Adrian and I disagree on faith.

[Violet]

My main disagreement is that your definition of the word "faith" is so wide it can include absolutely any position of belief or disbelief. Indeed, under your definition, believing the sun will come up tomorrow is a faith position.

However, this use of the word "faith" seems to divide statements into those that are "certain" to happen, and those that are not "certain" to happen. Anything that is certain to happen isn't a faith statement, and anything that isn't certain, is. It's almost as if you've replaced a belief that has the ability to be wrong with the word "faith".

How can you discern what is "certain", then? Beliefs can be right or wrong, well placed or misplaced... but believing something to be true is having faith in it's truth... belief is not a replacement for faith, it is a synonym...

It is my contention that beliefs can be either right or wrong, and that some beliefs are based on faith, whilst others are based on fact and reasoning. To classify all beliefs as faith (which is what you are doing since no belief can be "certain", otherwise it would classify as knowledge) is to make the term completely useless...why not just say belief instead?

Why not say 'towering' instead of 'gigantic'? Why not say 'vexed' instead of 'irked'? Why not say 'fat' instead of 'obese'? Because they are synonyms, and we use whatever synonym we feel like using in that case...?

You almost undoubtably have faith in fact and reasoning... you probably believe them to be far more stable/informative about an issue than personal insight could ever be. Faith isn't to suggest what it is based in, only the nature of assuming something to be correct. At the base of everything, there is circular faith (Ie: I believe because I do). One could not seriously function without accepting things as true with enough evidence/reason to believe them. Note @ the bold: the reasoning that supports the belief is not the belief itself. Faith is a separate issue from the justification one needs before they will hold faith in something.

We don't just say "belief" instead because faith-based positions are positions that are based on little to no evidence or reasoning. The belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is based on science, our observation of nature, our reasoning that the planet cannot simply stop turning, etc, etc. It is a reasoned position. It may be wrong, and it's certainly not certain (pun intended), but that doesn't make it a faith position. A faith position is something like "There exists a floating giant marshmallow with 12 eyes in the red spot on Jupiter". We have no evidence to suggest the existence of such a spot, nor do we have any reasoning to think such a statement is true, so if someone believes it, they are making a faith based position.

You seem to be confusing a position of little faith as being without faith, and a position of great faith as necessary for it to be faith in the first place. It's fine by me if you define faith as how I define a great deal of faith... but it remains that faith itself is unrelated to a qualifier.

Your position is an interesting one, but I disagree with it because it seems to simply conflate the issue, making any belief a faith belief, and thus the word "faith" becomes meaningless. If you disagree, I'd like to see a belief that isn't a faith-based one by your definition. I can't think of one that you can't simply argue is based on "faith", if you use the arguments you've used on my examples (sun, job, etc).

Belief = faith... I honestly can't see why you think that this shouldn't be so. Think about it Adrian: if you don't have faith in reasoning and science, then what can you trust (insert god arguments here )? I think that faith is a word that atheists and scientists need to "get over", kind of like how morbidly obese people need to "get over" being called fat.

All that holding faith to a definition that doesn't require a qualifier does... is help one understand the purpose of why we must have faith/belief/trust/confidence in things. It doesn't detract evidence, it doesn't spoil the data, and it doesn't interfere with science or reason in the slightest.

Faith does not become meaningless just because it is a synonym with belief...