(December 12, 2014 at 11:29 am)professor Wrote: Who does not employ faith in their everyday life?No, religion has co-opted the term. Faith is normally based on some level of trust and/or experience, though we recognize that it can also be baseless, hence terms like "blind faith." When I walk into my home and flip the light switch, I "have faith" that the lights will come on because they do nearly every time. I "have faith" that my car will start because it almost always does. I have faith in certain friends to keep their promises because they are reliable in that regard. This faith is not always rewarded, and I understand that the basis for that faith doesn't provide absolute certainty, even if I act that way. Which is why I might be disappointed or angry when any of those let me down, but my worldview isn't catastrophically impacted.
Faith is walking out on what you know.
Your faith in god and Biblical prophecy is akin to placing absolute trust in a complete stranger because he smiles and has a warm disposition, and because you trust people in general to do what is right. He may reward your trust and he may betray it, but the only factors that you have to go on are too slim to be a guarantee. Con men have been taking advantage of misplaced trust and blind faith for about as long as there have been people available to con.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
