Strong Atheism starts from faith

[Violet]

(2) Faith is belief without evidence (my fav. definition, but there are other suitable ones) such as having faith in a spegetti monster existing, no evidence, therefore faith, not fact

As the bold doesn't exist... i would question if you believe in such a thing as faith (or evidence) at all. I rather take issue when people define faith like so... for reasons outlined below.

Having a belief in something without having good evidence to do so. I disagree with leo's definition. I don't think believing that the sun will come up tomorrow is a faith based position, since you have good reason to believe so, same with having a job next month.

As for how it is different from fact? Facts are true. Faith positions have a possibility of being true.

Having good ("scientifically tested"?) evidence requires less faith to accept than poor ("personal"?) evidence... but it remains that it requires faith.

I have faith that you are all not simply products of my imagination, and that the lot of you live in a similar subjective reality as me, which 'most of us?' further assume to be the objective reality... and that is a position of untestable faith. And so the very form of my own existence is a position of incredible faith... imagine the amount of faith i must hold to accept the existence of others, and anything else really. So personal evidence is as much evidence (if less compelling) as scientific evidence, or theological evidence, or evidence because she said so... but evidence is itself only the justification for the belief in something. Some forms of evidence (scientific) make far more compelling justifications for the belief in something... but one finds that people can use almost any reason to believe something they want to hear/already have faith in (if simply because it 'feels right' <--intuitional evidence if you will ).

So simply... if we state that faith is the belief in something without evidence... we are stating that it is possible to simply believe in anything without reason (emotion, rationality, and in fact absolutely nothing that would make one 'feel' as though something is right.... essentially to be of absolutely no opinion and still believe one thing to be 'correct/right', which is simply a contradiction). We usually use "faith" to describe extreme positions of faith (Ie: religion)... but the action of holding a belief is no more modified by what the belief is in than the action of running is modified by wether you run to the store or from the unusually large turtle. Like with saying 'obese' instead of 'fat'... using 'belief' instead of 'faith' is just political correctness... but as the word faith is 'redefined' to look different than belief: it simply does not hold up.

It rather defeats the purpose of having faith in something when it is defined as requiring absence of evidence. Perhaps if it were defined as being the absence of scientific evidence... then the definition would fit its colloquial use. But when it is defined simply as belief without evidence (which i cannot see how is possible... if you know of some way for that: enlighten me): one runs into the impossible difficulty of distinguishing faith from belief, and then into the difficulty of understanding just what constitutes evidence (for it is such a subjective matter, if some forms of it are apparently 'objective' or 'inter-subjective'). A good reason simply lets one more easily accept things as true... the acceptance of which is the assumption that one is correct, which is faith/belief. If one defines faith as belief in something without evidence, then they've defined faith as something that does not exist, or they've defined evidence as something that cannot exist. They've also defeated the purpose of both evidence and faith (reason to believe and the belief in it because of said reasons).

And for all of the reasons above (though i think i repeated some things more than was perhaps necessary :S), I simply cannot see how one could be defining faith as belief without evidence. Unless 'evidence' is used to signify 'scientific evidence' or 'scientifically testable evidence'... then i fail to see any reason for distinguishing 'faith' like so.