(June 20, 2013 at 8:49 pm)Walking Void Wrote:I feel that faith and trust are just synonyms for believing without being sure. The word 'faith' being repeatedly used by Christianity has made you forget that it can be as secular as it is religious. Isn't "I have faith in you" the same as "I trust you?" Having faith or trust in a thing is an attribute of being loyal to a thing. You are loyal to Dawkins (as I am to much of modern science) because you believe that what he said is true; you were not present at the experiment, nor did you verify it yourself, but you believe what he says. You can not know for certain, but you would agree what he said is true.(June 20, 2013 at 8:00 pm)Consilius Wrote: I think you are painting faith in a bad light.
Faith and doubt are opposing terms. Both are built on evidence. This evidence causes a person to lean in one direction or the other in their belief in something. Neither faith nor doubt suggest that you are absolutely certain of anything.
I agree on 1 point, and disagree on another. I agree that faith and doubt are opposing terms. That is why I work with 1 but not the other. I work with doubt in my studies, and work to reduce that doubt so that I can be in favour of clarity (when doubt is no longer the majority). It is not easily calculated, but I can decide if I am in favour of 1 thing over another or have more answers than questions. I also take my understanding of things as granted, but never as absolute truths. These are truths that I work with for the present until a new discovery is made and I change an understanding or 2. I do NOT work with faith, I work with loyalty. Faith is more spiritual than it is a realistic component. I cannot apply my imagination to real life because I have to be able to test those imaginations and be able to reproduce them as real-world application. I have loyalty to what I have learned till now. Up to now, what I understand has not failed me yet I understand so little.
The part that I disagree on is faith being built on evidence. I use religion as an example. If I was a christian and I had faith in a god, do I need evidence or can I just be fulfilled thinking a certain way without change? Unfortunately, pathologically a god is a real concept in their mind, yet they do not to see it as imagination. It is true to them without evidence. It just... is.
When biologists like Richard Dawkins who have information in their own field of bio discover new information, I do not have faith that they have information (truth [not absolute truth]): I have loyalty to them that they were right.
Faith, again, can and at many times must be applied to real life. The issue with it is that it has the 'results may vary' disclaimer attatched. And this is in a world where we are used to nothing less than perfection and certainty.
It woud be unfair to request faith without evidence. I feel that the constant and unchanging goodness in the world (that is as close to a summary of that argument as I can get) proves that there is a God. It probably isn't sufficient to prove anything without a doubt, but it leans me in the direction of believing (not knowing) that God is real. Therefore, I have faith.