RE: Question about "faith"
September 16, 2020 at 1:03 pm
(This post was last modified: September 16, 2020 at 1:17 pm by Simon Moon.)
(September 16, 2020 at 11:55 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Christians don't conflate faith with knowledge. That is largely an atheist thing, as can be observed in this thread alone. When you attend church, and hear the conversations Christians have amongst each other, faith is used to signify trust.
Quotes such as "Faith is belief without evidence and reason" come from atheists.
Whereas quotes such as "Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods" come from Christians.
You seem to be acting as a spokesperson for all of Christianity and Christians, but I am not sure you are qualified. Either that, or maybe you are guilty of a 'no true Scotsman' fallacy, and you are claiming that only 'true Christians' adhere to your definition of faith.
I have plenty of Christian family and friends, at all levels of education and professional attainment, and almost all of them, at one time or another, have espoused a definition of faith closer to, "belief without sufficient evidence, or in the face of evidence to the contrary". Do they say it in those words? No. But there meaning is still pretty obvious.
I can't count how many times I have backed a Christian in a logical (or evidential) corner, and after a long pause, they come back with something like, "well, that is where faith comes in". If that is not an admission that they have lost the debate based on flawed reasoning, and have fallen back on believing n the face of evidence or reasoning to the contrary, what is it?
And just what does, "Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods" mean, anyway?
It sure sounds like, "well, I once accepted this theistic claim because I thought it was reasonable, but now that, what I once thought were reasonable justifications for my beliefs, have been challenged*, I will continue to believe them anyway".
And please explain how the Hebrews 11:1 definition of faith does not seem to be describing "belief without evidence".
*these challenges could be anything from, having it pointed out that the philosophical arguments for the existence of god (Kalam, teleological, ontological, TAG) are all fallacious. Or, that the Bible is not as reliable as once thought (Gospels not written by eye witnesses, for example).
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.