HerDotness
Lady Babbleon
Gets my vote. I've long been fond of that Twain quote.
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Faith Is Not Belief Without Evidence
- Thread starter ChristineES
- Start date
Gets my vote. I've long been fond of that Twain quote.
Someone can have all the evidence they want and still need faith: you can have all kinds of evidence that your best friend won't stab you in the back, or that your SO won't cheat on you, or that the people you're doing business with will cut you a square deal, but believing all of that still requires faith and amounts to faith.
By the same token most of what you're prefacing that faith on is personal and probably wouldn't mean much to anybody else. A lot of it would be impossible to demonstrate to anyone else.
By the same token most of what you're prefacing that faith on is personal and probably wouldn't mean much to anybody else. A lot of it would be impossible to demonstrate to anyone else.
Naw....that would be to confuse the terms "faith" & "inductive reasoning".
Examples:
Faith: 14 angels fit on the head of a pin. This cannot be tested.
Inductive reasoning: There is much evidence to support confidence that the sun will rise again tomorrow.
Now you're just playing with definitions, and it looks like your definition of "faith" is circular: if it's a reasonable belief, no faith required. If faith is required, it must be an unreasonable belief.
Faith is emotional as much as intellectual: you can have all the proof you need of something and still need faith to off-set doubt (another thing that's as emotional as it is intellectual).
HerDotness
Lady Babbleon
Except, I'd call this "reasonable expectation" rather than faith of the variety that is being considered here.
I don't think the two are as similar as you suggest, especially when the answer to a question such as, "How can a virgin be made pregnant by a spirit, have a baby and still be a virgin?" is "We can't understand how that could be, so we have to have faith that God did that." That's clearly in the realm of "Faith is believing what you know ain't so" for me.
I guess it's a good thing I don't need your approval in order to have what I consider proof. I know my proof wouldn't mean anything to you- nor even my definition of it. It is my opinion
About the word "Gnosis" I had to look it up- the meaning, according to free online dictionary is: Intuitive apprehension of spiritual truths, an esoteric form of knowledge sought by the Gnostics. I am not sure why you would give me this definition, as I am not a Gnostic- or maybe you take the form for any spiritual person.
If we're just talking about the intellectual aspects, that would work. But like I said in my last post, faith isn't purely intellectual, it's also emotional.
Someone can have enough evidence to justify "reasonable expectation", and still have doubts. Pushing those doubts aside requires faith no matter how much evidence there is.
For a lot of people, it isn't.
My examples are cromulent. I was politely not pointing out who was "playing with definitions".
There's a good reason that we don't refer to the "faithful" as the "inductive reasoningful".
I think it rather presumptuous to tell we believers that we "know it ain't so". How would you know? I do believe in the virgin birth- just because you don't believe it doesn't mean that others don't believe in it. Some people may lie to themselves, but that doesn't mean we all do. Speak for yourself and stop speaking for any of us.
Kind of hard to have a debate about something unless we're sure we're talking about the same thing.
It's possible that a lot of people can be wrong.
But aside from this weakness of consensus, the faithful believe things which are not observable or testable.
Context would steer us towards appropriate definitions. If one compares inductive reasoning with faith, the former implies a more rigorous definition,
so the latter would be discussed in the same context. Certainly, the less formal definition of "faith" as confidence in something would be a different sense.
Thus, the 2 terms are not equivalent, even though they might at times be used to describe the same thing.
Doesn't matter if they're wrong or not. I'm just saying that if someone believes in a God that can create an entire universe, the belief that that same God could get a woman pregnant and turn her back into a virgin afterwards wouldn't fall into the category of "believing what you know ain't so" for those people.
"The faithful". Unless this is a new religious movement that I haven't heard of yet, I would say you're generalizing a little bit.
Problem? Nah....I like the idea that no one has exclusive claim to "the truth".There is a big problem when we never know who's wrong.
If someone compares inductive reasoning with faith and leaves it at that, then in my opinion they're using an incomplete definition of "faith".
I don't consider that a less formal definition of faith. Any definition that discounts the confidence aspect is talking about something completely different, IMO.
Why even call that faith? At that point, "faith" is a completely superfluous term.
I think both aspects have to be taken into consideration in order to have anything like a reasonable discussion about the whole concept of faith.
If you're going to go by Mark Twain's definition and equate faith with self-deception or delusion, "believing what you know ain't so", then you're talking about something completely different from what religious people are talking about when they say "faith".
I think you're misunderstanding the terminology. Maybe I should've picked a less obscure analogy.
Let me try explaining it directly: if you hold beliefs about the world, they might be correct or incorrect. If you think about how your beliefs can be tested, or what your beliefs imply and how those implications can be tested, then you're able to do the tests that can help tell you just how correct your beliefs are.
OTOH, if you never test your beliefs, you really have no idea whether they're correct or not.
If you care about whether your beliefs are correct, then you need to seek out verification of them.
I think you're missing my point.
If there really is a god out there causing people's religious experiences, then I think it would be unreasonable to assume that the only thing that this god is doing is causing religious experiences.
As another analogy, someone might claim that they broke their leg when they were hit by a car, but breaking legs isn't the only thing that cars do. They also leave tire tracks, for instance. Even if we had hundreds of people claiming broken legs caused by being hit by a car, if we couldn't find tire tracks anywhere, something wouldn't be adding up, because if enough cars are out there to cause all those broken legs, then we'd expect to find tire tracks all over the place, too.
Do you understand what I'm saying? A god running around giving people religious experiences almost certainly wouldn't ONLY be running around giving people religious experiences.
The most famous fable of the Dubner Maggid is about the way in which the Maggid was able to find such fitting fables. When asked about this the Maggid told: Once I was walking in the forest, and saw tree after tree with a target drawn on it, and at the center of each target an arrow. I then came upon a little boy with a bow in his hand. "Are you the one who shot all these arrows", I asked. "Yes!" he replied. "Then how did you always hit the center of the target?" I asked. "Simple", said the boy, "first I shoot the arrow, then I draw the target"
In other words, it's best to work from where you are and what you've got. What one person calls as evidence for their faith could probably be argued from some angle and maybe even refuted. Faith doesn't need evidence. You don't have evidence that moving your foot will make you spontaneously combust. But I'm sure by some odd chance it could happen. Yet you believe with the same certainty it wont happen, despite not knowing for certain. Belief in not spontaneously combusting is a belief based on observation of previous experience. But it isn't a certainty. Simply a logical and reliable deduction based on probability. But, you still don't know despite the fact that your deduction is made by previous evidence which would say otherwise. Faith isn't necessarily based on evidence. Evidence can be used to support your faith, sure. But, you don't need evidence to have faith. There's people who say they don't know if there is a G-d due to lack of evidence, yet will still pray anyways and say "Thank G-d." I don't believe faith needs evidence because people believe wholeheartedly and devoutly in things which they've never even sought to verify as true by means of evidence.
In other words, it's best to work from where you are and what you've got. What one person calls as evidence for their faith could probably be argued from some angle and maybe even refuted. Faith doesn't need evidence. You don't have evidence that moving your foot will make you spontaneously combust. But I'm sure by some odd chance it could happen. Yet you believe with the same certainty it wont happen, despite not knowing for certain. Belief in not spontaneously combusting is a belief based on observation of previous experience. But it isn't a certainty. Simply a logical and reliable deduction based on probability. But, you still don't know despite the fact that your deduction is made by previous evidence which would say otherwise. Faith isn't necessarily based on evidence. Evidence can be used to support your faith, sure. But, you don't need evidence to have faith. There's people who say they don't know if there is a G-d due to lack of evidence, yet will still pray anyways and say "Thank G-d." I don't believe faith needs evidence because people believe wholeheartedly and devoutly in things which they've never even sought to verify as true by means of evidence.