(September 17, 2020 at 5:41 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: But if a surgeon showed me his cosmetology degree, a dentist showed me his pilot license, and my wife turned a rod into a serpent like Moses. I would be more inclined to trust them in those areas.
That is the nature of faith/trust. It is based on the merit of the proposer.
Dude, just the opposite. You just said that you would trust someone to fly you if they had a pilot license - which is evidence that they can operate an aircraft - and therefore you have a trust in that person - because of evidence.
Now, when someone believes that Dalai Lama reincarnates or that Joseph Smith is the last prophet they do it without any evidence and that's called faith.
If there was any evidence that Dalai Lama reincarnates or that Joseph Smith is the last prophet then people would not need faith in these stuff.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"