A Believer's Thoughts on Faith

[Huggy Bear]

Weren't you guys just telling me that belief without evidence = faith?

Disbelieve without evidence is not faith.

Stating that you KNOW God exists, without evidence, by your guys own definition, is faith.

In response to the OPs long line of bovine excremen,t all faith is is something you hold to be true despite evidence to the contrary.

Therefore stating that you KNOW God doesn't exist, without evidence, is faith by the same definition.

Y'all came out in defense of GUBU's statement, so don't try and back pedal off it now.

[The Grand Nudger]

..oh but I do, that you have a particular reaction to that is a you thing.

Weren't you guys just telling me that belief without evidence = faith?

Sure, though I think faith is a little different than that, personally.  Why would it be relevant, though? Are you under the impression that I know god doesn't exist....without evidence? Wrong again. I think it's interesting that as faith has shrunk, the faithful have consoled themselves with the idea that even if they can't demonstrate that their god exists, at least no one can say it doesn't, for a fact. A bit like negotiating with death, I think.

[Jehanne]

We have evidence of coincidences no matter how unlikely. No such evidence exists for gods and any attempt to make evidence subjective and non-universal is to render the whole concept useless. At least in terms of epistmology.

"It's not impossible, just very, very improbable" -- per Zooey.

[Mister Agenda]

Disbelieve without evidence is not faith.

Stating that you KNOW God exists, without evidence, by your guys own definition, is faith.

In response to the OPs long line of bovine excremen,t all faith is is something you hold to be true despite evidence to the contrary.

Therefore stating that you KNOW God doesn't exist, without evidence, is faith by the same definition.

Y'all came out in defense of GUBU's statement, so don't try and back pedal off it now.

Take it up with someone who says they KNOW God (and I take it this means any conceivable capital G creator God) doesn't exist.

[The Grand Nudger]

Capital G or lower case - I talk about this all the time. Apologists tend to want to argue with a straw version of a given persons position - but if and when they do encounter a person who actually would argue the gist of their straw - the results are as underwhelming as ever. I don't mind saying that I know, for a fact, that every single god and kind of god ever described by man is a narrative device. A character in a story who's mouth is useful - but nothing else.

Common retorts on the boards have been..

You don't know everything!
-Sure don't, but I don't need to know everything to know one thing.

What if there's something in some corner of the cosmos that you can't possibly know about that has godlike abilities?
-Cool...hope so! What's that got to do with the narrative devices humans use to posit their normative principles?

Now we can add:
That's faith!
-I don't think so. I think faith is confidence in a proposition beyond what the evidence for that proposition can support. I think this is a fair description, personally - it describes a thing I also experience, something relatable and sensible. Where you might have some evidence for something - but it's spun out into some greater claim that's harder to cash with whatever evidence referenced.

[Jehanne]

As an atheist, I freely admit that God may exist.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yet another thing not all atheists agree on. It's a shame that nutbars want to constantly hassle you, for example, with my position...a shame, and wasted effort. Not that their efforts would be more productive if they did take that up directly with me or people like me - which might explain why they contain themselves to people they interpret to be undecided- as if a person would just fall into their religion..like gravity, should they come to believe that a god does exist.

The fullest (or traditional, I guess?) expression of religion surrounds what we think is true - not the set of things that we think can't be proven false. I think this avenue of debate is one expression of the change in contemporary religion that witchdoctors are always complaining about when they swirl the drain of nominal christianity in their own flocks. The general idea is that..sure..there's an element of faith to confidence in gods plan - but that it's existence is (or should be conceived of as) provable - and demonstrably proven. The trouble here is that provable things are, by default, disprovable. The mistake..at least on their part and some good number of their critics, is believing that their claims to normative principles - what their religions actually are - are somehow damaged or invalidated in the event that their conceptually provable god is proven false.

[Gwaithmir]

As an atheist, I freely admit that God may exist.

I don't. The Christian God has too many contradictory attributes.

[Angrboda]

As an atheist, I freely admit that God may exist.

I don't. The Christian God has too many contradictory attributes.

I hold myself to the same standards as I hold others. Until I can definitively conclude that the Christian god does not exist based on deductive argument, I keep an open mind.

[TheJefe817]

I don't. The Christian God has too many contradictory attributes.

I hold myself to the same standards as I hold others.  Until I can definitively conclude that the Christian god does not exist based on deductive argument, I keep an open mind.

I don't think I really understood this, to my great shame, until I started to examine my own doubts more deeply.  I actually explained the difference to my daughter this weekend in terms of burden of proof and it was like a lightbulb went off for her too.

Of course, I used to also say in tandem with the open mind that I actually hoped that christianity was true and heaven real.  Now I've concluded that if the "true" involves the bible as written, I hope it is not - I have no desire to spend eternity in North Korea.