Theists, what does faith mean to you?

[Catholic_Lady]

With all respect, but who are you to say what can and cannot be evidence for me?

You are far from the first to make that weak argument.

The problem is that while you may buy it you have no way of convincing us of its veracity.  Thus, if you claim the holy spirit pooped on your head you might really believe it but  I would find an errant pigeon a far more likely suspect.

Perhaps you believe that you can win the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes if you don't buy a magazine?

Perhaps you believe that billionaire republicunt politicians are really "looking out for the little guy?"

Perhaps you believe that Saddam Hussein really was working on a nuclear bomb?

Your beliefs may convince you but they do not convince me.  For all I know, you might be nuts! 

Now, were you to suddenly pop in here and announce that allah had whispered in your ear that would be a bit out of your normal xtian comfort zone and so perhaps worth taking a deeper investigation.  I would suspect some sort of medical issue before ascribing anything to the supernatural.

But "evidence" is worthless if all you can do with it is convince yourself of what you already believe.

I understand that, which is precisely why I am not trying to convince any of you. 

This thread was started to ask about what faith meant to us personally and why we believe as we do. It wasn't asking us how we can convince anyone else.

I wrote this on page 6:

I guess I just don't agree that personal evidence I can't necessarily show to anyone else, shouldn't count as evidence to me.

Nonetheless, there are things I could say to other people... things that have happened to me, etc, but people could easily not believe what I tell them, or not think they mean anything. They'd still walk away not believing in God. And I wouldn't blame them. There's no way I can show people my entire life and all my thoughts and all my experiences, which all contribute to why I believe what I believe.

Likewise, it's my entire experience with my husband that makes me believe he loves me. If someone asked me how I knew he did, I could say things like "well.... he respects me." or "He bought me flowers" or "he sacrificed something really big so that my life could be better."

... but those are still not a full account by any means, and describing a full account of an entire experience would be impossible. A skeptic of love and marriage can just as easily say those things don't mean anything, and that other people's husbands have done the same thing and then cheated on them and left them, etc. You'd have to literally be in my shoes.

I just now bolded the part that is relevant to your post, where I admit that this isn't something I can "prove" to anyone else.