New atheist.. question

[Joel]

They do wear out and break. Humans also die in their sleep. That's exactly the point I'm making.
Just because we believe something, doesn't mean it's true.

I thought the point you were trying to make was "Faith isn't a desirable trait to have". I believe I showed you how that is untrue.

It's not a desirable trait to have. Why would you want to believe something without evidence for it?
You showed that it's truer than I initially made it out to be.

[Esquilax]

I thought the point you were trying to make was "Faith isn't a desirable trait to have". I believe I showed you how that is untrue.

You failed.

Your "faith" in your car starting is directly correlated to the evidence and past experience that you have with your car. You have "faith" that it will work because it generally does. But that "faith" is modulated based on the evidence you have; my first car was a cheap little shitbox and when it started to break down, so did my "faith" in its ability to start. My current car starts routinely, and so my "faith" in it remains strong.

Contrast that to actual faith, like faith in god, which has next to no evidence, certainly no verifiable evidence, to back it, and yet inexplicably remains strong. Imagine that.

You're conflating faith with reasonable expectation, when you say you have faith in your car.

[catfish]

Actual Faith™? Really?

[Esquilax]

Actual Faith™? Really?

It must be so much easier to scoff than to provide something of intellectual merit, huh?

You might have noticed that when I was discussing lower case faith, faith in cars, I uniformly put it into quotation marks, indicating that I didn't for a second buy that this was the correct word to use there. But if I'd just started using another word your proven inability to actually read posts correctly would have left you confused. It's just a neatness thing.

You don't have faith in your car, you have a reasonable expectation that it will work. But you do have faith in god, because you have no evidence to base your belief in him on. That better, catfish?

[catfish]

You don't have faith in your car, you have a reasonable expectation that it will work. But you do have faith in god, because you have no evidence to base your belief in him on. That better, catfish?

Pay attention... I have faith that it will start tomorrow.
Can you provide evidence for tomorrow?

[Esquilax]

You don't have faith in your car, you have a reasonable expectation that it will work. But you do have faith in god, because you have no evidence to base your belief in him on. That better, catfish?

Pay attention... I have faith that it will start tomorrow.
Can you provide evidence for tomorrow?

Sure: the car's started yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and the majority of the days that you've owned it. You have a reasonable expectation that your car will start tomorrow based on the fact that it has a habit of starting for you, and because we can understand and view the mechanisms that cause your car to run.

It's the same with... I dunno, Pluto's orbit. We haven't known about Pluto for long enough for it to have made a complete orbit, but we know it will. Why? Because we have observed other planets making their orbit, and we've seen Pluto move; we have no reason to assume it won't continue on its course.

There's no faith in these things; we can observe them, and build patterns of behavior and reaction from this. But you can't do that with god, you can't even verify his presence and hence you need faith. That's the difference.