jbernier

It might be more the fact that faith comes Latin fides which includes a notion of trust. In short this is not a recent innovation in the word's history.

jbernier

Thank you, Gurdur. I do so appreciate it when people recognize that those of us who hold "faith" as something valuable are not in the same box as Nazis. Seriously - this is quite a mature attitude.

Godless Wonder: Comparing "faith" to "Nazis" or the "Holocaust" is really quite unproductive. Nothing shuts down discussion quicker than saying anything which could possibly be taken to suggest that you are comparing a conversation partner or potential conversation partner to Nazis. Now, I will of course give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are not suggesting that people of faith (particularly people of Jewish faith) are little different than Nazis.

Craigart14

Fidelity of a partner is a prediction based on evidence. Unfortunately, there is no simple law of logic that can accurately predict human behavior. People change, and they make mistakes.

As for the sun rising, inductive reasoning, based on the "data" that the sun has risen every day for as long as mankind has been around to observe it, predicts that it will rise tomorrow. Deductive reasoining, which works in reverse from induction because it moves from general principles to individual cases, also predicts that the sun will rise tomorrow. Newtonian mechanics tells us that a body in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Since the rising of the sun is actually the 1,000-mile-per-hour spinning of the earth, it would take an awfully big outside force to prevent tomorrows "sunrise."

I think I'll get up and go to work again tomorrow . . .

Craig

Godless Wonder

I never suggested it was recent.

Godless Wonder

Ok, I never meant to say that faith was as bad as Naziism or Stalinism, and I'm not the one who first mentioned those words in this thread. I do mean to say that if you look rationally at faith and try to decide if faith is a good thing, or if ti is a bad thing. well, it certainly seems to me to be a bad thing and definitely not a good thing. Wasn't suggesting it was as bad as those other things. What I meant by "in the same box" was in the box labeled "bad stuff" not the box labelled "good stuff."

What I would like to change is the idea that so many people have that faith is a good and desirable trait for a person to have. It is not.

trendkill

They're substantially the same. Discussion definitely needs to move on from this pseudo-distinction if progress is to be made.

Godless Wonder

You think progress can be made? Heh. You're more optimistic than I am. No progress will ever be made in this area.

DBT

Yes those definitions are essentially the same and they can also define trust and confidence and maybe you can throw in fidelity as well, but for the sake of religious debate this cross drift in meaning is redundent.

The definition that makes faith and belief a form of dishonesty is;

Quote, Online Dictionary;

2.Faith Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief. See Synonyms at trust.

That after all is what the debate is about.

DBT

We are not trying to redefine anything,we are trying to keep the terms accurate regarding the title of this debate.

And your statement appears to be an attempt to poison the well.

Gurdur

Eh ?
Godless Wonder was very specifically talking about the outside world, and changing usage for it. Not just an internal debate on this thread.