Gemma Therese

Evidence is not proof.

Gemma Therese

Jamie_L

No. But they are related.

Faith is neither proof nor evidence.

And fish is not chicken.

Or something.

Jamie

Gemma Therese

God asks us to think, but to surrender our logic ... to use our mental capacity not so much to reason this and that, but to recognize that we will never reach Him with our mind alone.

Gemma Therese

Gemma Therese

We all have the same basic eveidence. Perception is the difference.

I look at Catherine of Siena and see a beautiful saint.

You look at her and see ... a mentally-ill hysteric?

Same person, same life, different perception.

Gemma Therese

Yellum Notnef

Heres another vote for 'mentally ill hysteric'.

Daggah

Our mind is all we've got.

Ensign Steve

That is exactly what I am talking about. Saying that god asks this of us assumes his existence. If I have no faith that he exists, then I have no reason to believe that he asks me to recognize anything.

Jen

Undercurrent

A mode of usage that, conveniently, is functionally identical to, "use logic all the time, except when doing so leads you to conclusions that contradict the church. Then stop thinking and accept what we say."

Old Man

I think that particular definition from m-w.com is frivolous. If there was proof, then it would still be seen as unproven by the uneducated, none-the-less. Einstein was perceived to have "faith" in his theory of relativity, even though he had proved it to himself, but not to others, because others could not understand his proof.

So faith exists independently of the existence of proof. But the word "belief" in the bible is usually contrasted with "sight":

2Cr 5:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight

So the believer is said to walk by faith, because he cannot see the object of his faith, even though he has poved to himself that the object of his faith is real enough, though not atomic.

The phrase "genuine faith" is objectively meaningful and serves to distinguish those with faith from those without faith - i.e. those who reject the bible (and so can claim no rationale or reasonable basis for their faith), yet who, bizarrely, claim to have faith.

The propaganda I was talking about was Atheists believing there are good grounds for rejecting Christ. In fact there are none. To believe that there are is propaganda. If Christ could not be proven a fraud by the Jews in the days before AD70 and the destruction of Jersualem, of which Christ prophecied - and the Jews were inveterate enemies of Christians - then there is no way that anyone on this WWW site will be able to prove it.

The world had its chance to prove Christ a fraud, and was not able to. Neither will you, nor anyone else. That's the problem that atheists face. They can't prove Christ was a fraud. And so they ought not to belittle or condemn those with faith, because atheists can offer no alternative.

Undercurrent

Hopefully, the one without faith will point out the institutions every few blocks to which children a brought regularily before they can even understand the words, and trained to sit, stand, kneel, sing, &c on cue for the rest of their lives, all in the name of faith. If "faithlessness" is a result of propaganda, where are the equivalent institutions for it?