I think you mean to say that they don't necessarily believe current science rather than that they are ignorant. Can you, for example, tell me where the water came from, because it wasn't simply rain. Or can you tell me how many animals it would have taken or the exact dimensions of the ark?
Probably not, you can, however, dismiss it without any real consideration because the propaganda you are conditioned with doesn't say that it is a real possibility. This is called science? Science is never wrong?
I'm offended at the implication that to have faith you must be ignorant. I also find it offensive in a similar way when believers imply that being without faith indicates a lack of morality. Neither of those implications are well founded or necessarily true.
I actually side with the atheist skeptic in this case. The degree whether your faith is 'blind' depends on your perspective on the possibility of different choices. You are not off to a good start.
I agree that what you say is true for true faith. When faith is based on knowledge it is unshakable and can move mountains. Probably this is not always the case. Sometimes faith can be very tentative. However, the materialist mind is yet blind.
The materialist mind holds the objects of the senses to be truer and more lasting than the awareness that powers the senses. They hold onto a peculiar idea that the objects (brain chemicals) that the senses perceive are the creators of the senses. Which means that the dream that a materialist sees is itself creating the dream. That is the materialistic view.
For me, OTOH, the sensual objects are dreamlike creations of the everlasting awareness. Objects come and go but the source of those creations does not. A materialist mind, distorts even Buddha's teaching that 'All things are transitory and without self', to mean that sensory objects objects are all there is, without any basis for their (temporary) existence. When Buddha teaches that "There is an unborn, uncreated, unformed that is the basis of all discernment", the so-called materialist Buddhists interpret that the Buddha's 'Unborn' is born of mediation practice, forgetting the basic definition 'the unborn'.
So, to a mind that has never contemplated on creation of dream objects in dream and also never contemplated on the meaning of absence of objects before and after 'the bodily existence', our faith (knowledge) that there is a lasting basis for the 'world of objects', comes as blind faith to the materialist mind.
Isha Upanishad
O Pushan! O Sun, sole traveller of the heavens, controller of all, son of Creator Prajapati, withdraw Thy rays and gather up Thy burning effulgence. Now through Thy Grace I behold Thy blessed and glorious form. The Purusha (Effulgent Being) who dwells within Thee, I am He.
OK , then. Let's start with faith. I'd like to point out something that often bothers me about the skeptical's take on faith. it's rather insulting to a believer. Faith isn't blind, it's something that is built up through knowledge. Its like the faith one establishes over time in a relationship, with a friend or spouse, for example. You build trust in someone by getting to know them. Because they give you no reason to feel otherwise.
Test even the inspired expression. (Acts 17:11 / 1 John 4:1-3 / 2 Thessalonians 2:2)
You are correct. Faith is equivalent to trust. And though you can have blind faith or blind trust in someone or something, most people develop faith/trust as you say, over time and with experience. Faith/trust is earned through evidence. You put trust in an individual, because over time by their actions they have provided evidence that they are trustworthy.
As a skeptic, the problem that I encounter is when I am talking with a theist and we're discussing the evidence for why I should trust in whatever god claim they are making, there comes a point at which they say something like, "You just have to have faith... or you just have to take it on faith..." because the evidence that I require to find the claim to be trustworthy isn't available. That is to say, at some point I must blindly trust or have blind faith in some aspect of their argument.
You are correct. Faith is equivalent to trust. And though you can have blind faith or blind trust in someone or something, most people develop faith/trust as you say, over time and with experience. Faith/trust is earned through evidence. You put trust in an individual, because over time by their actions they have provided evidence that they are trustworthy.
That is exactly why I believe in Baha'u'llah, faith/trust earned through evidence. His actions over time have provided evidence that He was trustworthy.
OK , then. Let's start with faith. I'd like to point out something that often bothers me about the skeptical's take on faith. it's rather insulting to a believer. Faith isn't blind, it's something that is built up through knowledge. Its like the faith one establishes over time in a relationship, with a friend or spouse, for example. You build trust in someone by getting to know them. Because they give you no reason to feel otherwise.
Test even the inspired expression. (Acts 17:11 / 1 John 4:1-3 / 2 Thessalonians 2:2)
I keep hearing that. No one is confusing faith with knowledge, they are making the assumption that you can't have both. If you know a thing with out seeing it that is faith. Just because you can't see a thing doesn't mean that you are blind, the thing isn't there yet. Faith is built on trust. Blind faith is trusting without reason. Sometimes you just have to roll the dice. Sometimes you have no choice but to have faith without knowledge. Blind faith is trusting in something that you can't see because, not only is it not there but you are ignorant of it. You can't have real trust and faith in something you have no knowledge of.
Give an example, please? Generalization is to be taken with a grain of salt. It's built upon experience. If you put your hand in fire enough times you get burned. It's built upon experience, which is intimate knowledge.
What about arrogance? You can have faith with or without knowledge and be arrogant. The former is just arrogance and the later, blind, is over confidence.
Hmmm . . . Belief isn't guessing, belief is faith, that may or may not be based upon knowledge. Guessing is speculation and it can be educated or uneducated, i.e., blind or informed. Beliefs, whether informed or not, should be tested. I may be a confident builder of roller coasters but I ain't gettin' on the thing until it's safely tested.
You can't have sin in ignorance. You can be ignorant of your sin, or of what sin is, but you can't sin in ignorance. If you don't know the law how can you sin against it?
I keep hearing that. No one is confusing faith with knowledge, they are making the assumption that you can't have both. If you know a thing with out seeing it that is faith. Just because you can't see a thing doesn't mean that you are blind, the thing isn't there yet. Faith is built on trust. Blind faith is trusting without reason. Sometimes you just have to roll the dice. Sometimes you have no choice but to have faith without knowledge. Blind faith is trusting in something that you can't see because, not only is it not there but you are ignorant of it. You can't have real trust and faith in something you have no knowledge of.
Give an example, please? Generalization is to be taken with a grain of salt. It's built upon experience. If you put your hand in fire enough times you get burned. It's built upon experience, which is intimate knowledge.
You can't have sin in ignorance. You can be ignorant of your sin, or of what sin is, but you can't sin in ignorance. If you don't know the law how can you sin against it?
So, though I can't yet see the fruit in winter time, I know the apple tree in my back yard will produce fruit in the summer. If that faith?
Hmmm . . . Belief isn't guessing, belief is faith, that may or may not be based upon knowledge. Guessing is speculation and it can be educated or uneducated, i.e., blind or informed. Beliefs, whether informed or not, should be tested. I may be a confident builder of roller coasters but I ain't gettin' on the thing until it's safely tested.
You can't have sin in ignorance. You can be ignorant of your sin, or of what sin is, but you can't sin in ignorance. If you don't know the law how can you sin against it?
You don't know, you assume based on past experience. They may be one or many reasons the tree does not produce fruit. Example where I live is walnut country, last year a series of storms just when the fruit was setting effectively destroyed the harvest.
You are still laboring under the mistaken premise that faith is more than the definition.
There is a point of law which boils down to "ignorance of the law is no excuse"
New international version gives this:
Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord.
I think "fruits of the soil" just means "fruits that have been grown". It doesn't mean "rotten fruit" IMO. [And easy seen when common sense is used "one offers to please God; so rotten fruit is highly unlikely"]
I never understood why Abel's faith was greater than Cain's just looking at what they offered.
Today I read it again, and saw it in a different light:
6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
Cain was full of hate. And God wants us to offer [give up] our hate. He does not care about fruits as an offering. And anyway fruits are given by God to us, so kind of silly to offer God his own stuff IMO. Seeing it in this new way, it finally makes sense to me.
What about arrogance? You can have faith with or without knowledge and be arrogant. The former is just arrogance and the later, blind, is over confidence.
Concerning the scriptural basis for Christianity the skeptics have good reason to question any claims of Christianity concerning the 'evidence' claimed that the gospels date and authorship, and the lack of provenance and authorship of Genesis and the Pentateuch that would make it reliable as a basis of revealed scripture, which the church fathers and unknown authors and editors of the gospels claimed a literal interpretation.
Other than 'faith' what is the basis for this 'belief' and trust of the scripture?
I never understood why Abel's faith was greater than Cain's just looking at what they offered.
Today I read it again, and saw it in a different light:
6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
Cain was full of hate. And God wants us to offer our hate. He does not care about fruits as an offering. And anyway fruits are given by God to us, so kind of silly to offer God his own stuff IMO. Seeing it in this new way, it finally makes sense to me.
The problem from the skeptics perspective is the lack of provenance and authorship of Genesis and the Pentateuch that remotely demonstrate it as history and whether Cain and Abel were in reality real persons in history.
