rhutchin

One's beliefs may certainly be based on evidence and reason but that evidence and reason would not be enough to provide an empirical proof of that which is believed. I have no problems with Dawkins' comment.

For example, one may believe that a chair will support them if they were to sit on it based on past experience and then empirically text that belief by sitting on the chair (or having someone else do so). Everyone who gets on an airplane pretty much believes that they will get to their destination safely. Usually, that belief is verified.

neilgodfrey

I am getting giddy trying to follow you. All this started when you said that faith undergirds all beliefs, even presuming (falsely) to know that was the case with my "beliefs" too.

I'm suspecting you're about to argue something like "we only believe pigs can't fly because despite the current evidence and reason behind that "belief", we will not know till we put them to the test by dropping every last one of them out of a plane to see just if the next one will prove the exception. And therefore at bottom our 'belief' that pigs can't fly is really a 'faith' statement." No?

rhutchin

Maybe you can propose a definition of "belief" as you think of it. So far, I don't get the impression that you know what you mean by the term.

Julio

I don't think you can fight on two fronts at the same time!
"We" refers to honest, collected and unbiased Bible students. But the verses you [mis]quoted do NOT refer to you or any other Calvinist [TULIP or less virulent fashions]. "Unto you" [plural] is pointing only at the twelve superstitious disciples.
It is dishonest exegesis to throw unrelated verses at your friends.

neilgodfrey

This is all a spinoff from post 42. You said my beliefs were underpinned by faith. When I denied this, you said that what I call my beliefs are not beliefs at all but something else. When I pointed to a common every (rainy) day use of the term 'belief' you also said my use of the word was invalid. Now you are imputing that I don't know what I mean by belief because you cannot seem to understand what I have said. I take the normal dictionary meanings of the term and use particular variations according to their appropriate context as indicated in the dictionary. If you want to insist that belief must also always necessarily in all contexts have a faith component, then you are going beyond the everyday dictionary meaning of the word.

If you want to define belief your way so that it always rests on faith then go ahead. Just don't expect to discuss the nature of belief with me.

This is all a digression from the point where I stated that your argument from faith meant nothing to me. I am only interested in arguing from evidence. You seem to assume that no-one can do that without somehow getting faith mixed up in there somewhere. If that is what you think, we have nothing to discuss with each other.

rhutchin

OK. Let me help you out here. Based on the above, it seems that we can define your "beliefs" as those things that you can see, feel, and hear as in your example of rain. I don't think that is the normal dictionary meaning, but so what. So, if you think that something is true (or somewhat true) when you cannot see it and feel it and hear it, what term would you use for what you think. It is not a belief that you hold; it is a(n) XXXX. What term would you use for XXXX? Your term, XXXX, is what I would call belief and that is the way in which I used it in my original comment. So, to accommodate you, I will revise what I said earlier and say that faith undergirds all those things that people cannot see and hear and feel and all people exercise faith to some degree because no one can see and feel and hear everything.

rhutchin

Honest, collected and unbiased Bible students can include everyone in the world potentially. Those who are confused would be those not addressed by Christ in the cited verses.

show_no_mercy

So the entire bible is one big parable? Is Noah's Flood a parable? Don't you think you're taking this quote just a biiiiiit out of context?

neilgodfrey

This is all simplistic theoretical gobbledegook that might satisfy some people, but it is simply not the case that experience can be so neatly divided between what one can see/hear/feel on one side, and faith on the other. You will have to do better than talk in terms of XXXX. You will have to be specific and put upfront exactly what sorts of situations you are meaning to address.

You seem to be trying to lay down prior ground rules that will undercut the only ground rule I am interested in, and that is that reason and evidence are the rules of the discussion. If you want to deploy postmodernist airyfairyness to deny the normal scientific foundations of my ground rule then sorry, not interested.

renassault

In general the governors provided justice, I don't know why you're disputing that. Occasionally, as seems to have been the case with Jesus and apparently the Christians at that time, there was injustice from locals, not the governors. The fact that these were appointed by men, doesn't mean the exact same men who are insulting Christians, and it's a euphemism for governments' authority. I don't really see your point.