The difference is the addition of these words “…that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.” Blind faith is a subdivision of faith, and carries the additional load of that added phrase.
Frankly I liked your definition in the OP better. Saying that blind faith is belief that does not rely on “logical proof or material evidence” seems insufficient to me. Because first of all, if there is logical proof of something, no faith at all is required to believe it.
Second of all, requiring “material evidence” is kind of vague. Do they mean material meaning ‘pertaining to’, as in “this evidence is not material to the topic we are discussing”? Or material as in part of the physical world? Experiencing a spiritual epiphany is material in the first sense but not in the second.
I like this definition; the “blind” part means that the believer is blind to contrary evidence. The typical conspiracy theorist has blind faith, because, no matter how many times you prove to him that (say) the World Trade Center towers didn’t fall due to controlled demolition, he still goes right on believing so. He has blinded himself to everything other than his own personal pet belief.
Faith, per se, is mildly pointless. Maybe there’s a God and maybe there isn’t. No real evidence either way.
Blind Faith is a bit dopey, as it persists despite all contrary evidence.
I hate arriving late to a thread, but:
Don’t normally agree with Shodan, but he took it philosophically, as he should, WAY beyond my “Nope.”
Czarcasm, we’ve been [del]friends[/del] acquaintances [del]forever[/del] for some years, but that was a pretty stupid question for reasons others have put forth.
FTR: “Is blind faith admirable?”
I’ve hung out with many religious people, and NONE would agree with it. They’d be right, and wrong, but that wasn’t the question.
Since then I’ve stopped giving Shit #1 what others think.
A real-world example of blind faith might be a person who’s been sold an unsatisfactory good or service by a salesperson or company, more than once.
Who hasn’t relied on testimony or sales pitches to make a purchase? (even when due diligence is performed in the research beforehand)
I have an unquestioning belief that blind faith is not admirable.
This is Czarcasm’s example:
You don’t think the example given by Czarcasm is similar to Christians believing that a dead guy that now sits at the Right Hand of God will come back to Earth some day?
I’m dying to see the skid marks this turd left in your brain shorts.
Agreed. Blind faith is potentially dangerous. Come to think of it, scratch potentially.
No, blind faith by its very definition is not admirable. Is the faith one thinks of as being associated with religion blind faith? I’m not prepared to answer that question.
How could it be otherwise? Belief in a world determined by unseen spirits, who work in mysterious, unpredictable ways based solely on the accounts of bronze age shepherds? All religion is blind faith, and all religions trumpet that blind faith as their core strength; anyone who lacks faith in the unseen spirits is branded as weak and undeserving of eternal reward.
A couple of problems here.
First, most religious people would deny that their faith is “based solely on the accoutns of bronze age shepherds.” Personal experience, spiritual epiphanies, changes of life are all factors that contribute to faith. These things may have other, more rational explanations, but they are important pieces of the foundation of faith as well. To put it this way: your typical Christian has no experience with the god Thor beyond snippets of stories; it’s easy to not believe in him. OTOH, they may have grown up worshipping/praying to Jesus and seen and experienced events they attribute to him. Prayers seemingly answered. Lives undeniably changed. Spiritual ecstasies. All those things reinforce their belief to a point where it cannot simply be said to be based on 2,000 year old writings anymore.
You can argue that the experiences are being misinterpreted and self-delusional, but that doesn’t make them not real.
The second problem with your statement is “anyone who lacks faith in the unseen spirits is branded as weak and undeserving of eternal reward.” That’s just a strawman and betrays ignorance of basic soteriology. I know of no mainstream theology (in terms of Christianity at least) that labels unbelievers as weak, or any more undeserving of salvation than believers.
I am not denying that people have personal experiences they attribute to the supernatural. But the only reason Christians associate their supernatural experiences to Jesus instead of Thor is they have been indoctrinated with the Jesus mythology at some crucial part of their life. If they had been brought up with stories from the Upanishads, they would be Hindu. Ignorance abhors a vacuum.
I don’t disagree with that; but to my mind the element of experience makes their faith less than blind, whether correct or mistaken.
They have evidence of their experience…but the assignation of said experience to a particular deity may be where blind faith comes in.
If the object of their faith is due solely to the mythology they are exposed to, I would say that faith in Jesus, Vishnu or Thor is entirely blind. They had an unexplained emotional experience; that is not faith. Attributing that experience to an unseen spirit is blind faith, because there is no discernible evidence connecting the two. That is the very definition of blind faith.
I disagree. There is a perceived cause and effect between the worship of, or faith in, a particular deity and the ensuing consequences. It’s not a causal relationship that would withstand scientific scrutiny, but it’s experientially real.
To step back, I would define ‘blind faith’ as believing something because that’s what you’re told by a source without reputable knowledge or expertise. Believing the catechism because your priest tells you to might quality as blind faith. Believing the cathechism after years of living it no longer qualifies as blind faith, but faith based on personal experience.
What is the difference between “experiencially real” and “not real”? Is everything real by simple virtue that I believe it to be so? Rather circular, wouldn’t you say?
But personal experience can provide no discerible evidence to link the experience to the object of faith, other than confirmation bias.
Not everything you believe is necessarily real, but everything you experience is real one way or another. You may misattribute the cause of the experience, but the feelings and events themselves are no less real.
It could be confirmation bias, certainly. But I’m arguing that faith can be unproven without being “blind.”