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Originally Posted by bingle
I missed this in my first reply, sorry.
There is a difference, though, in the amount of faith required to accept, say, the theory of gravity and the existence of God. Or, to use another poster's example, to accept the existence of Santa Claus. Do you say that people who believe in Santa Claus and those who do not are each using as much faith as the other? What about those who believe in oranges and those who do not?
If I postulate the existence of an invisible pink space unicorn, do you believe in it? Is it equally acceptable to be convinced of its existence as well as not? How do we then distinguish between reality and fantasy? What decision process can we go through to separate the two?
Bingle
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I see where you are going with this. But I think that faith is binary. It is either there or not, and one cannot have various degrees of faith. A sliding scale of faith would imply that that remainder is taken up by empirical proof. (by the way, I do speak of empirical, even though it is limited, that being part of d*d's arguement).
I can readily accept the existance of gravity because scientific proof exists to demonstrate its repeatable measurement, and predict it's behaviour. I cannot accept the existance of your unicorn, because so far there is no proof of its existance. You have not produced it. I cannot accept it on faith. Nor can I discount it's existance on faith. But I can postpone my acceptance (or lack ) of it until there is proof (empirical) and therefore remain agnostic to its existance.
Similarly, I can demonstrate the existance of oranges and so can you. I can do it repeatedly and yield the same result. If somebody doesn't believe in it , in them, then they have difference in interpretation. Regardless, the orange is there.
The crux is why do I accept the definitions of scientific proof? Do I have faith in Science? No. I have confidence, so far demonstrated, that the method of proof used by science is repeatable and dependable. As our sophistication in measurement develops, so shall our capablility to measure that which is currently out of our ken, and our accuracy.
I think that deductive reasoning is a very valuable tool, but falls short of the aims of faith. Faith implies acceptance without proof, regardless of its source (dedcutive reasoning or empirical evidence).
Faith allows one to accept that wich is not designed to be provable. When you talk about those who have faith as being the ones who discard the proof :
( I talked about those who don't accept proof, but believe which would be believing through "faith")
They are they are still utilizing faith regardless of the evidence.