Question about "faith"

[tackattack]

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I can't believe you are unable to see the problem with this!

You can take the chair to any culture, with any religious belief, or no religious beliefs. You can explain what it is for, you can teach cultures that don't have chairs, how to build them so that they are structurally sound. YOu can show them chairs made out of wood, metal, wicker, bamboo, etc, etc, and you would have no problems convincing them that they are all the same thing, with the same purpose. And most importantly of all, you can easily demonstrate to them  that the chairs exist.

Please show how you can do the same thing with your god? Show them how trusting that the chair will hold them up, is even in the same ballpark as trusting that your god exists.

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I don't have faith in these things. They are what I am presented with. I am forced, pragmatically, to accept them.

They have shown to be reliable.

I have never been presented with a god in the same way that I have been presented with my memories, reason or senses.

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You can take spirituality to any culture, you can explain what it is for, you can teach cultures that don't share your views of spirituality. It's the very definition of Church outreach and missionary work. I can show you how trusting in God has supported my life and improved it. It is in the same ballpark, it's just not a materialist only ball park, although all are welcome.

Secondly you do have faith in those things. You just refuse to call it faith because of it's connotations and your bias. It's very hard to drive a vehicle without faith in your
eyes. Apparently the word salad isn't over yet and the descriptive definitions here are too far to be reconciled and no one is willing to accept a prescriptive definition.

Listen, I know people have biases and that I personally don't understand fully 100% of the things in my life. I know senses can be tricked and memories can be false. We don't go through life worrying about that without copious amounts of experiences with mind altering substances. Nominally we trust our day-to-day senses and recent memories to understand the world around us.

Has the word salad been settled yet? Honestly, it's probably a good read, just far too many pages to catch up on. I have faith in God. I have faith that this chair will hold me up when I sit on it. They are the same faith. I believe in God and I believe in my chair. I do not have absolute faith that all people are good all the time. I do have faith that most people can be good.

Why do you believe in your chair?  You have sufficient evidence to prove it exists, and nobody has a reason to doubt its existence.  Belief is not needed.

I have faith in my chair and my God because I have sufficient experience that they both will support me. You doubt one's existence and it's completely understandable, but I don't. I don't know why belief is needed or not, but typically belief is a threshold reached from certain inputs accepted as facts. Belief would naturally follow faith. You walk outside, see a tree and have faith in your eyes, thus you then believe it is there and avoid it while riding your bike.

@The Grand Nudger @Fake Messiah @Sal - I have no problems disbelieving in fairies and unicorn, not from their lack of physical-ness, but because I haven't experienced them. If I woke up tomorrow and (without psycho-reactive drugs) started seeing faeries floating around or unicorns galloping, I would have to seriously rethink my beliefs on faeries and unicorns. Faith IS mundane, and that's the point, we all use it day-to-day, unless you're defining it as "religious faith" or "blind faith", which some people here are.

Just as atheist say they believe in one less God than I do, I just have faith in one more thing than they do.