braces_for_impact

Thank you others for chiming in with the differences between inference, deduction, self reliance, etc. and faith. IMO, far too much equivocation takes place with the word. It's as if theists wish to convince others that they do have faith and are capable of using it. At times it feels like it is used as a stepping stone to accept their claims about god and his nature and so forth.

Faith is belief without evidence. If I sit in a chair and it supports my weight, did I use faith to sit in the chair? Obviously not. I have no reason to suspect the chair would not hold my weight, it has done so numerous times before, it shows no indication of damage or wear, etc. All of this is simple deduction. It is used to save us time from having to verify every claim constantly. Now if I see the chair is missing a leg, and cracked down the middle, and I still sit in it, believing despite the physical evidence that it will hold my weight, then that is faith. An even better analogy would be to attempt to sit in a chair that simply isn't there. People can tell me the chair is there but that I don't see it. I may be told that I can feel the chair's presence. I may even be told that if I believe strongly enough I will not fall when I sit down in the open air. But we all know what will happen. I will fall on my ass.

Hence faith is irrational, especially in matters of importance.

Robert G. Ingersoll

There is no objective standard, as far as I can tell, so we are in agreement on that.

Obviously, many if not most religious persons believe their beliefs are 'reasonable' for any number of reasons. I believe they are wrong.

I was trying to distinguish between paranormal and supernatural beliefs, based on 'faith', on the one hand, and the every day 'faith', or assumptions that all people share, except the dangerously insane, on the other.

E.g., shooting someone in the heart with a gun, driving a car at 100 mph into a wall, jumping off a 20 story building, etc., are all activities that will result in violent death, and no supernatural agent will intervene to cancel out the 'natural' attributes of nature. These are examples of a 'reasonable assumption' we all share, theists and atheists alike. My point is that religious 'faith' is a whole different ball of wax. Using 'faith' as a weasel word to confuse these two issues is pretty lame. THAT'S the point I was trying to make.

capnkirk

Pardon the belated response to this post, but it relates to a discussion I am having on another thread.

My first thought would not be any of those...for each of the choices offered reflects biases and preconceptions. When confronted by an experience that defies all your preconceptions, it is not constructive to impose those preconceptions on the experience, irrespective of what they are. Denial is a natural response, but not objective. Probably I wouldn't be able to come to a conclusive understanding (after I had ruled out hallucination). It is the weakness of theism to accept the "angel" interpretation at face value, deriving from the presupposition that angels exist, and that angels look like winged creatures with haloes (But what if they don't? Is it purely coincidental that angels look like grown-up cherubs...given that the earliest depiction of cherubs predates xtianity in a land isolated from OT Judaism?) This would be a validation based on conformity to an image presented by medieval artists.

On the other hand, it is the weakness of athiests to persist in belief that it was a hallucination, even after knowing in their heart that it wasn't, simply because this is the first time that they have ever experienced anything so far outside their previous conceptions.

What is left is the knowledge of having seen an unknown being that looked like biblical depictions of angels. no more, no less. The key is to prevent preconceptions from blinding you to other just-as-viable interpretations...or lacking those, to refrain from forming any further conclusion pending further data.

It could have been an angel; it could have been a Vorlon; and yes (to quote Scrooge) it could even have been some undigested morsel from last nights meal...or none of the above.

To summarize all this in light of the thread title, it would take a personal appearance of God directly to me, and then he would have to provide satisfactory explanations of the myriad contradictions in his nominal revelation to us (i.e. scripture). In any case, I would wager that a "real" god would be as displeased and disenchanted with the scriptural accounts as athiests are!

I am sure that this thread is filled with requirements for clear, unambiguous evidence, and the absence of contrary evidence. That is just philosophical BS. It presumes starting with a clean slate. (They are answering another question: "What should god have done differently so as to remove any doubt as to his existence?") But at this point, that is no longer sufficient. The slate is NOT clean. Tons of contrary evidence DOES exist, and that would have to be satisfactorally disposed of first...and the only credible disposer after letting such contradictions stand for all this time would be god himself!

Wiploc

1. Suppose I told you there was a lion in your hall closet. You looked and didn't find it. You decided it wasn't there.

2. Then someone told you there was a catamount. You didn't find that either.

3. Someone said there was an invisible bobcat. You look. If it's there, it's invisible. You see no reason to believe it.

4. You also don't find the lynx, the mountain lion, the pink panther, and several other cats you are told are in your closet.

Would it be unreasonable for you to find yourself predisposed to disbelieve in whatever feral feline you will next be told is in your closet? You don't have a definition of it, but you are prejudiced against it to the extent that it is fair to say that you already disbelieve.
crc

Asha'man

Well said.

In fact, the more important a subject is, the more irrational faith is.

Having faith that you will pass a math test may be a safe belief. Having faith that you can walk across a busy interstate highway without getting hit is dangerously irrational, even insane.

If a belief is important enough that you could be risking your life, you had better find some rock solid evidence to support that belief.

Goliath

Amie,

I have no faith in anything. You are therefore demonstrably wrong.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Melkor

I also.

I actually make a point to think critically as often as possible... a conscious point. If I find faith of any kind, bouncing about in my head, I do my very rational best to purge myself of it and replace it with logic, reason or at least a bit less certainty that faith of all kinds seem to always be associated with.

There is no certainty. When someone is 100% absolutely positive and certain about something, then there is faith involved... even if it is only a minute amount.

I can be reasonably sure about things... I am at times very, very confident that I "know" something, in particular if it is something that is well demonstrated, i.e., "common knowledge".

It was also "common knowledge" that the Earth was flat... heck, by observation alone, it was pretty easy to take that, no faith needed, right? I mean, it looks flat, so it obviously must be.

Well, we all know that it's not now.

Or we think we do. We have to take it as faith that the pictures we have seen of the Earth from space are actually pictures of this planet.

Granted, it is reasonable... but reason does not guarantee certainty.

Does this mean that I wander the world in my day-to-day life, completely bewildered and uncertain about everything?

No. It just means that I acknowledge that there is always room for more information, another point of view. I acknowledge that there is no possible way to have all the answers, and while I am willing to accept things based on reason, logic, or rational extrapolation thereof, it also means that I will reject outright anything that requires faith.

If I hear a traffic report that says the usually-busy route I take to work each morning is completely jammed up with idiot drivers, I do not need to actually be there to assume the report is true.

It is reasonable to make that assumption.

However, if I hear a traffic report on the radio saying that the route I take to work each morning is covered in 10 feet of molten lava, I would have to see that before I would accept it. Since I live in Minnesota, it would not be very reasonable for me to "believe" that without a pretty impressive amount of evidence.

To answer the question posed at the outset of this thread, there is nothing that would bring me to have faith/believe in anything inherently unprovable. The two, to me anyway, are mutually exclusive. If it can be proven, then I shall reserve judgement until I have seen enough evidence to prove its existence to me beyond a reasonable doubt. Given the nature of what most people define as "God" (big "G"), that would be an enormous undertaking to provide me with that much evidence. Of course, if I were presented with enough evidence to "prove" God's existence, then no belief would be required. Result? No faith/belief.

If it ("God") cannot be proven, requires only faith/belief, then it is irrelevent... anything inherently unprovable would be incapable of influencing anything in any measurable way anyhow, so there is no reason for me to suspend logic and reason to take a leap of "faith" for something that is that inconsequential. Result? No faith/belief.

I guess the final answer to the question is "nothing would bring me to believe in/have faith in any deity".

Sephiroth

Yep, same here.

Amie

yes but they are familiar with the concept of an angel so if what they see is what is familiar within the parameters of that concept then they do "see an angel" and not just some winged human. I've seen an angel and I dont really care if you guys think that sounds crazy. I know what I saw.

that you are aware of...

Amie

no I never said anything about *expectations*. I would think it would be "kind of silly" if I said anything of the sort.