(October 7, 2016 at 10:30 am)Cato Wrote: The OP needs to read up on justified true belief. This whole 'degree of uncertainty', therefore faith, is fatuous bullshit. I have to assume that those deploying this tired argument fully understand they have absolutely no evidence to justify their beliefs and are desperate to have others acknowledge as respectable their entirely faith based position. Someone thinking that this reasoning is compelling has betrayed a severe ignorance of what constitutes knowledge (justified true belief).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/
Spot on. If I press the 'power' button on my computer, it doesn't require an act of faith to expect that my computer with go through a series of processes and turn itself on. This is what is called 'reasonable expectation based on experience'.
On the other hand, if I expected that pressing this button would result in orange marmalade oozing out of unoccupied USB ports, this is clearly an act of faith.
Similarly, to lack belief in a Being with whom no one has ever reliably communicated, whom no one has reliably ever seen, and whose existence isn't required to explain anything, isn't an act of faith, but one accepting the world as it is, not how deluded fantasy wishes it to be.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
