(May 23, 2009 at 9:33 am)Darwinian Wrote: If my daughter tells me that she has done her homework then, based on previous experience, I have no reason to doubt her and accept her statement as fact. Therefore I would argue that it is quite rational for me to have faith in that statement.
I disagree. Because if you have NO reason to doubt her then you IOW have at least SOME reason to trust her. Or in other words evidence that she is trustworthy.
If you trusted in her when there was no reason whatsoever to trust her... - THEN you'd need faith and that would be irrational.
ALSO - you may have noticed though that I wasn't just defining faith as 'belief without evidence' but I am ALSO talking specifically about evidence in the EXISTENCE of something and having faith (belief without evidence) in the EXISTENCE of something. I know I didn't actually specify that here. But when I am talking about 'belief IN something' I mean the existence of something...
ALTHOUGH - I still think that you can explain it pretty much the same way here. If you have no reason to doubt your daughter then you must trust her for SOME reason(s) - and that/those reason(/s) IF at all VALID would be evidence in some way of her trustworthiness. If the reasons are INvalid then you're being irrational cos you're trusting her without reason so there's no evidence of her trustworthiness and therefore your trust in her must also be faith. Hence irrational faith. So once again - not rational.
What you are talking about with your daughter I think of as trust, not faith. If it was faith then your reasons couldn't be valid and WOULD be irrational because if they WERE valid then you WOULD have evidence IOW because your VALID reasons for trusting her would IOW be evidence of her trustworthiness (i.e. reason to trust her) - hence canceling out the faith because you cannot have faith with evidence.
EvF
