unicorns. Faith IS mundane, and that's the point, we all use it day-to-day, unless you're defining it as "religious faith" or "blind faith", which some people here are.
Just as atheist say they believe in one less God than I do, I just have faith in one more thing than they do.
"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry." -- Philip Stater, Huffington Post
always working on cleaning my windows- me regarding Johari
(September 22, 2020 at 11:20 am)tackattack Wrote: @Fake Messiah
Just as atheist say they believe in one less God than I do, I just have faith in one more thing than they do.
What faith? I don't have faith in anything.
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"
September 22, 2020 at 11:41 am (This post was last modified: September 22, 2020 at 11:51 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(September 22, 2020 at 11:20 am)tackattack Wrote: @The Grand Nudger @Fake Messiah @Sal - I have no problems disbelieving in fairies and unicorn, not from their lack of physical-ness, but because I haven't experienced them. If I woke up tomorrow and (without psycho-reactive drugs) started seeing faeries floating around or unicorns galloping, I would have to seriously rethink my beliefs on faeries and unicorns. Faith IS mundane, and that's the point, we all use it day-to-day, unless you're defining it as "religious faith" or "blind faith", which some people here are.
Just as atheist say they believe in one less God than I do, I just have faith in one more thing than they do.
You came in a bit late, but we've been discussing whether trusting that a chair will hold your ass and faith in god are the same thing. I suggest that they're not, that the latter is much more than the former. That I don't have or do whatever you have or do about god, to chairs. One is mundane, and the other, as you note, is not.
Every christian in this thread has insisted otherwise, and I can only conclude that every christian in this thread has an impoverished faith if they only get what they get out of a chair from their god. I'll say it again, something about bickering with atheists makes you people swirl the drain. Faith, which is apparently nothing more than what I think about chairs, has broken you.
Doesn't do that to everyone.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
(September 22, 2020 at 11:20 am)tackattack Wrote: You can take spirituality to any culture, you can explain what it is for, you can teach cultures that don't share your views of spirituality. It's the very definition of Church outreach and missionary work.
Yes, one could do the above. But you continually miss the point.
But that still does not get anywhere near to the kind of demonstration that the chair exists. All these cultures would have to go on is your word for it. If they came to you with their version of a sitting implement, they could show you it exists, and how it works, and why it is trustworthy. If they came to with their spiritual/god beliefs, they would be completely unable to convince you of their god's existence.
Quote: I can show you how trusting in God has supported my life and improved it. It is in the same ballpark, it's just not a materialist only ball park, although all are welcome.
I see you didn't respond to my friend's drastic improvement in his life that he credits to his conversion of Hinduism in post #227. Why should my friend's claim that Hinduism was the cause of his drastic improvement of life (quitting drugs, stopping petty crime, turnaround in career, and family life) be dismissed as nothing to do with the existence of the Hindu gods, but your life improvements be credited with the existence of the Christian god?
Please demonstrate that some non-materialist realm exists, with any where near the kind of reliability that a chair can be demonstrated to exist.
Quote:Secondly you do have faith in those things. You just refuse to call it faith because of it's connotations and your bias. It's very hard to drive a vehicle without faith in your eyes.
Still no.
I have reasonable expectations (not faith) in those things, because they have constantly demonstrated their reliability to convey reality. I have tons of evidence for their reliability, not least of which, is I am still alive.
L
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
