I have thought about what you said. But I have to say that the giving of one’s time and money in a personal way shows more caring and compassion than what a scientist does working in a lab. It is true that scientists have discovered many things that have helped the lot of humanity. I would not want to do without them either. Both science and religion have a valid place in our society. The discussion in this thread is not really about the word faith, it is just another slam thread aimed at religion. It is sad, the trouble between science and religion, we need them both.
You have no direct evidence, your assumptions are false. I gave you links to the material written by people in attendance who knew what was going on.
Read the material, read the book, study the documentary, I know my answer was not what you wanted but it was the correct answer. Now stop the harrassment.
So are you going to actually answer what I said, or you going to continue pretend that you are legitimately concerned that I specifically think you believe in faries? It was an example of of how one sort of “faith” is equated with another very different sort.
I never implied it. I don’t think people of faith are idiots. I think faith is a bad thing, that’s all.
Knowingly acting on the best information we have at the moment, full in the knowledge that we do so (and don’t really have much other choice), is not any sort of faith at all.
Faith is the assertion that something is true even when there is no evidence to support it, or even when there is evidence to contradict it. Faith is belief, without any implication that there is any supporting evidence. That is precisely what is often lauded ABOUT faith: that UNLIKE things for which we have good reasons, we believe even against “all odds.”
Otherwise, what are we discussing? Just another tortured redefinition of rationality and inference.
I guess this is true in the sense that faith has no real steps. But it most certainly is presented as some laudable method of accessing truth. So you really need to explain in what way you mean that it isn’t a method, or then what you think it is.
Please, tell me you are not really this dishonest. Stop playing this game. No one is stupid enough to fall for this misdirection. No one, not even you, literally read what I wrote as saying that you believed specifically in faeries.
You gave me a link to an essay which made CLAIMS about what people in attendance had said. But all those claims came from a particular book. And, in that book, it turns out that those claims are false and misleading in exactly the way I noted.
Either Pam Reynolds was “brain dead” for two hours as you claimed or she wasn’t. The very source you quote as an authority on this says that your account is false.
Did Reynolds hear the comment about her vessels being small or not when she was supposedly out of body? Was she brain dead or even in cardiac arrest at the time? No, she wasn’t. This comment was made when they were hooking her up to the machines in PREPARATION for the time when they would stop her heart. And so on.
Lekatt, the book doesn’t say what you say it does. The evidence does not support your version of events. It is not harassment to point this out, because you play this exact same game in every single thread in which you make claims about science and evidence.
I think you’re missing the point (and I only know anything about this because I’ve lived through it). It’s much bigger than “I trust the person who feeds me.”
Children don’t know that they exist, they learn that they exist based on their ability to effect the environment. Not all environments are the same; every child does not have an equal experience of personal efficacy and worth.
One baby learns he must scream at full volume in order to be fed; another learns that his slightest whimper, any whimper, means he will be fed (even if he was upset because of being bored/cold/hot/4 months old). Or, he won’t be fed, no matter what he does - not all babies live in responsive households.
Babies who aren’t responded to appropriately and quickly develop a sense of empirical reality that is quantitatively different. And their sense of their own existence, their inherent value, is different. They don’t “know” that they can trust.
The “value” of that kind of “faith” (or, rather, the price of a lack of it) plays out later in life. Contrasting experiences with other caregivers (teachers, family members) aren’t always enough to counteract it (i.e., changes in empirical reality don’t necessarily “take”). Studies show some pretty strong links between a lack of parental attachment and aberrant behavior. It’s in the link I already gave (as well as a bazillion other sources).
When empirical reality clashes with core beliefs, faith, it often loses.
Of course, the plus side is that most people’s core beliefs are positive. That way they’re not defeated instantly when empirical reality throws them a curve ball. That’s the upside of our inborn faith mechanism, IMHO.
hotflungwok I agree with you that unreasoned faith is pointless. I agree that saying ‘goddidit’ is unsatisfactory. However, for me I question what God is, as opposed to thinking that God is irrelevant to the situation. I do believe in Creation, because when I look around me at the complexity of structures I don’t believe that they are random reactions to external stimuli. However, given that, I don’t need to say ‘goddidit’ because it’s a presumption that it is true of everything, as everything is a subset of God’s ongoing act of creation. So for me science answers questions about the mechanisms of God’s creation, but tells me nothing of purpose. The faith comes in that I am not merely examining random mechanisms. Consciousness itself would be a “God” impulse, defined by subsets and supersets of information structures, whether it be a computer, a computer network, a person, a community, or a society. It is possible that some cosmic event greater than our whole galaxy could come and disintegrate our whole Galaxy in an instant at any given moment. Given this possibility, it is faith that keeps me acting given the wide range of possible results that could end any and all progress I have ever made. This is not a faith that I have some sort of special relationship with God that makes me more important than other patterns in the universe, but a faith that there is a reason a purpose for me to continue forward even though I cannot see the vast majority of results of my actions, if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon and causes a typhoon in Japan, then what does the wind that my body displaces as it moves through space do? What about the vibrations of my footsteps or the chain reactions I instigate through social maneuvers? These are all mysteries, things that I probably won’t ever fully know the answer to, yet knowing this, I continue forward, because of faith.
Are you asking me or telling me? 
I think you’ll find that many religious believers have had plenty of verification of their faith, and plenty of repeat experiences, which would imply repeatability.
As for “objectivity”, please present an example of a theory (scientific or otherwise) that is objective.
As much as I agree with your basic premise (which I think is that we should base our knowledge on empirical evidence rather than on faith derived from some ambiguous set of unverified mystical beliefs), I think you’ll find that it can be difficult to dismiss religious faith as useless when arguing with someone who embraces it.
Difficult, but not impossible … 
But it is you doing the equating, not me, why should I justify an equivalency that I do not agree with?
So people of faith are not idiots, they are bad?
Sometimes the best information at the time is wholly inadequate.
No, that is not what faith means. You are defining faith in such a way that it conflicts with reason. I do not agree with this definition. Yes, faith can exist without evidence, but it is not exclusive to evidence.
I thought it was another tortured redefinition of faith.
Faith is a form of trust, going forward despite the odds arrayed against you. At any given moment in any given situation there are details, loose ends that one can focus on to the point of despair. It is faith that keeps us going. Scientists employ faith all the time. They don’t rest their results on faith, but they pursue the results out of faith. They form a hypothesis and then put their trust in their ability to find the answer. Despite failing over and over they continue to go on in their quest of knowledge. Faith is the marker that seperates throwing up their hands in despair and continuing on despite a setback.
Rejecting a lame overused rhetorical device is dishonest?
Yes of course.
That’s all empirical evidence.
Yes, because of the empirical evidence.
Yes, I’m with you on this.
Now you lost me. If we’re still talking about the baby, her core beliefs are based soley on empirical evidence. Mommy feeds me was just an example. I’m kinda hoping that most people’s core beliefs are based on empirical evidence, on reasoned faith.
When people put too much stock in faith, and not enough in reality, we do see this kind of clash, with reality losing out. I’ve seen it lots of times: people seeing something very obvious and choosing to believe something else, because their faith dictates that it must be wrong.
Good.
Great.
Why? Do you have proof god exists?
Um, you’re going to have to explain what this means. What structures? What reactions, and why are they random?
Um, that’s the reason why it’s not a valid explanation. It doesn’t explain anything because god supposedly did everything. Saying ‘goddidit’ is like saying ‘it happened’. Until you can actually show that god did do it, and that he exists, it’s a meaningless response.
Creation has a purpose? How do you know that?
Given that absolutely no evidence of god’s interference in the brain has ever been found, I’m going to have to ask for evidence to support this.
David Hasslehoff and Fran Drescher could bust into my apartment and start singing. Given this horrifying possibility, I completely and totally ignore it and many others as so improbable as to never happen in my lifetime. Except for the baseball bat. If you need faith to keep you going because our universe might be destroyed at any minute, do you worry about the sun coming up in the morning, that gravity keeps pulling matter toward other matter?
I think you’re reading a bit too much into the quantuum butterfly theory. Really.
I think you’ll find that many religious believers think they have plenty of verification, and pleny of repeatable experiences that they think are supernatural. But to date, all of the ones that have been investigated have turned out to be completely natural in origin. I also think you’ll find that most religious believers have a lower threshhold of what they accept as evidence.
You don’t know any? Pick any scientific theory. Gravity.
Just for reference:
Arguing against someone who is using strong faith as their basis for argument is quite useless because they are not prepared to change their position in the face of evidence. They already know they’re right, that’s what faith does. I can dismiss it as useless or dangerous quite easily, but that won’t change anything with the person.
Yeah - I was agreeing with you. It seems to me it’s awfully difficult for empirical reality to override core beliefs (faith).
But that’s not always a bad thing, if empirical reality turns sour. It’s possible for people to be sustained by faith when otherwise they might give up.
You forgot to add “…or look for realistic solutions.”
I’m sorry for speaking English, was there another language I should have been using?
No, faith is bad. Smoking is bad for you and maybe people living with you: that doesn’t mean that smokers are bad people.
In which case the rational and honest thing to do is to simply admit that, rather than trying to claim things beyond it.
I’m defining faith in the way dictionaries and believers do, and also the only way to define it that isn’t simply calling something else “faith” in which case we might as well not call anything faith.
This is a completely different sort of faith than what the OP is pretty clearly talking about, and others have made this clarification pretty clear. No one is talking about this sort of faith.
In this case, you seem to mean faith in the sense of hope and good spirits. Again, no one is disputing that those things are bad. But they are also clearly not what someone means when they say that they have faith in the truth of some truth claim.
You didn’t reject it, you played pretend to imply it said something it clearly didn’t, and then reacted to that.
The universe exists. If that is unacceptable for you you’re going to have to tell me how you define God. If you want to start to get an inkling for how I perceive God, start with Spinoza’s Ethics. When you’ve read that we’ll go from there.
The human body for instance. The opposition of musculature. Muscles don’t push, they only pull. Given that muscles are not diametrically opposed to one another but are arranged around the skeletal structure, muscles that contract in multiple different directions keep the whole system balanced. The Trapezius and Rhomboids in the back keeping that retract your scapula do not have a mirror image in the front. You have the Serratus Anterior and Pectoralis Major playing antagonistic roles to them, but there is tension supporting it from many other muscles all pulling in different directions yet capable of performing precision movements in harmony through a reaction caused by injecting calcium into the muscle cell that deactivates a tropomyosin shield over the proteins actin and myosin causing an attraction that pulls the two ends of the cells together in a contraction. Most muscles are made up of thousands or more cells, mostly working in concert to create these attractions. At the same time the antagonistic muscles are going through an eccentric contraction in order that your skeletal structure does not simply flop around. The blueprint for this structure is contained in DNA molecules, that are a combination of 23 strands taken from each parent.
Correct that’s why I agreed with you.
It doesn’t necessarily, it is faith that there is one that keeps me from finding a comfortable corner where I can quietly starve to death.
Your word interference plays your hand. You are defining God as something extrinsic to the process. I am defining God as something intrinsic to the process. Thus far we are still defining categories, we have yet to get to the part of the argument where assertions can be proven or not, as we have yet to assure one another that we are working with a common definition and a common set of axioms.
I think you’re being a little bit too condescending. Don’t think that I sit up at night worrying about such things. However, it is something I have thought of and before you take it too far, yes I am aware of individual actions being cancelled out in the aggregate. The point being that there are just as many good and reasonable reasons to despair into inaction as there are reasons to hope into action. Whether or not a seemingly random cosmic event is worth worrying about is a subjective bias. You have eliminated it due to a combination of low probability and your own emotional needs not to stimulate your worry centers with low probability data.
I guess, then, that you *know * that you have plenty of verification for your beliefs, whereas religious believers only *think * that they do. Do you have some scientific evidence that confirms your claim about what many religious believers think?
Please provide the cites for all the ones that have been investigated. Otherwise, please stop making sweeping claims.
What percentage would you consider to be “most”? Please indicate how you measure the threshhold, and please provide evidence for your claim.
“Gravity” is not a scientific theory, and you quoted some dictionary definitions of *objective * without demonstrating the connection with your one-word “theory”.
Are you saying that everyone who uses strong (??) faith as the basis for argument *never * changes their position in the face of evidence? Also, why are you arguing in this thread? Do you enjoy doing things that are “quite useless”? Or, are you saying that nobody in this thread is using strong faith as their basis for argument? And why have you introduced the word “strong” as a modifier of faith? Are you suggesting that “weak” faith is better?
So, you, on the other hand, are open to changing your mind about anything, including the existence of god?
I didn’t say anything about “dangerous”. Why are you introducing it into your response to me? And do you want to “change anything with the person”?
So I didn’t bite when you dropped the faeries gambit, and now you’re mad at me? Did your invisible pink unicorn not show up for work?
A smoker’s smoking is not as intrinsically tied to their identity as a Christian’s faith is to theirs. You know this.
Who is claiming what? You have been trying to get me to justify things that I have no interest in justifying. You want to start a thread about faeries existing, do it. I’ll argue that they do exist and make a case for it using Jungian archetypes. However, I do not feel any responsibility within this thread to answer to your leading questions.
Someone above posted a dictionary definition of faith. It is perfectly suitable for my purposes. Refer to it if you are having trouble figuring out which version I am using. It was the one about faith in people ideas or things.
I don’t think that it is categorically different and that is the argument I am making. This does not make me a liar. Whether you are having trouble parsing my argument due to your inability to understand, my inability to communicate or some combination thereof does not equate to dishonesty.
Faith in the sense of hope and good spirits, yes, that is precisely what I mean. That could be the hope of some economic payoff or an attempt to commune with the almighty. Faith means the same thing in all cases.
I rejected your faeries jibe.
Spinoza. Proof by handwaving. ‘God is perfect therefore it must exist’. Nope, his ‘proofs’ contain too many assumptions, too many things he just lets through, like the existance of god.
It’s complex. So? Are you saying that in order for complex things to exist god must exist?
I try not to have ‘beliefs’. Of course, while I have to have at least some, I try to base them off objective reality or empirical evidence, and not subjective experience. So, yes.
What an odd request. No, I don’t think that actual scientific studies have been done on believer’s thoughts. Of course, what I said was an opinion, in response to yours. You can tell by the way I phrased it.
Again, an odd request. No investigation has ever been announced that proved supernatural anything. I’m pretty sure that kind of even would make the news, so I feel safe in what I said. There are also probably many investigations that were never announced to anyone, and would be impossible to find. So, no I can’t cite every single investigation, but then, that should have been obvious. Of course, if you know one that did prove an event supernatural, I’m sure we’d all like to hear about it. I mean, it would only take one to prove me wrong.
No, again, this is an opinion. See how I used the word ‘think’? Dead giveaway.
Wow, now you’re just nitpicking to be argumentative. So because I didn’t spell out the full name of the theory you weren’t able to infer what I meant? And I included the definition to remind you that all scientific theories are objective, by definition. They pretty much have to be to make it to theory. Can you name a scientific theory that isn’t objective in the ways I mentioned?
All? Maybe not. But enough that it can be considered probable. Faith does not make a good basis for factual argument, and since is based on more than just facts, facts alone have a very hard time affecting it.
I enjoy a good argument, and not everyone in this thread is using faith as a basis for their argument.
Now you’re just making stuff up.
Absolutely. Show me the proof, I’ll change my mind.
No, I did. I mentioned it as a reason I would dismiss it.
Because that’s what you try to do in an argument, convince the other person you’re right. Change their mind.
mswas, how is your application of “faith” any different from a natural, rational, secular reaction to probability (i.e., yes, an alien race might annihilate our planet at any moment, but it seems extremely improbable, and there being no evidence to suggest its likelihood, the idea of “giving up” living seems to offer few advantages, so to soldier on until otherwise notified of imminent destruction makes obvious sense), and how does your “evidence for creation” differ from the “irreducible complexity” argument?
Granted, you selected musculature as an example rather than the anatomy of the eye, but it appears to be based on the same notion: boy, it sure is complicated, so there must’ve been some divine intervention along the way somewhere.
In the former case your “faith” seems to be simply an anti-fatalism— not a bad thing in itself, but not reliant on the existence of a higher power; in the latter, your rationale for God’s existence really boils down (despite your protests to the contrary) to a “Goddidit” argument.