(December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am)clemdog14 Wrote: I think that faith is important in other aspects of life. If I get on a plane, I have faith that the pilot will fly me safety to my destination.
That's not faith. That's evidence based, reasonable expectations.
Quote:Granted, I will use reason throughout my life because God has given me a brain and rationality so that I can cross a street based on evidence. It's just interesting that I have faith in certain situations but not all.
It is interesting. It is known as 'compartmentalization'. You purposely partition a certain area of your mind in which you keep your unsupported beliefs. For some reason you refuse to examine those beliefs using the same level of evidence and logic you use for other aspects of your life.
Why, do you suppose, you do not examine those beliefs as stringently as so many other aspects of your life?
Quote:You are right. It is not rational for me to believe in God. I have to abandon reason in order to have faith in God. As Kierkegaard would say, faith is an absurdity, yet I still cling to it.
Yes. Because you don't care if your beliefs are true, or at least likely to be true. The evidence and reason you use to determine if something is true or not in all those other aspects of your life, you do not use for your religious beliefs.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
