Faith

[namguy69]

"Religion is for people that are afraid of going to hell...Spiritual people have already been in Hell"

Unknown author.

namguy

[Jason]

Is there a topic we are to debate here, namguy69?

[jose]

hi namguy thanks for introducing yourself, is that your Sig line?

[Tobzie]

I think there is something to debate here, namguy's dubious use of an ellipsis...

[Nathan Struth]

What are we debating?!??!?! WTF!?!??

[jamesbdunn]

Faith like science is a way of trying to understand the world we are placed within.

[Jack]

That we can debate. :)
I would contend that faith is accepting packaged explanations for the world. Faith is the unquestioning acceptance of reasons provided by others. It does not encourage an individual to question and learn for themselves.

[Captain Chaos]

Quote by: Isherwood That we can debate. :) I would contend that faith is accepting packaged explanations for the world. Faith is the unquestioning acceptance of reasons provided by others. It does not encourage an individual to question and learn for themselves.

Faith is baloney, science is steak.

Meaning...

Faith requires ample processing before you can choke it down. Science requires a wee bit of cooking, because it does not always make sense on the surface, but ultimately is far more palatable.

[jamesbdunn]

Quote by: Captain Chaos Faith is baloney, science is steak. Meaning... Faith requires ample processing before you can choke it down. Science requires a wee bit of cooking, because it does not always make sense on the surface, but ultimately is far more palatable.

I disagree, or maybe not. We may just have different perspectives about the same thing.

Faith is a dumby variable that you put on the left side of your equation, so you can better manipulate the things you have some control over on the right side of that equation.

[Zhavric]

"The information super-highway is a ****ing metaphor!"

-Cryptonomicon, Neil Stephenson

Please explain how internal convinctions can be of any use to us in describing & understanding the external world. Faith cannot be used to understand the universe beyond our own imaginings & thoughts.

[jamesbdunn]

Quote by: Zhavric Please explain how internal convinctions can be of any use to us in describing & understanding the external world. Faith cannot be used to understand the universe beyond our own imaginings & thoughts.

A person without the ability to have faith can not pursue investigating a phenomena which has no present basis of real world perception. We have five senses, if you want to consider things outside of those five senses you must have the concept of faith.

You touch an electrical wire and get shocked. You believe there is something that you can try to understand there. People tell you it is electricity. Can you touch, taste, feel, smell, or hear it. At first you might believe you can, but through further investigation you find that your senses only deal with electricity on a much different level than they would with lets say water.

You have faith that the models described to you have enough validation to them to do something constructive. Like keeping yourself from being electrocuted.

If a person truely has no faith in anything, I have the faith that they will probably have a short life as running in front of a moving car will probably end their life. Though I've never done it my self of course.

Faith is a necessary element of investigation and learning.

We may not like to mix words tainted with religious reference with words of logic, but the word should not be penalized for being abused.

[Zhavric]

Quote by: jamesbdunn A person without the ability to have faith can not pursue investigating a phenomena which has no present basis of real world perception. We have five senses, if you want to consider things outside of those five senses you must have the concept of faith.

You, sir, have confused "faith" with logic. It is logic that allows us to make comparisons, the basis for all inquiry. "Faith" is belief without evidence. I do not have "faith" that X = X & X =/= Y. They are demonstrable.

You have faith that the models described to you have enough validation to them to do something constructive. Like keeping yourself from being electrocuted.

Again, you have confused faith with logic. What keeps me safe from electrocution is the logical deductions and comparisons made from experiences with / explanations of electricity.

If I relied on "faith" to keep me safe from electricity, you'd probably see me sticking my finger into an electrical socket sure that some force would stop me from being harmed. i.e. It wouldn't work.

If a person truely has no faith in anything, I have the faith that they will probably have a short life as running in front of a moving car will probably end their life. Though I've never done it my self of course.

On the contrary. As I've established, it is logic and our natural preservation instincts which keep us safe. It's faith which causes people to be bit by snakes when they try to handle them, get shot by bullets when they think their god is protecting them, and generally injure themselves horrifically.

Faith is a necessary element of investigation and learning.

You're not describing faith. You're describing logic.

EDIT: Good effort, but you still haven't explained how internal convictions are useful for explaining the natural world around us.

[jamesbdunn]

Quote by: Zhavric Good effort, but you still haven't explained how internal convictions are useful for explaining the natural world around us.

You personally have not followed every known relationship in mathematics and the sciences to come to your present understandings. Within your lifetime you do not have that kind of time or resources.

So, you have the faith that others have used diligent effort to describe a phenomena. You take those results and push forward with the development of your own concepts.

You personally do not understand the Power Tree associated with Nuclear Physics. But if you had the interest, you would open a series of books and accept on faith that the hundreds of calculations involved are representative.

You would not attempt to prove the legitimacy of every equation or proposition. You simply don't have the time or resources to do that. People have spent their entire lives learning only a small piece to contribute to the Power Tree.

You have faith that the individual peices already developed will help you in your own work. Putting infinity on the left side of an equation is a huge leap in faith that it will provide you with useful information about the terms on the right side of the equation. Infinity is a concept, not necessarily a reality.

[Zhavric]

Quote by: jamesbdunn You personally have not followed every known relationship in mathematics and the sciences to come to your present understandings. Within your lifetime you do not have that kind of time or resources.

I'm not sure why theists keep submitting this manner of defense.

Do you need degrees in physics & biology to know that a healthy adult elephant cannot occupy a 1 foot cubic box and remain healthy? No. Do you need to examine every letter of the alphabet to know X is not the same letter as Y? No.

Thus, your line of reasoning fails. With logic, we don't need to know everything to know specific things.

So, you have the faith that others have used diligent effort to describe a phenomena. You take those results and push forward with the development of your own concepts.

Perhaps you do, but I highly doubt that.

What I do (and what I suspect you do as well...) is make logical deductions based on parameters given to you. Do you have "faith" the elephant won't fit comfortably in the shoebox or do you know it to be true based on what you logically understand about elephants and geometry?

You seem to be under the misconception that knowing something logically is the same as having faith in something. This is not the case. Faith is belief WITHOUT evidence and thus useless in discussing the natural world which needs to be explored using evidence and logic.

There's also a world of difference between declaring a plausible claim "likely" based on evidence & deductive reasoning and wishing an absurdity to be true.

[Zinkovich]

I do not believe in faith because faith leads to implied experience, and thus makes you deprive yourself of honesty in your intellectual journey.

To believe in something you had not experienced through personalized, synthetic words of basic semantical reinterpretation of historical or scientific fact or coincidence is not to accept experience, but to deny it of its true base observable nature. When a man mentions that he dug up a dinosaur fossil in Africa with indications that it has feathers, we should look at the fossil based on what it is and not to define it by what it implicates through our implied experiences.

To give an example of implied experience, the ability of faith to heal ro move mountains is one of those within the Bible. By reading the Bible with serious acceptance, the Christian begins to believe in the possibility of healing through the implication of hrealing being personally experienced by someone he never met, and never established a previous trust towards. And then there is, of course, the most implied expeirence of all, the creation-or rather, the implication of a start to our game as the reason for our existence, and thus the existence of our reason. It is ridiculous in its lack of basis on true observation.

Thus we lead even further into the fabrication of people or objects rather than experience as carriers of the articles of faith. We do not know if they exist, and yet we base our lives and future itnerpretation of our lvies around them? Such a thing is not right, and robs the believer of true expeirence for himself.

Faith is a denial of our own ability to discern and experience a small part of the whole. I detest faith because it leads ot dishonesty ot the self and thus unintentional dishonesty towards others. I am sorry if my stance offends, but there it is in full color.

[jamesbdunn]

Quote by: Zhavric There's also a world of difference between declaring a plausible claim "likely" based on evidence & deductive reasoning and wishing an absurdity to be true.

Do you believe that electromagnetic energy originating many trillions of miles from Earth, propogates through space and is influenced by many factors before reaching Earth?

Do you believe there are factors of influence that no one on Earth has yet considered?

If the helix formed by the magnetic and electrical portions of the electromagnetic wave were to rotate (they often do), could the rotation be compared between two different observation locations and determine the varying phase difference (I'm not sure this would provide useful information)?

Does this provide information related to the amount of refraction the waveform/photon experienced while traveling through stellar dust (maybe, there is only a very weak logical relationship posed)? Instrumentation-wise, detecting electromagnetic wave rotation and phase differences is completely doable. Could refraction cause a phase change in rotation, I've never been told as such, but I have a feeling it does.

Would I spend more then a second on this if I didn't have faith in it's potential to yeild something useful?

By randomly spewing loosely related topics, a creative opportunity arises.

So I go check the internet for topics related to electromagnetic B-E rotation as it relates to refraction and see if anyone else has already done part of the research.

Electromagnetic Wave

I'm not interested enough to go beyond this point.

But the point is, there has to sometimes be a leap of faith to go beyond what you know and probe areas that you know nothing about to identify the relationships you suspect may be true.

[Zhavric]

But the point is, there has to sometimes be a leap of faith to go beyond what you know and probe areas that you know nothing about to identify the relationships you suspect may be true.

We both know that with enough training and explanation there will be a clearly defined and understandable path from the basic math & science everyone learns to the advanced physics that's in the cutting edge of science. It's a logical progression. Not faith.

Faith is when there's assumption WITHOUT evidence or any logical progression.

[Cephus]

Quote by: jamesbdunn Faith like science is a way of trying to understand the world we are placed within.

No, science is trying to understand the world, faith is trying to impose "understanding" on the world. Religion has no interest in the truth, they simply invent their own "truth" and insist that it's real.