(October 2, 2019 at 5:12 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: If faith be limited to known demonstrable facts, it wouldn't be faith, it would be facts. For faith to limit itself to hypothesis and assumption about the unknown that does not contract what is known and demonstrable, it would be called assumptions or hypotheses and not faith. For faith to be faith it must either Contradict known facts or treat what could be no more than hypotheses and assumptions as if they were more than hypotheses and assumptions.
So how is this in principle different from superstition?
The difference between faith and superstition appears to be entirely observer centric. Faith is the superstition of those who loath to be called superstitious. Superstition is the faith of other people whose superstition does not agree with one's own.
Superstition contradicts known facts, so it should not be difficult to show what is superstition, and therefore it's not relative to the observer (heresy is). Faith is assent to superrational truth. Superrational is relative to human capability. A hypothesis is arrived at through abductive reasoning and proposed for empirical demonstration. Faith might be a kind of assumption depending on semantics. Superstition is an assumption too though, and so are hypotheses.
