Agnostic - The wisest option for man?

[Sarkus]

You have made a leap here from the belief I was talking about above to this 'blind faith'....
...(Some religionists do have blind faith. I am not saying I hold with this view.)

In the case of religion, of god, "belief" is synonymous with "blind faith". There is no leap.

If you "believe" something with no direct evidence of it. This is blind faith.
No god has direct evidence supporting it - and thus belief in it IS blind faith.

So what "belief" are you referring to? Please explain to help clarify.

 

[Light Travelling]

So what "belief" are you referring to? Please explain to help clarify.

The only thing I can think of to help explain better is this;

An atheist - lacks belief.

A deist - has belief by their own reasoning process.

A theist - Has faith by revelation. (faith being like trust).

A fanatic or fundamentalist - has 'blind' faith, called this becuse they will not listen to others views or reasoning at all.

 

[pavlosmarcos]

an atheist does not lack belief( this implies that a thing exists) an atheist has no belief.

 

[Sarkus]

A theist - Has faith by revelation. (faith being like trust).

A fanatic or fundamentalist - has 'blind' faith, called this becuse they will not listen to others views or reasoning at all.

No - trust is different.
I "trust" my friends - because subconciously I have first hand evidence (from one of my 5 senses) of them with which to build up a probability that they will continue to perform as they do. "Trust" in this case is merely saying that the odds are good.
Faith when dealing with religion is blind. There is no first hand direct experience of God.

 

[Light Travelling]

Faith when dealing with religion is blind. There is no first hand direct experience of God.

Well for you and me maybe not - but many people do claim direct experience. Can we really be 100% sure that all of them have not had the experiences they claim?

I trust my friends and sometimes put my faith in them to do things for me when I do not 'know' that they will. The two are certainly not the same but are similar.

 

[Light Travelling]

How about this for an over simplified 'sliding scale' of religious feeling?

extremism
denial
lack of belief
true neutrality
belief
trust
faith
blind faith
extremism

 

[SkippingStones]

Everyone has some ¨blind faith¨. If you step onto a road and see a car coming you believe it will hit you and so you get out of the way. People don´t think to themselves, ¨The probability of the car hitting me is high, etc¨. It´d take to long, and you´d get hit.

In order to live in society, or live at all, we have to define the world somehow, and this is belief. We believe that something is. That process CAN be defined as using experience to figure the probability that something will continue the way it has in the past. It can be defined in other ways however, and as we learn more about how humans work the definitions will change. A typical God based belief system is one of these definitions.

Reasons and definitions are things we tell ourselves after events so that we can use them to predict future events and act accordingly.

For the little boy at church, he gets a cookie when he says ¨God exists¨.

 

[Sarkus]

Everyone has some ¨blind faith¨. If you step onto a road and see a car coming you believe it will hit you and so you get out of the way. People don´t think to themselves, ¨The probability of the car hitting me is high, etc¨. It´d take to long, and you´d get hit.

Over simplified, I'm afraid.
When you see a car coming, you may not consciously go "weighing up the probabilities, this car is going to hit" but subconciously you do. (Plus there is the matter of survival instinct taking over.)
With friends, you "trust" them to do something, but again that "trust" is built up on previous experience - and so subconciously you are saying "they are more likely to do it than not".

In order to live in society, or live at all, we have to define the world somehow, and this is belief. We believe that something is. That process CAN be defined as using experience to figure the probability that something will continue the way it has in the past. It can be defined in other ways however, and as we learn more about how humans work the definitions will change. A typical God based belief system is one of these definitions.

No - there is a distinct difference between a "belief" in God and the "belief" that the sky won't fall down, for example.
I do not "believe" in anything the way someone has a "belief" god - and when I use the word "belief" in casual parlance I'm actually meaning "probably". i.e. "I believe you will do this..." when I mean "I think you will probably do this".
And a "god-based belief system" is MORE than a definition of society when you truly believe in the god.

Reasons and definitions are things we tell ourselves after events so that we can use them to predict future events and act accordingly.

For the little boy at church, he gets a cookie when he says ¨God exists¨.

The boy who gets a cookie has no belief in god - he has a belief that if he says the right things he gets a cookie.

I think I understand where you're coming from, but we're talking here about a "belief" in god.

Well for you and me maybe not - but many people do claim direct experience. Can we really be 100% sure that all of them have not had the experiences they claim?

I'm sure they've had their experience - I'm just not going to believe it's attributable to "god" until they provide evidence. Otherwise it is just willful interpretation of another phenomena.