Evidence Verses Faith

[Daystar]

Daystar, you have conveyed some good points about 'faith'. I am understanding you better in this post.

If you are right about that, CoxRox, and I hope you are, I have done the nearly impossible. It isn't easy, you know. This stuff.

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Sorry to jump in, but we've got a good discussion going and I can't resist.

In regards to 'Faith' vs. 'Blind Faith', I see this as two sides of the same coin. I understand you are defining faith as more of a trust than anything. Blind Faith is simply a harsher way of stating this. In your example, you indicate that you had faith that the shooter was a young woman because of your experience in the field. I would attribute this conclusion to reason, not faith.

If our rookie cop believed your hypothesis, I would say he was relying on faith. He knows you are experienced, and knows you are often right. He doesn't understand how to arrived at the conclusion of the young woman, but he believes you in an act of faith.

My apologies if that sounds disjointed, it was written over an hour between bursts of real work.

No. That is pretty much what I was saying. My faith was dependant upon my knowledge of the subject, the rookie couldn't grasp that he could only question it. He will learn.

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Well again I think we are thinking of different meanings of the word "faith". You seem to define faith as believing in something that hasn't been proven yet, whilst I would say it was believing in something without good reason or evidence. If you have faith in something or you follow evidence, you can still be right or wrong in both cases.

I wouldn't define faith as something that hasn't been proven yet, that is science. Science doesn't give a great effort to prove things that are proven, does it? I certainly wouldn't say that faith was something that comes about without good reason. Blind faith is buying into science or religion without good reason. I wouldn't buy into anything without good reason and I don't think anyone would. You may see it that way but that is because you are perhaps limited in what you have to reason with. Your religious influence.

But my point was that with either evidence or faith you can be wrong, especially when faith or evidence is taken as fact.

For instance, we used to believe the Sun went around the Earth. This was a perfectly logical deduction because we understood that things move and we could see the Sun move and not feel the Earth rotate. Ergo the Sun orbiting the Earth was a good explanation of the evidence. It was based on reasoning, so I wouldn't class it as a faith issue. Of course, as new evidence was introduced, we changed our explanation to what it is today, and the explanation is as proven as it can be by modern science.

Yes.

So again I find flaw with your definition, since it would put the first theory as mere "faith" when it did rely on evidence and reasoning.

Hmmm ... interesting.

Faith and evidence. There it is. One man's faith is another man's evidence and one man's evidence is another man's faith.