Can an Atheist argue someone out of faith?

[Edwardo Piet]

"Faith is greater than proof is it?" I think it is, not blind faith though.

*sigh* not THAT tautology again.

[Godscreated]

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@ Tiberius if the Jewish people and christians were making up their religions then why is it we would include satan, it would be much easier without him. Why after these thousands of years would we not have developed answers to questions like why does God allow bad things to happen to good people and ect. I know we have answers to a lot of questions like this but these answers basicly find no acceptance from nonbelivers and if we were just looking to control people as many of you have said, then don't you think we would have come up with more acceptable answers to draw nonbelievers in. As I said above faith is all we have and as long as we are honest in our faith we have something greater than proof. This is what Jesus told Thomas.

The Satan question rather answers itself. Something has to be invented in Christianity to mask the problem of evil so you can attribute bad things to Satan and good things to God. As for the Jews they didn't care too much for the problem of evil, their god used the satan character as a pawn; asking satan to do his own evil for him apart from when he was feeling capricious that is eg Lot.

Faith is greater than proof is it? Do you apply this to medical science, civil engineering, pharmaceuticals, food industry, construction, national electricity grids, maybe your drive to work in the morning? Where exactly do you apply this maxim, apart from in your church or the privacy of your own home? My guess nowhere and that you take sick kids to hospitals not to faith healers, you take aspirins and don't use crystals, you switch lights on in your home you don't pray for the lights to come on, you trust to the qualities of suspension bridges and don't drive over cliffs hoping winged angels will hold up your car as you believe in the right god and the 1000s of others both dead and alive are wrong. Your faith argument belies the extreme weakness of your position and the intellectual price you have to pay to believe in something like a god, gods, man-gods or whatever.

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[Captain Scarlet]

Other religious faiths have no satan, with them you only have to over come self, in the christian faith one must trust in God to over come the temptations of a being that has great powers than mankind. Satan knows each of our weaknesses and preys on them. He does not make us sin,that is our choice (freewill). Just as it is our choice to rely on God to over come the temptations put before us. Now please do not misunderstand me, Satan is often used as a scape goat for our on personal failures, when the blame falls squarely on our shoulders for not trusting God to help us, the sin is ours not satan's. As Jesus says satan has already had his judgement and found guilty before God.
As tack says not blind faith and I believe that he understands that I was not talking about blind faith. The faith that I am talking about and the faith that Jesus told Thomas about was not a blind faith. Jesus said do not tempt the Lord thy God, this is blind faith, God has given us the doctors, engineers, builders and ect. to be of assistance to the human race and not to take advantage of them would be foolish. Some of the examples you mentioned are faith based, when you drive over a bridge of any kind you are placing your faith (trust) in the designers, safety inspectors, construction company and ect. to do their jobs well, so that your trip over the bridge is safe and some of the other things you mentioned would have thesame faith applied to them. This faith is not a blind faith either you trust others to do what is right, just as I trust God to do what He has promised. I do pray for many things as part of my faith in God and that does included my own personal safety.

Don't understand your rejoinder on satan, but your response seems to indicate you will only believe what you want to anyaway.

On faith. You can make up whatever explanation fits the evidence you want to see, your own level of conviction, the biblical quote mining you seem to think is important. Religious faith is faith is faith is faith and any distinction between it and blind faith is casuistry. The fact is when you want to argue faith is better than proof, you do; largely becuase there is not a jot of evidence for any of your claims (or for that matter any supernatural claims), and conveniently side step the faith issue on ANY other topic. You don't put your faith in engineers, you beleive they have precisely built and tested their work and have the evidence of other cars successfully crossing the bridge; therefore you rely on empricism NOT faith. If you trust in god so much and the next life is so much better than this one, when you are ill why bother with medical science and the proven methods for treating illness? Why not trust in god, you seem to think its better?

[tackattack]

well EV when ever you want to come to an agreement that it's far more unlikely for an atheist to fully understand faith in God, than a theist and thus commonly confuse http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith with their own colloquial use of http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blind+faith I'll stop bringing it up. Faith isn't about proof, it's in confidently trusting that the gaps that experience has are proven to be just as consistent as the experience. It's not being in denial of anything, nor self-justification or rationalization.

[ib.me.ub]

@coffeeveritas: what do you think about this as a theory.

http://atheistforums.org/thread-5223.html

[Edwardo Piet]

well EV when ever you want to come to an agreement that it's far more unlikely for an atheist to fully understand faith in God, than a theist and thus commonly confuse http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith with their own colloquial use of http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blind+faith I'll stop bringing it up. Faith isn't about proof, it's in confidently trusting that the gaps that experience has are proven to be just as consistent as the experience. It's not being in denial of anything, nor self-justification or rationalization.

We agree that faith isn't about proof then.

But then, science isn't about proof either. Maths and (other) tautology are about proof. Science is about evidence.

And faith doesn't even have evidence.

Without evidence faith can never be validly evident to anyone, it's just delusive magical and nonsensical thinking. If faith-based thinking were to be evidentially supported it would no longer be faith-based thinking: It would then be evidence-based thinking.

Since faith lacks evidence that's what makes it blind. Faith therefore=blind trust. Trust without evidence, belief without evidence=faith.

The colloquial term "blind faith" is handy because it expresses how faith actually is. But then on the other hand it is but a tautology. It's a tautology like a lot of colloquialisms are.

[Buddy Lee]

I like this quote from http://bornatheist.com/1.html

The atheist has nothing to prove.

As an atheist, I have no belief in god--not in the Jewish god, not in the Christian god,
not in the Muslim god and not in the Hindu gods. When comparing myself to a
religionist, I like to picture each of us holding an old mayonnaise jar. Perhaps when you
were a child you poked a few holes in the lid of a mayonnaise jar and collected insects
for observation. But in this instance, instead of putting insects in the jar, picture it full of
religious beliefs.

The religionist's jar contains all of the beliefs of his religion. For example, a Catholic's
jar would include heaven and hell, a bearded man in the sky and his human son, virgin
birth, walking on water, people rising from the dead, saints, miracles and the Pope as
the infallible spokesperson for god.

My jar is empty.

Often religionists feel atheists should prove there is no god. Perhaps because they
have been in power for so long, they think they can set the terms of the debate. But
atheists have no belief in god. My jar is empty. I have nothing to prove. All of the
shouting in the world will not change this fact. It is the religionist who has a jar full of
beliefs. And the religionist lacks facts to support his beliefs. So he labels them faith.
Religion requires faith because it has no facts.

[tackattack]

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well EV when ever you want to come to an agreement that it's far more unlikely for an atheist to fully understand faith in God, than a theist and thus commonly confuse http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith with their own colloquial use of http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blind+faith I'll stop bringing it up. Faith isn't about proof, it's in confidently trusting that the gaps that experience has are proven to be just as consistent as the experience. It's not being in denial of anything, nor self-justification or rationalization.

We agree that faith isn't about proof then.

But then, science isn't about proof either. Maths and (other) tautology are about proof. Science is about evidence.

And faith doesn't even have evidence.

Without evidence faith can never be validly evident to anyone, it's just delusive magical and nonsensical thinking. If faith-based thinking were to be evidentially supported it would no longer be faith-based thinking: It would then be evidence-based thinking.

Since faith lacks evidence that's what makes it blind. Faith therefore=blind trust. Trust without evidence, belief without evidence=faith.

The colloquial term "blind faith" is handy because it expresses how faith actually is. But then on the other hand it is but a tautology. It's a tautology like a lot of colloquialisms are.

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Without objective evidence faith can never be validly evident to everyone. Subjective evidence can be indicative of subjective belief based in reality. You're presupposing faith has no evidence. That it's reasoned without experiential evidence and therefore a delusion. From your perspective it seems perfectly valid, because you've had no experiential data to factor into the equation. However, from my perspective, I experience something then try to reason why and how I came to experience it. I don't limit evidence to only the material, nor do I care about it's objectivity. I'm not trying to prove it to anyone. I'm merely trying to validate what's true to me. I believe in the existence of God based on a trust that experiences I can't explain and can't measure lead to the inclination that God exists and is working and has been revealed in my life. Luckily I know lots of other people who have had the same experiences and reached the same conclusions independently, lending even more credence to my own subjective, indicative evidence; thus overcoming the threshold for reality for me.

[Anomalocaris]

Considering how pervasive and ingrained is christian cosmology and doctrine in the culture you and most of the people who reached the same conclusion share, hardly is it possible that you reached the conclusion independently. I somehow expected more from people then "nor do I care about it's objectivity"

[tackattack]

Of course nothing is independent. We're all influenced by our environment throughout the years. I was indoctrinated in the Church and it did influence my early development. Because there was no understanding or substance or experience though I walked away from those beliefs. I did come back to the Church though because of experience, and then grew in understanding, then sought confirmation.