No. Whether or not the evidence would convince me is immaterial. What would matter is if what she had would even be considered evidence at all by someone who already wasn’t a member of of her particular faith. Is the evidence she puts forth available for examination, or is it of the “The birds singing in the morning is proof!” variety?
So you don’t have to find the evidence compelling, it’s just that the source and quality of the evidence have to meet your criteria for acceptability?
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but that’s not regular faith you’ve got there, that’s blind faith!”
“What, why?”
“Well, I don’t reckon your preacher has submitted his teachings to the rigors of the scientific method, or an outside panel of objective fact-finders. Once he does that and they approve of his methods and conclusions, then you can call what you have ‘faith’. For now, you’re just blind.”
No I’m thinking more of something like a “Jesus helped me turn my life around or ‘reconcile with my father’ / ‘forgive my enemy’ / ‘emerge from depression’ / ‘understand myself’” kind of thing. Things based on personal experience that can have other rational explanations, but which the believer attributes to God.
I guess it could also apply to someone who comes to faith through ontological arguments for God, as unconvining as those arguments may be to others.
From now on, would you mind responding to the words I say instead of the wildly imaginative conversations going on in your head? I said nothing even close to that. I said nothing about the source or quality of the evidence-only that it should be something that an average person would consider to be evidence.
At which point the question is asked as to why she believes it was God. What is it, what evidence exists, that moves this from the blind faith to the faith category?
That doesn’t mean I don’t know that there are mechanistic/probabilistic explanations for how this woman survived, but nobody has access to that.
Also, as John Mace said - the placebo effect.
What kept her alive? The luck of the draw.
What caused them to keep looking? Blind faith.
Good one. Thank you.
edited to add: I think this falls under The American Heritage Dictionary definition: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
In general, I agree. But I can think of at least one counterexample:
To a person suffering from depression, it might take something like blind faith to believe that life is (or will become) worth living, or that they are worth loving, even when their brain or their personal experience or their observation of their surroundings seem to be telling them the opposite.
There may well be other situations analogous to this one in which blind faith (including but not limited to blind faith in certain religious doctrines) is admirable.
But then, like Eonwe is arguing, you’re making yourself the arbiter of what constitutes acceptable evidence.
There was a fascinating radio story I heard years ago that sticks in my head. Radio Lab, maybe? Anyway, it was all about lying. Some researchers devised a survey full of questions where almost everyone had an embarrassing answer (e.g., “Sometimes I find defecating to be pleasurable,” “I have imagined killing people I know in detail”), and then they asked people. The idea behind the survey was that if you answered questions in the non-embarrassing way, you were probably lying.
I don’t remember all the details of how the survey was conducted, but there was an interesting result: when they tried the survey on Olympic medal winners, they found the star athletes lied in answers significantly more than the public at large. At that point, the data ended and the speculation began.
They speculated that people who deceive themselves in a way that flatters themselves may have an easier time meeting goals. If you say, “Well, I’m competing against the best athletes in the world, and I stand a pretty good chance of losing,” you may be likelier to lose than if you say, “I’m the best, and I’m gonna win this!”
And there was similar research I saw awhile ago suggesting that if you believe in free choice, you tend to be better-behaved than if you doubt that free choice exists.
In both cases, I think there may be some benefit to believing things against the evidence.
And what you(and others) seem to be arguing is that the word “evidence” has no real meaning. Since this isn’t supposed to be a monologue on my part, and since I’m also willing to entertain new ideas, why don’t you give me a definition of evidence that you would find acceptable?
(my bolding)
Chill out. I’m being nothing but polite, and have been trying to get a better sense of what you mean, but you have yet to explain some fundamental elements of your argument.
I’ll ask you again. How is prediction based on evidence different than faith different than blind faith?
You’re the one who started the thread on blind faith as opposed to faith. Until you help us to get a clear picture of what you think the difference is between them, I don’t see how it’s possible to answer the question.
With regards to what I bolded in your quote above; “something the average person would consider to be evidence” is a statement about the source or quality of the evidence.
Statistics are varied and murky, but a significantly greater than 50% of world population believes in some kind of supernatural/spiritual force/being. So, I guess that there must be something that the average person considers evidence for it?
I’m saying that evidence or lack thereof does not differentiate between faith and blind faith.
1: Do you accept The American heritage Dictionary definition: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence?
2: Do see the fallacies in arguing that since supposedly 50% of the world’s population believes in some sort of supernatural entity that somehow that is evidence of a supreme being? You are saying in essence that the evidence behind their belief is their belief., and you are also making the claim that all the different beliefs out there are somehow evidence of a supernatural being. Even if I were to accept your claim of “the belief is the evidence of the belief”(which I certainly don’t), then all you have done is presented millions of small bits of evidence/belief/evidences to support the existence of ghod knows how many different supernatural beings.
Then what does? If the American Heritage Dictionary definition doesn’t work for you, give me an alternative.
If Jane Doe prays for her mother’s cancer to go into remission, and it does, Jane is justified on chalking that up as evidence that God exists and answers prayers. Maybe she goes on to study the scriptures, attend worship services, even enter seminary – and all these things bolster her belief by offering a consistant frame of reference and worldview that harmonize with her personal experiences.
Now you can argue that she doesn’t have compelling evidence and I’m sure you would dismiss it as not “real” evidence. But as events like these pile up in Jane’s life, they become real evidence to her - enough for me to say that her faith is not blind, it’s based on experience.
You can legitimately argue that there are better, more rational explanations for her experiences, and that she is forgetting all the times that her prayers weren’t answered or that God wasn’t there for her, or she’s conveniently ignoring difficult parts of the Bible or whatever you want to say to dismiss her evidence. But I’m saying why do you get to decide how much evidence is necessary for her to have faith? She has enough for her. Just because it’s not enough for you doesn’t make her faith baseless.
Are you rejecting the American Heritage definition of the phrase? If so, your definition of blind faith would be…?
Faith = belief despite there being no evidence (I have faith that Christ rose on the third day)
Blind Faith - belief despite there being no evidence and without regard for any thought or consideration into it. Also - belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination
Or the ‘biblical’ definition -
[QUOTE=Hebrews 11:1 NIV]
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Hebrews 11:1 KJV]
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen
[/QUOTE]
You can come to have ‘faith’ in something thru learning, discovery, conversations etc.
Blind faith you just “have” and nothing will persuade you otherwise.
1: Is that their definition of ‘faith’? I’ll accept that.
2: We’re missing each other here. Going back over the posts, I admit I was moving a little far afield here. I was not trying to suggest that majority belief is sufficient evidence for a thing. I’d like to retract that whole bit of my last post as an ill-thought-out argument against a point that you weren’t really making.
But, yes, I would say that “the evidence behind their belief is their belief.” It’s just that what constitutes evidence for them might not constitute evidence for you or me.
For example, if a man said, “I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of wholeness and peace, and everything became clear to me. That was when I knew God was revealing himself to me, and I’ve been a believer ever since,” then that is evidence to him of God.
Like I said before. I’m still not sure what the difference between the American Heritage definition of faith is and what constitutes blind faith.
Oh, wait, was that the AH definition of “blind faith”? If so, I misunderstood.
However, their relevant definition of “faith” online is:
“Confident or unquestioning belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing”
. . . which doesn’t seem to me to mean anything different than “Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.”
Or, at least there is enough overlap to make the two differentiable.