(September 11, 2020 at 9:57 am)rockyrockford Wrote: extremely interesting statement "...Is this question ever going to tie back to not believing in God or gods, the only thing all atheists have in common?..."
My question to an atheist is not "why don't you have "eternal faith in God", but what do you have "eternal faith" in? If anything. If you feel that that the word "faith" is more of a religious term, then it would be very hard for you to relate to the question about faith. It wouldn't apply to you, it would be an unfair question.
Would it be safe to say, that an atheist doesn't have "eternal faith" in anything...not even nature will last, our sun will eventually burn out a bazillion years from now.
Great Post !! Thank you!!
The mind has a network of beliefs about how the world works. This provides an internal model of the world that allows for prediction.
My understanding of electricity generation, house wiring, the nature of switches (plus the feedback of 1000's of successful switching events, setting a probability) tells me that when I flip my light-switch on, the light will likely go on.
The better the belief network, the better the predictive abilities. I recognize, however, that some of my beliefs may be WRONG yet the network mostly works anyway.
Faith, in terms of "absolute trust" plays very little role. I may have faith that I exist, and the laws of the universe aren't going to flip overnight. But, I could be wrong, and we are all in a simulation and it will stop tomorrow. I just assign the probability as too small to worry about.
Now, if you want to define faith as "hope", I can see that hope is useful in some circumstances. Hope allows us to take calculated risks, when our prediction ability is limited.
But "absolute trust" is a maladaptive trait. Nothing deserves absolute trust, because there is never evidence enough to justify "absolute" anything.