Christian "faith" vs. plain "faith"

[watchamadoodle]

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"Faith," like many words in English, has more than one meaning. Take a look at:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defini...ctCode=all

faith

noun

[MASS NOUN]
1 Complete trust or confidence in someone or something:
this restores one’s faith in politicians


2 Strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof:
bereaved people who have shown supreme faith


2.1 [COUNT NOUN] A particular religion:
the Christian faith


2.2 [COUNT NOUN] A strongly held belief:
men with strong political faiths

Because of the various definitions, people often speak past each other. The proper solution, of course, is to ask each other, what, precisely, does one mean by ones terms?

For a discussion of 2 (which is essentially belief without evidence), take a look at what William Kingdon Clifford had to say at:

http://ajburger.homestead.com/files/book.htm

If you are thinking of 1, there is a difference between trusting someone or something with evidence that the thing one is trusting is actually trustworthy, and trusting it without such evidence.

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I'm surprised that the dictionary definitions in your quote all suggest that faith is either 0% or 100%. It would be very common to say "I don't have too much faith in political promises", or "how much faith do you have in Social Security?" Those statement imply that faith can range between 0% and 100%. Maybe I'm weird, but I would use "faith" in those sentences commonly.

[Huggy Bear]

A man's word used to mean something. There was a time where you would take the word of a "gentleman" without second thought.

Your cynicism is more a reflection of the times you live in.

Again, you've got a given illness and some guy comes up to you and offers you a miracle panacea that will cure your illness if you just give him some money.

just to confirm that you'd take him at his word right? Just open up your wallet and give him everything you've got.

Skepticism =/= cynicism

The times I live in huggy are about 1000 years ahead of the times you live in, apparently.

Shit, just when you think you've read the stupidest things people believe. Wow.

Where did I indicate specifically what I believe? Do I choose to take God at his word? Yes.

"Let God be true, but every man a liar;" - Romans 3:4

There is a difference between believing God and some random man off the street. I would even go as far as saying it is no longer faith in my case, I have SEEN the evidence, there isn't the slightest doubt in my mind that God exists.
Whether you believe that or not makes no difference to me.

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Huggy's crossing into Poe territory...

How exactly?

[watchamadoodle]

Another question for Christians: faith is obviously not a binary value (0% or 100%). Christians might say that a certain saint "had great faith". The parable of the mustard seed suggests that faith grows.

So how can faith in Christian theology determine a person's fate after death (heaven or hell)? Nobody has 0% faith and nobody has 100% faith IMO. Everybody is inbetween somewhere. What do you suppose the cut-off level is for faith? How fair would it be to send one person to hell for having 49.9% faith and the other person to heaven for having 50% faith?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

[Tonus]

Any opinions? I'm especially curious if Christians agree that "faith" means "confidence" and that "confidence" must have a cause - whether the cause is seeing Moses split the Red Sea or simply being indoctrinated as a child.

The Bible can be interpreted to imply that the term "faith" is used in the traditional sense of trust or confidence. In the OT god is an active person who constantly intervenes directly in the affairs of humanity in order to show that he is capable of exercising great power. So when he says that he will do something, those who had seen his power had faith that he would accomplish it and no one could stop him. In the NT Jesus is a bit more circumspect but still performs powerful acts and shows the ability to read thoughts and intent. So his promises would also seem more trustworthy.

He turns it all around by telling the doubting Thomas that 'blessed are those who do not see, yet believe.' But even that could imply that after having seen some of Jesus' miracles or hearing of them from people he trusted, he should have known that Jesus could rise from the dead and should have been willing to accept the word of his contemporaries.

But there is no way to extend that to the current day, since we don't really know who wrote the books of the Bible. And it's an underwhelming piece of work, not the sort of thing you'd expect from a magnificent intellect, but very similar to so many other ancient myths and legends. Faith in the Bible or the beings it references is not based on a reasonable trust or confidence, which is why that kind of faith is often referred to as blind faith. There is no basis on which to trust what it says, so it's effectively taken at face value. Which is why there have been --and still are-- so many different gods and religions throughout human history.

[Huggy Bear]

Another question for Christians: faith is obviously not a binary value (0% or 100%). Christians might say that a certain saint "had great faith". The parable of the mustard seed suggests that faith grows.

So how can faith in Christian theology determine a person's fate after death (heaven or hell)? Nobody has 0% faith and nobody has 100% faith IMO. Everybody is inbetween somewhere. What do you suppose the cut-off level is for faith? How fair would it be to send one person to hell for having 49.9% faith and the other person to heaven for having 50% faith?

There are degrees of faith. A biblical example would be Jesus being persuaded to go to someone house in order to heal them. Meanwhile a Roman centurion who realized the concept of authority, knew Jesus could Just "order" the healing to be done, no need to actually go to the house. Hence why his faith was greater.

[KevinM1]

An atheist's "faith" is really just a verbal shorthand for the confidence in something based on a combination of factors: past results in similar situations, the inherent qualities of the thing/event itself, probability, and perhaps even the character of the people involved. It's incompatible with the idea of blind faith, which is why it's so tiring when theists try the "your faith in science or whatever is just like my faith in god!" thing. No, it's not. Not even close.

[Ravenshire]

There is a difference between believing God and some random man off the street. I would even go as far as saying it is no longer faith in my case, I have SEEN the evidence, there isn't the slightest doubt in my mind that God exists.
Whether you believe that or not makes no difference to me.

Really, you've seen it. Then you should easily be able to convey that evidence to us, right?

[watchamadoodle]

An atheist's "faith" is really just a verbal shorthand for the confidence in something based on a combination of factors: past results in similar situations, the inherent qualities of the thing/event itself, probability, and perhaps even the character of the people involved. It's incompatible with the idea of blind faith, which is why it's so tiring when theists try the "your faith in science or whatever is just like my faith in god!" thing. No, it's not. Not even close.

Is blind faith actually possible? IMO, Christians have faith for bad reasons, but they do not have blind faith. Nobody can simply choose to have blind faith as many Christians claim.

However there is a difference with Christian faith. When I was little, my father told me that if I could put salt on a bird's tail then he couldn't fly away and I could keep him as a pet. I remember being very incredulous, but I believed my father and tried hunting birds with a salt shaker. That was just as silly as believing in Christianity, but there was one difference - if I had ever successfully salted a bird's tail and he flew away, then I would have falsified the claim. It is much harder to falsify many Christian claims, because the Lord works in mysterious ways.

[Esquilax]

There is a difference between believing God and some random man off the street.

So you wouldn't just take the random man off the street at his word? Even if he seems appropriately gentlemanly? Then why on earth are you castigating science for doing the same?

Not that I believe for a second that it's possible to please you, on this subject; if science really did start taking people randomly at their word and not testing things, I have no doubt you'd turn that into an "aha!" moment too and accuse the scientific community of just making things up based on the last thing they were told. Let's not pretend that this is some consistent position you've taken up.

What's particularly infuriating is that evolution deniers like you are the ones most likely to leap on all the supposed evolution "frauds" whenever you need to, yet you'll take the rigorous testing needed to root out any such frauds and turn that into a weakness too. But if the scientific tests started yielding positive evidence for your god, I bet you'd be trumpeting the repeatability and consistency of those results from the rooftops.

I would even go as far as saying it is no longer faith in my case, I have SEEN the evidence, there isn't the slightest doubt in my mind that God exists.
Whether you believe that or not makes no difference to me.

Didn't you just get through saying that needing evidence for a thing bespeaks a lack of confidence?