Tercel

Critical Thinking Made Ez,
Why do you insist on relating faith to belief (especially belief + hope) when there is precious little evidence the Bible writers using the word meant anything of the sort.

Epitome and I have already demonstrated to you <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000012" target="_blank">here</a> that the meaning of "faith" as used in the Bible is best described as relating to Trust.

critical thinking made ez

After reading every verse in the NT using the word Faith, I see your point. I grant that it is best used as a type of Trust... as I step aside.

[ March 10, 2002: Message edited by: critical thinking made ez ]</p>

99Percent

Tercel: All information about my nose comes from empirical observation. My nose might not really exist - as all empirical observation could be false to fact.

Some more dubious impirical observations (or transmitted knowledge) could be false to fact, but your immediate reality is doubtless true. You can see your nose at any waking moment by crossing your eyes, and not only that it is the same nose, with the same characteristics. This is what I call logical persistence of reality.

Now although I'm not a solipsist, it's certainly something we must take into consideration.

Its a complete copout, by which you want to rely on so you can go into your ridiculous faith phase.

Hence I can only believe my nose exists not know it.

You certainly know that your nose exists. The alternate reality that your nose is nonexistant is absurd, so there is no alternative and therefore no need for belief, it becomes complete knowledge.

However it seems customary to use the word "know" in general when belief reaches a certainly level. Hence I say "I know my nose exists" even though I cannot know it truly and absolutely.

You say you know you nose exists when there is no other alternative this is the certainty level you reach when belief or faith is no longer necessary to be willed.

However, in contrast, God is not an empirical observation.

That is precisely why you need faith to believe in God.

While it is true that a great deal of what I know about God comes through empirical observation (generally by reading the scriptures) God can also be known by the testimony of the Spirit in our hearts.

Albert's position (correct me if I am wrong) is that God is never completely knowable, thus faith is unavoidable. The (strong) atheist position is that God is not even possible to begin with, so belief is discarded, it becomes in fact knowledge.

Thus the Spirit can reveal to us the truth about God in a way surpassing understanding, without us relying on the not-fully-reliable empirical observation. Hence, not only can I be said to "know" that God exists because my belief has reached a certain level like in the case of my nose, but I can truely know that God exists through the faith he has placed in my heart.

You are contradicting yourself, if you in fact know that God exists, like you know your nose exists, you will no longer need any faith. I certainly don't need faith to know that my nose exists. I just know.

Tercel

You can't prove that: You're simply assuming that solipsism is false. Which is the whole point in issue.

I see a pink blur if I cross my eyes, the only way I know it as my "nose" is by inference based on past experience.

I agree solipsism is a cop-out, which is why I'm not a solipsist. However it does have the potential to undermine empirical reasoning, you shouldn't just ignore the fact that it could potentially be true.

The non-existence of my nose is possible. Something might be interfering with my perceptions in such a way that empirical observation demonstrates me to have a nose when really I haven't. Certainly the non-existence of my nose does not imply contradiction. Now I do believe my nose exists, I am very very sure of its existence, but it is possible that it doesn't really exist and hence I don't truly know that my nose exists. It is not complete knowledge.

Whoops small mistake there I wrote "certainly", I meant "certain" and not "certainty" - but I note that even that would have been ambiguous, so let me rephrase:
There exists some level X, where X is a degree of certainty of belief, at which it is customary to use the word "know" to represent belief above this certainty level.

I am not using this understanding of "know" here, since you appear to be using it to mean an absolute knowledge which could not possibly be false. Or at least that is how I interpret your statement:
"You say you know you nose exists when there is no other alternative this is the certainty level you reach when belief or faith is no longer necessary to be willed."

No, it is precisely why God's existence is capable of being more certain than the existence of my nose.
You don't need faith to believe in God's existence: You need to believe in God's existence before you can have faith.

Possibly. I'm not sure I entirely follow Albert's position.

Yes.

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Haven't you been reading what I've written?
<strong>You don't need faith to believe or know God exists.</strong>
Not only that but,
<strong>Faith has nothing to do in believing in God's existence</strong> and <strong>Interpretations of faith that suggest it is related at all to belief and/or hope are Biblically untenable</strong> (As Critical Thinking made Ez seems to have agreed )

<strong>EXACTLY</strong>. Same with God.
(Save for the minor quibble that you don't actually know your nose exists, you only believe it does - see above)

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />
Tercel

Zar

Yeah, maybe, but all the other reasons I noted explain why I and others cannot just shrug and accept the Trinity. This also ignores that it is not a very testable theory, since the only reason it exists is because somebody wrote some arbitrary stuff in a old book whose veracity has been successfully challenged in many ways and which didn't even bother to supply its own explanation because the authors didn't seem to think that deeply about the implications of what they were saying along those lines. What extra-human evidence is there for the Trinity? That is, what evidence is there outside what anyone could have made up and written on a scrap of paper? You can work out the logical implications of fire-breathing dragons for a book of fiction you are writing, this does not make them real.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Tercel,
You've made great progress in admitting the following:


Yes, it's where I get part of it. You've unearthed the taproot of the Protestant disease. What you admit to here is its non-objective, emanative, self-authenticating raison d'être. The radial root feeding into this central axis of unreality, is the non-systematic, non-legalistic, non-president setting non-standards of the Protestant non-intellectual tradition.

You argue:


Piggybacking "super" on the word "rational" does not raise your argument out of the quicksand since you freely admit that your knowledge is not rationally derived. This is a clumsy way of saying you are confused.

If you were less confused or perhaps more honest, you would say that you have non-rational direct information about God (the burning in the bosom) which you choose to assent to as being direct knowledge of God. You also have rational indirect information about God in the form of the Bible which you choose to assent to as being indirect knowledge of God.

Now, to get off the hook with 99% and myself, all you have to do is admit that your free will assent, which elevates your direct and indirect information regarding God to your knowledge regarding God, is an act of Faith.

Faith is acting on what we see darkly as if we saw it clearly. The act is irrelevant: it may be an act of trust, an act of raw belief, an act of attempted prayer, or an act of martyrdom. The point is only that it is an act based upon a non-empirically informed free will.

Faith is the incorporating act of assenting to information whereby that information is transubstantiated into your knowledge. Knowledge, by definition, is the melding of the beholder with the beholden. This is the metaphysical basis whereby your faith in God (read: information you assent to and incorporate into yourself as knowledge) weds you to Him, allowing you to become one with Him and be saved. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Tercel

No, it's a not-so-subtle attempt at avoiding the use of the word "irrational" where it's not entirely applicable.

That's exactly what I am saying.

Since that's exactly the position I'm arguing against, I'm hardly likely to agree -never mind "admit" anything.
My free will assent is not an act of Faith, and such assent is completely unrelated to the word "Faith".

Nope. Faith is trusting someone with something and not trying to do it yourself.

And that is where I disagree. Empirical information or lack thereof, I hold is not directly related to Faith.

I would call that "believing" not "faith".

theophilus

It may also be characteristic of a lack of mental discipline, as it is here.

theophilus

I am amazed at the constant resort to name calling in lieu of argumentation. My remark was part of a larger argument and therefore, unlike yours, has relevance.

theophilus

Every time I come here.