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Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 2:19 pm
(This post was last modified: September 29, 2009 at 2:20 pm by solarwave.)
Hey guys,
This thread comes from me reading the quote by Dawkins: "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."
So my question is what do you think faith is?
I don't understand when atheists say faith is belief without reason since it seems to suggest that all christians are idiots who wake up one morning and decide they are christians for no reason at all, just on the spur of the moment. No one thinks like that, everyone has a reason for what they think even if you disagree with that reason. Eg: When you sit on a chair you dont test whether it is strong enough to hold you first, you have faith that it will hold you because of past experiences and reason, not 'belief in spite of evidence'.
Even if you define faith like that let me trying to give my definition which is closer to what Christians mean.
Faith: Trust in the way reason best points even if it isn't 100% conclusive.
What do you think?
Solarwave 
Mark Taylor: "Religious conflict will be less a matter of struggles between belief and unbelief than of clashes between believers who make room for doubt and those who do not."
Einstein: “The most unintelligible thing about nature is that it is intelligible”
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RE: Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I think everyone has a reason for believing, and people claim faith when they can't explain their reason or don't want to. They don't want their reasons examined and under scrutiny.
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RE: Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 2:37 pm
(September 29, 2009 at 2:19 pm)solarwave Wrote: Eg: When you sit on a chair you dont test whether it is strong enough to hold you first, you have faith that it will hold you because of past experiences and reason, not 'belief in spite of evidence'.
Solarwave,
In this example you are talking about knowledge based on empirical evidence. I have sat in chairs and almost always they hold my weight ergo I know that chairs will hold my weight. This is not a faith example. "Past experiences" = tests and the results point to the fact that chairs hold people.
Also, your Dawkins quote says nothing about reason it is talking about evidence. Faith is belief without evidence.
Rhizo
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RE: Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 2:49 pm
(September 29, 2009 at 2:37 pm)Rhizomorph13 Wrote: This is not a faith example. "Past experiences" = tests and the results point to the fact that chairs hold people.
Indeed, this is the heart of the scientific method, repeatable verifiable tests. You don't "take it on faith" that chairs will hold you, you know they will unless they are broken because you've experiences it first hand and seen it happen to others. Simple as that. No faith needed.
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RE: Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Doesn't it prove that chair you have sat on before dont fall, not that everything that looks like a chair wont.
If you call that evidence than many Christians have evidence for God because of past experiences of Him, such as everytime they put their faith in Him God doesn't let them down. After how many times does that stop being a coinsidence and become evidence?
Mark Taylor: "Religious conflict will be less a matter of struggles between belief and unbelief than of clashes between believers who make room for doubt and those who do not."
Einstein: “The most unintelligible thing about nature is that it is intelligible”
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RE: Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 3:14 pm
(September 29, 2009 at 2:58 pm)solarwave Wrote: Doesn't it prove that chair you have sat on before dont fall, not that everything that looks like a chair wont.
If you call that evidence than many Christians have evidence for God because of past experiences of Him, such as everytime they put their faith in Him God doesn't let them down. After how many times does that stop being a coinsidence and become evidence?
Because there's nothing testable about that claim. Personal experience is never evidence of the supernatural, no matter how frustrating that may be.
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RE: Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 3:29 pm
(September 29, 2009 at 3:14 pm)Eilonnwy Wrote: Because there's nothing testable about that claim. Personal experience is never evidence of the supernatural, no matter how frustrating that may be.
Is personal experience ever evidence for anything? Why specifically the supernatural? Because you find it hard to believe? Arn't many things in science hard to believe before the evidence is fully looked at and understood?
Mark Taylor: "Religious conflict will be less a matter of struggles between belief and unbelief than of clashes between believers who make room for doubt and those who do not."
Einstein: “The most unintelligible thing about nature is that it is intelligible”
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RE: Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 3:33 pm
(September 29, 2009 at 2:58 pm)solarwave Wrote: Doesn't it prove that chair you have sat on before dont fall, not that everything that looks like a chair wont.
Solarwave,
This is a good point and allows me to move on to further explain how science works. Science never thinks it has "THE ANSWER." Science only has a workable model based on evidence. We are always trying to move toward a better model to allow us to do things like, toss a rocket from here to Mars and have it actually land on Mars AND not destroy itself. We do not know exactly where every molecule of Mars will be at any one point in time but we have a workable model that allow us to calculate, with extreme acuracy, where mars will be relative to a rocket shot from another moving body, the Earth.
Rhizo
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RE: Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 3:34 pm
(September 29, 2009 at 3:29 pm)solarwave Wrote: Is personal experience ever evidence for anything? Why specifically the supernatural? Because you find it hard to believe? Arn't many things in science hard to believe before the evidence is fully looked at and understood?
Well that's just it, you do not supply anything else but the personal experience. Scientific evidence doesn't build on personal experience alone. Evidence is gathered, looked at, tested, and independently verified.
Best regards,
Leo van Miert
Horsepower is how hard you hit the wall --Torque is how far you take the wall with you
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RE: Faith?
September 29, 2009 at 3:35 pm
(This post was last modified: September 29, 2009 at 3:37 pm by Rhizomorph13.)
(September 29, 2009 at 3:29 pm)solarwave Wrote: Is personal experience ever evidence for anything?
Court cases when there is nothing else to go on. Although if there were 100 people who would swear to seeing something; it would only take one piece of hard evidence, like a video, to have their testimony thrown out.
Quote:Why specifically the supernatural?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Rhizo
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