infinity

you're either confusing, or intentionally ignoring, the difference between faith and expectation. i believe i outlined my points in my reply to albert, i will not repeat it here.

WCH

I see nothing wrong with that. It is a matter of faith that your house has not been blown up. It is also a matter of faith for me when I sit down in my chair that the chair is real and I won't break my tail-bone landing on the floor after passing through a holographic chair.

Of course, in those examples it is only a small leap of faith. I know from experience that my chair always has been real and have no reason to doubt it. I still don't know it for absolute certain, but I can be 99.999% sure, and that is definitely sure enough to act upon it as if it were 100%.

Faith is the belief that something is true, even though you don't know it.

Really, what do we actually know? I am thinking and therefore I know I exist... the rest is faith. In practice, the less faith the better, even though all things are faith. For instance, if the light in my room is out then there is a chance that I will sit on my chair and a chance that I will fall. Rather than take that huge leap of faith, I will turn the light on, and instead take the tiny leap of faith that the chair is not a hologram.

Evoken

Good points, I agree with the difference between expectation and faith.



Have a good day,
Asimis

DBT

I'm short on time and Infinity has already given an exellent response,so I'll just state the obvious yet again -

That definition is not mine,its straight out of the dictionary.

Various other definitions of the word faith,although valid according to the dictionary, tend to contradict each other in specific meaning depending on the context of the sentence.

The sheer amount of debate and cofusion simply on the meaning of the word faith is the result of those contradictory definitions.

Albert Cipriani

An expectation of things to come is just another way of saying you have faith. As a secularist, you prefer to call that an expectation whilst I prefer to call that faith. So what?! Call it what you will, we mean the same thing.

Adding the qualification that your expectation (as opposed to my faith) is based upon “consistent history�? is a woefully inept attempt to obfuscate. For I can claim the same. My faith history is recapitulated with every prayer I pray and every time I look out upon this faithless world and shudder in the shadow of its desolation.

And so DID the Supreme Court’s definition of a black man being physical property and equal to 3/5’s of a white man for all political purposes EXIST. Why do you idolize definitions that exist? Why don’t you have the guts to take on bad definitions as being unworthy of existence like I do? Your religious homage to dictionary definitions is unworthy of your obvious intellectual endowments. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Ellis14

Belief in something non-empirical is not a matter of faith. Hope is not a matter of faith. Believing in what you wish for, what you hope for; believing without evidence, certain convinction with insufficient proof is faith, and is non-rational. The fact the religions have historically decided to cash in on this trait of human wishful-thinking, couched it in rhetoric and mysticism, wrote poetically about it and called it faith, doesn't make it any better.
I will not apologise for pointing out that someone is being irrational. Faith is not a virtue, it is a vice, it a "virus of the mind", as Richard Dawkins calls it. It's one of the last lingering traits of our primitive superstitious past, and IMO is the singest biggest cause of human misery and stagnation in our history: the ability to dispel evidence and reason, and just believe, as an act of will?? That is not what I call rational! Is it what you call rational?

As I said, faith is non-reason, faith is capricious. If you don't agree you must show that my definition of (religious) faith is wrong.

Evoken

I think something is wrong with this paragraph. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and allow you to clarify.

Cliche thinking and you ignore the fact that atheism is also a meme or as you like to put it a "virus of the mind".

BadBadBad

I don't have any problem with faith. I just have a problem with folks that tell me I must have faith. I think that's where the dishonesty comes in.

In grade school, my son announced he had found a watch. At first, I had faith. It simply didn't occur to me that he wasn't telling the truth. Later though, there were questions. More and more, the answers rang untrue. I called the teacher, and someone was missing a watch. I confronted him and assured him that I knew the absolute truth. Before I told him what I knew, I gave him one last chance to come clean.

He still assured me I was wrong, and that I needed to have faith in him. I could have done that from the beginning. We've all seen parents who have faith in their children despite compelling evidence. At somepoint though it changes from being faith to denial.

Ellis14

Not sure what is unclear, but here goes:

I hope I will be a billionaire, but I don't believe I will. So hope and faith are not the same thing. Faith entails a deep conviction.

I also stated the faith has always be touted by most religions as the "large shield" (St. Paul) to protect us from the Devil, or a virtue necessary for any true believer. Jesus expounded the importance of faith and said "if you have faith the size of a mustard grain you could move this mountain from here to here". (He lied). Paul said again in Hebrews that faith was "the assured realisation of things hoped for; the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld". In other words, knowing what we believe, instead of believing what we know. Holding conviction whether you can see it or not. See in the sense of course of detecting it at all.

Now, if faith is belief without evidence, as I maintain, then what Jesus, Paul and most other religions are advocating is blind belief. Why? Why not just say, "look around people, it's pretty obvious that I am God's son and that he exists"? Why is faith so important? Is not the evidence all around us? Perhaps it's God's own fault for conceling his existence from us so well, he then turns around and demands that we take a leap of faith to believe?!Perhaps faith is God's ultimate joke, and a bad one at that.

The most obvious critique of faith is that because it is belief without evidence, (evidence is our criteria for evaluating a claim), it can be used to support any religion or belief, without precedent, on a whim, simply because we want to, we've been taught to, brainwashed to. In this context, I can't see how any theist can refute the charge that faith is fickle and capricious.

Of course, some don't. There are many theists, some on this board, that don't limit their belief to faith. They think they have very good reasons for belief in God, and think that the evidence supports their position. Fair enough. I'm not arguing against theism here, I am rejecting faith.

When a theist tells me how they reject religion B in favour of their religion, on faith, logically, I'll become a theist. Of course, I've stacked the deck there, because for faith to be logically valid it would have to be based on evidence, in which case it wouldn't be faith.
I hate clichés.

I like to think of atheism as a result of healthy skepticism and critical thinking. If so, critical thinking is simply the cure to the faith virus.

DBT

Whether it's expectation or faith depends on what it's based on -inductive reasoning or wishfull thinking.
That's what makes the differance,there is no preferance


It's simply the truth Albert,deal with it.



But can your Faith history be confirmed to be true by an objective observer?



I agree with your sentiment,and that's exactly what I'm trying to do with the word faith.