(March 20, 2014 at 7:35 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: Analytic philosophers of mind define belief as, "the psychological state in which one accepts a premise or proposition to be true". This seems to be the best working definition of belief that I've heard.
Using that definition, everyone has beliefs, because everyone accepts some premises and propositions to be true.
That being said, there are good reasons to believe premises, and bad reasons.
The single best method we've come up with for determining whether a premise should be accepted as true, is by basing beliefs on demonstrable evidence, reasoned argument and valid/sound logic. Nothing else comes close.
Faith fails on every level. Faith is not a path to truth. It is indistinguishable from gullibility.
I like hat definition a lot. But if I can play devil's advocate for one question: Why are humans capable of faith if it is to be discourage? In other words, why is it that faith is a natural thing every human has the ability of engaging in, and yet it bad? And if so, how does one surgically remove faith?
