(June 26, 2018 at 11:05 pm)JairCrawford Wrote: I understand your analogy but faith typically deals with things not concretely seen. You can provide visual proof that 1+1=2 with the apples and thus I would have to either ignore it or willfully delude myself in order to ignore that evidence and choose to believe 1+1=3.
But when dealing with things unseen, we can't really disprove them. Now yes, I understand that there is a burden of proof issue but that's a different topic.
I guess what I am wondering is, do you believe that by definition, faith is an impossibility? If so, why?
So you can choose to believe that 1 + 1 = 3?
I don't think so. You either believe something to be true or you do not. In this case, we know 1 + 1 = 2 so there is no matter of belief there. We simply understand it as a mathematical fact.
In my case, I do not think faith is impossible... sure, you can have faith. But faith is only useful if you cannot clearly demonstrate something is true or false. In the case of mathematics, no faith is required. We can demonstrate different mathematical truths. We cannot demonstrate whether or not god is real, but we can determine whether or not we have evidence for a divine creator. The answer to that is no. That's where belief comes in.
I cannot choose to believe in unicorns the same way I cannot choose to believe in god.
I think faith is an interesting concept because it sort of implies that you want something to be true even though you don't actually believe it.
If you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.
