There are some things that you know to be true, and others that you know to be false; yet, despite this extensive knowledge that you have, there remain many things whose truth or falsity is not known to you. We say that you are uncertain about them. You are uncertain, to varying degrees, about everything in the future; much of the past is hidden from you; and there is a lot of the present about which you do not have full information. Uncertainty is everywhere and you cannot escape from it.
Do you have proof you will awaken tomorrow morning or a belief/faith that you will?
The whole point is that we all live our lives with a fair amount of faith and belief, there is no continuity or going forward without it, and it’s an untenable position to defend that we function without it. You’re left with what you’re doing above…a rather torturous effort.
The ‘what’ you choose to have faith/belief in ,especially looking backwards, is a different kettle of sharks altogether and has nothing to do with my point.
It doesn’t weaken one’s position to admit that certain things we take for granted in the way we lead our lives are really just acts of faith/belief at the bottom of it all.
I’m an agnostic complete non believer in the bible or its divinity, but I believe/have faith I will awaken tomorrow morning and the day after that and lead my life accordingly, even though there is no 100% certainty I won’t have an aneurysm tonight or keel over while reading some of the more moronic posts on T nation from a stupidity induced coronary.
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When I use the word ‘faith’, I use it meaning without any evidence.
“strong or unshakeable belief in something, esp without proof or evidence”
I think we just use the word differently.
I know it may seem I’m nitpicking here, but it’s important that we understand how one another is using the words so that we don’t run into or at best, limit misunderstandings.
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Of course. I prefer:
Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
And my argument remains. Would you say you have knowledge or faith you’re going to wake up tomorrow? Do you have proof or evidence of a future event? Every future prediction requires a certain amount of faith, even using your definition.
Because I know we’re both going die. But I believe it won’t be tonight. But either one of us could keel over from any number of causes.
Or maybe I’m just explaining myself reaaally badly.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:When I use the word ‘faith’, I use it meaning without any evidence.
“strong or unshakeable belief in something, esp without proof or evidence”
I think we just use the word differently.
I know it may seem I’m nitpicking here, but it’s important that we understand how one another is using the words so that we don’t run into or at best, limit misunderstandings.
[/quote]The letter to the Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1[quote]1-Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. [/quote]You use this exact faith in order to believe that 2+2=4. “It just is” ain’t cuttin it.
By your definition, without any evidence or other reason to have confidence, how can you have faith(a confident belief)? There’s no reason to have confidence or diffidence in a person, idea or thing without having a reason for being swayed to having confidence/diffidence. And that’s why I prefer the definition I use.
You’re explaining yourself fine. Like I said before, we have to agree on the premises first.
To me when you can apply evidence to a decision, faith is no longer a factor, and a better term to use would be “degree of (un)certainty”.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:When I use the word ‘faith’, I use it meaning without any evidence.
“strong or unshakeable belief in something, esp without proof or evidence”
I think we just use the word differently.
I know it may seem I’m nitpicking here, but it’s important that we understand how one another is using the words so that we don’t run into or at best, limit misunderstandings.
[/quote]The letter to the Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1[quote]1-Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. [/quote]You use this exact faith in order to believe that 2+2=4. “It just is” ain’t cuttin it.
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And yet somehow a grown man believing in talking animals is not the same thing as a grown man believing that two plus two is equal to four.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:When I use the word ‘faith’, I use it meaning without any evidence.
“strong or unshakeable belief in something, esp without proof or evidence”
I think we just use the word differently.
I know it may seem I’m nitpicking here, but it’s important that we understand how one another is using the words so that we don’t run into or at best, limit misunderstandings.
[/quote]The letter to the Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1[quote]1-Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. [/quote]You use this exact faith in order to believe that 2+2=4. “It just is” ain’t cuttin it.[/quote]And yet somehow a grown man believing in talking animals is not the same thing as a grown man believing that two plus two is equal to four.[/quote]Oh but it is.
[quote]schmichael wrote:
I’m guessing that this guy is a creationist trying to make atheist’s look stupid.
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Says the creationist that for all intents and purposes has come across as if he has a learning disability.[/quote]
Dude, I have answered a large number of your questions and done my best to explain some really basic philosophy of science ideas to you. You are the one who refused to interact with anything I posted (unless you count asserting your ignorant opinion as interaction) and then proclaimed “I am done with this”.
Yeah, that’s much better than your earlier claim of “but we’re honest that we’re biased”, as if admitting bias gives one more credibility. “I’m full of shit, but you can trust me(big smile)”.[/quote]
You have failed to comprehend my point, again. I never said that it gives credibility, I said that it is ridiculous to deny that you have any bias.
By your definition, without any evidence or other reason to have confidence, how can you have faith(a confident belief)? There’s no reason to have confidence or diffidence in a person, idea or thing without having a reason for being swayed to having confidence/diffidence. And that’s why I prefer the definition I use.
You’re explaining yourself fine. Like I said before, we have to agree on the premises first.
To me when you can apply evidence to a decision, faith is no longer a factor, and a better term to use would be “degree of (un)certainty”. [/quote]
I think your definition is more akin to “blind” faith.
The evidence that we will wake up is because we as humans have witnessed/observed animals/people/whatevers going to sleep and waking up over the past thousand of years sleep has been documented and we know a lot about going to sleep there is plenty of evidence out there so that is definitely 100% NOT FAITH![/quote]
So what if we’ve seen it in the past? What guarantee do you have that it will happen in the future?
This is called the problem of induction. From Wikipedia
"The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge understood in the classic philosophical sense, since it focuses on the lack of justification for either:
Generalizing about the properties of a class of objects based on some number of observations of particular instances of that class (for example, the inference that "all swans we have seen are white, and therefore all swans are white," before the discovery of black swans) or
Presupposing that a sequence of events in the future will occur as it always has in the past (for example, that the laws of physics will hold as they have always been observed to hold). Hume called this the Principle of Uniformity of Nature."
For all those atheists wondering what they need to have faith in you need to realise that in order to do science you must first, before studying anything, have faith the uniformity of nature and reliability of our senses and memory.
These are accepted on faith because they can not be tested without assuming them in the first place.
Further, your own worldview must be able to provide the necessary preconditions for doing science by establishing a basis for things such as laws of logic, uniformity of nature and reliability of our senses and memory. These are all required in order to learn anything about the universe. According to the naturalistic worldview, however, the universe is an accident, and there is no intelligence, plan or purpose behind it. In that worldview, therefore, there is no logical reason why any of these preconditions should be true. Furthermore, if the human brain is merely the product of random chemical accidents, why should we trust its reasoning?
Who says they’re random chemical accidents? What basis are you asserting this on?
It sounds like something you read that “sounded smart” and you’ve been parroting it ever since.
I think it would be in your best interest to go learn some basic chemistry, then learn some organic chemistry, then learn some biochemistry. If not for the sake of having a better understanding of these “random chemical accidents”, then to simply expand your knowledge of what I feel are, very valuable sciences.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
I don’t usually like to link to other people’s work, but this girl is razor sharp and addresses what we’re talkin about. http://creation.com/genesis-new-testament The affirmation of the evolution of man is by definition to call the new testament writers and Jesus himself liars. This article simply demonstrates that point. She doesn’t try to make you believe the bible per se, but only shows that claiming to take it seriously while embracing macro bio evolution is a manifestly impossible position. If somebody wants to believe in evolution? Go right ahead, but do yourself a favor and leave Jesus out of it. For your own good.
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We don’t trust the brain’s reasoning without experiments, tests and research that proves [which means a very large degree of certainty] that something is true, or works a certain way.
If we can repeat an experiment and get the same results everytime, a hypothesis is proven to be true with a very large degree of certainty.
To put religous faith on the same footing as scientific endevours because both rely on faith is disinginuous because if you hold religous faith to the same standards as you would scientific theory, there’d be very little left of religious faith.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
The whole “you can’t prove anything” argument is a tired and cowardly copout, a rehashing of ideas that neither useful nor terribly interesting even in the 17th century. One may never be actually sure of anything in a philosophical sense, but you and I both operate under the assumption that we perceive with reasonable accuracy, that we are not mad, and that the basic physical workings of the world will be the same tomorrow as they were yesterday.
Evidence for different conclusions exists in different amounts. The evidence, for me, that I myself exist is as near to incontrovertible as evidence can be. The evidence that man evolved from monkeys is less sturdy than that but it is a fuckton sturdier than the talking snake scenario.
Recycled philosophical acrobatics will do nothing to change the fact that the Christian Bible is a collection of fairy tales gathered together by desert-dwelling primitives and lacking anything that could remotely be considered credibility as we understand it today (indeed, it is so full of so much nonsense that it contradicts itself numerous times).
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Got any proof of this? I mean not the garbage you can find on those atheist propaganda websites. I mean real proof. You pull the scripture with in the context of the passage, chapter, book and greater bible? You know the purpose of the passages, who they were written for and the original intended audience? Because unless you know all that stuff you cannot make the statement above.
I know you have read some of it, but you need to read it with an open mind, without bias and try to understand what it’s saying, not reading with an agenda to look for things you consider bad.
[quote]
Snakes do not talk, and it takes more than some words on a page to convince a thinking man or woman to believe otherwise. Whether or not that thinking man will ever know for sure that his perception of the world is pure and true, he knows not to mistake the uncertainty inherent in human life with a license to believe in anything at all.[/quote]
Only fundamentalists and atheists read those passages as literal historic accounts. Biblical scholars do not.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
Most Christians I know don’t believe that anything out of scripture belongs in a science classroom.
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But as literature there are some books that can and taught in ancient world lit classes, Particularly Ruth.
[quote]
Science is about hunches and proof and evidence and theories. Religion is about faith–blind faith, faith without proof, faith in something even the face of evidence to the contrary. I sometimes envy people with the capacity to have that kind of faith, but there is no room for it in a science classroom.[/quote]
Religion is not about ‘blind faith’ there is nothing blind with out it. Trust me, if it didn’t “work” it would have gone away a loooong time ago.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
Most Christians I know don’t believe that anything out of scripture belongs in a science classroom.
Science is about hunches and proof and evidence and theories. Religion is about faith–blind faith, faith without proof, faith in something even the face of evidence to the contrary. I sometimes envy people with the capacity to have that kind of faith, but there is no room for it in a science classroom.[/quote]
Why would you envy them? Faith is not a pathway to truth and if they’re ignoring evidence on top of having faith (which is already completely a bad idea) then I would say I definitely do not envy them.
Extreme faith in the face of evidence is extreme stupidity because at least before there was no other explanation but if there is another explanation and you’re STILL ignoring it and having “faith” in something else…well let’s just say I would not want a person with those decision making abilities working for me.[/quote]
I would tend to agree that believing in something where exists clear evidence it’s not true is a little crazy. I like to call it ‘safe faith’… Just in case, you don’t want to be on the wrong side.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
Most Christians I know don’t believe that anything out of scripture belongs in a science classroom.
Science is about hunches and proof and evidence and theories. Religion is about faith–blind faith, faith without proof, faith in something even the face of evidence to the contrary. I sometimes envy people with the capacity to have that kind of faith, but there is no room for it in a science classroom.[/quote]
Why would you envy them? Faith is not a pathway to truth and if they’re ignoring evidence on top of having faith (which is already completely a bad idea) then I would say I definitely do not envy them.
Extreme faith in the face of evidence is extreme stupidity because at least before there was no other explanation but if there is another explanation and you’re STILL ignoring it and having “faith” in something else…well let’s just say I would not want a person with those decision making abilities working for me.[/quote]
You’re preachin’ to the choir brother. I am an agnostic, because anyone who says they know that God does or does not exist is lying. But when it comes to the great religions of the world I’m in Hitchens’ corner.
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I can prove it. It’s called the cosmological argument, it’s a deductive truth and in cannot be proven incorrect. You can go nuts trying if you want. I can do that shit all day.
Hitchens had a weak mind.
[quote]
My point was simply that it would nice to see my loved ones again in some fairy-tale world and a very small part of me envies anyone who has that belief, however silly, to comfort them.[/quote]
Nothing is more fairy tale than the belief that nothing can do something, that for no reason existence exists. The common response of the atheist to this is, is that existence just is. Not only is that completely idiotic, it’s circular and therefore unequivocally false.