That's an equivocation fallacy. You are using the word faith like "trust", or "confidence". But religious faith isn't just being confident in something based on evidence, it's absolute certainty about something for which there is no evidence.
Is the problem faith itself or the imposition of faith?
- Thread starter Thoreau
- Start date
That's an equivocation fallacy. You are using the word faith like "trust", or "confidence". But religious faith isn't just being confident in something based on evidence, it's absolute certainty about something for which there is no evidence.
First, they probably believe they have evidence. Second, absolute certainty isn't given to us as a species. That's what the leap of faith metaphor is for. The only difference between trusting your life to a parachute and trusting your life to God is the ability to know how a parachute works. Which, if you think about it, most people don't. They trust someone else that it will work. In the case of god, they trust someone else that the rituals and observances they are told to do will give them a place at the good table when they die. Since they can't observe other cases of that like you could with a parachute, and they see the tables as real because it sort of makes sense if you don't think about it very hard, they have to have faith that it will work out if they commit.
But all faith works the same way. I have heard people talk about having faith that God will take care of them in situations which they can't control. Very much the same idea as trusting that the sun will come up or the parachute will work. In the case of the parachute, faith is the best anyone can do since they sometimes don't work.
But all faith works the same way. I have heard people talk about having faith that God will take care of them in situations which they can't control. Very much the same idea as trusting that the sun will come up or the parachute will work. In the case of the parachute, faith is the best anyone can do since they sometimes don't work.
Thoreau
Valued Senior Member
I have to disagree with that. I have faith in certain things. But I don't have absolute faith in them. It's more along the lines of, "I believe in angels, but if science proves me wrong and I'm incorrect in my belief, then I will obviously have to re-evaluate my faith in angels."
I don't think having faith automatically means you have to have to have COMPLETE faith.
That's still the same fallacy. Your non-absolute faith is not the same as my definition of religious faith. It's something lesser, like confidence or tentative belief.
Possibly the same reason why people tend not to like braggarts.
A person of faith is basically often heard as if saying "I know God and you don't. / God loves me, but He doesn't love you. / I know something you don't. / I have something you don't have. / I am better than you."
Humans are not islands and they do not live in a vacuum; they tend to feel a need for a homogenous community - hence (peer) pressure.
Faith itself isn't a problem in a homogenous society; but it is a problem in a pluralistic one.
Usually, we reason that if people have differing views, this means that not all of them can be right. Hence the false ones should be weeded out.
Such trust in others is common and meaningful in homogenous societies.
But in a pluralistic society (like the modern Western one), it becomes highly problematic, as the traditional instances that deserved trust don't exist anymore or their value is relativized (because there are now many).
One solution to pluralism is in resorting into (extreme) individualism; but individualism is rather difficult to maintain philosophically.
Because that's how religious people (granted mostly Christians) describe it. Faith for them isn't something that is tentative, which could change given new information. Faith is their rock solid evidence.
:facepalm:
You really don't understand do you? Just try and THINK about it. THINK don't FEEL, THINK for more than a couple minutes of all of human history and how religion has affected it. PLEASE try to understand. :wallbang:
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@ Knowledge here is a translator for everything you say. Enjoy
Is your faith in tomorrows sunrise tenative?
Theoretically yes. But I assume the odds are very good.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
@ Knowledge here is a translator for everything you say. Enjoy
Your a ignorant sheep. You know nothing of my post, clearly. Faith is a human emotion, like hope, or science. I believed in Matt Cain's temperament last night to complete his perfect game. Faith of Christianity is silly. We do not know that God exists, they act as they do.
Should I make a thread on my stance on God? I am a agnostic, faithful of God.
Once again...You validate my point. I don't have that exact phrase in the translator but I do have something similar. You are a living, breathing contradiction sir, how can one Be AGNOSTIC and have FAITH in an unknown being that cannot be given any valid evidence due to NOMA.(one day i hope that is destroyed)
“You are arrogant"= "Please stop sticking to facts...it’s annoying." that one is similar but not identical to you calling me “You’re an ignorant sheep"
ag·nos·tic
[ag-nos-tik]
noun
1.
a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience. Synonyms: disbeliever, nonbeliever, unbeliever; doubter, skeptic, secularist, empiricist; heathen, heretic, infidel, pagan.
2.
a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
3.
a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic: Socrates was an agnostic on the subject of immortality.
same thing. Look up the metaphor of 'leap of faith' where the protagonist has to jump across a chasm. I'll try to find it. It's one of the xian thinkers from europe, I think around Descartes' or Pascal's time. They point out that faith is what you use to make the leap.