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Originally Posted by Ustwo
So you are saying having faith in god is like having faith in union bridge contractors?
I'd say one is an assumption, you assume the bridge is safe or it would have had a problem prior to you using it. One is faith. You have faith there is an invisible sky god that reads your minds, has issues with how you use your genitals, and well send you to eternal torment if you dare question him with your logic.
Assumptions are based on past data. They can be wrong.
Faith is based on, well nothing.
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Nope. I'm saying that faith is a implicit in everybody's life. Whether you choose to have faith in a higher power is just another form of that.
Why would you assume that the bridge is safe because it hasn't failed before? Do you assume that everything that hasn't failed is safe?
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You're confusing statistical improbability with impossibility. No one prepares for an impossibility at all, but when one decides to prepare for an improbability one must consider the reasonability of said preparation. It's statistically improbable that I'll be killed by a deer, therefor I don't prepare for it. It's much more likely I'll get in a car accident, so I buckle up and I drive a car wit airbags. I prioritize my preparedness based on estimated probability of danger. That, of course, doesn't mean that the improbable things won't happen, but to chastise someone for being a statistic makes no sense.
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Nope, i'm not. You're confusing statistical improbability with reality. I know the odds that i get struck by lightning are pretty small. This fact is of little consolation if i ever get struck by lightning. It's statistically improbable that you get killed by a deer, sure. Is that fact going to matter if you get killed by a deer? No.
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Assuming you're right and my extensive experiences in being a theist doesn't give me enough to make statements about the faithful, the same can be said of you, no? So when you post here, you're not posting for all theists.
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I know i'm not posting for all theists, and unlike you, i wasn't trying to speak on behalf of all of them. All i was alluding to is that there are many diverse perspectives that fall into the category of theism. You were saying that all theists automatically defer to god whenever they come across uncertainty. You said all theists were the same, i said they weren't.
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Your question isn't impossible, it's vague. I can answer what I am guessing you're asking, but there's a chance I'm not guessing the correct interpretation of the question. Prove I exist? I can see my body, and I trust my eyes because I understand how they work. There. Boom. Answered.
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Here's a hint: first you would have to offer some sort of evidence (experimental, because, you know, if it isn't how can we be sure of its consistency) of existence, then you would have to show that you meet the criteria.
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This is getting really boring. If you're going to go that far back, then the conversation is too disconnected from reality to work. "How can you trust reason and your senses? it's clearly faith!"
Faith: belief that is not based on proof.
Proof: evidence sufficient to establish a thing as true, or to produce belief in its truth.
Evidence is only verifiable based on deductive reasoning and precedence based on perceptions. If you can't assume perceptions are correct, then how can we have a basis of anything? You've gone way past "faith". Faith is something that happens outside of or in spite of evidence. Evidence is something based on perception, therefore it's still completely different. I don't know how to make this more clear.
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I know, it's stupid, but it works.
I'm trying to show you that if you go far enough, the concepts of proof or evidence break down. The impression i get from you is that you think that there ain't no problem that science can't shed light on. To me, this flies in the face of everything that i know about science.
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Without the basis of trusting the perception, there is no understanding. But that's completely different than belief without evidence. Evidence comes after accepting perception. Conclusions come after accepting evidence. Faith is separate from all of that because it works 'outside' of the system. It says "Yeah, that perception, evidence, proof stuff is great, and trust it... except when it comes to this old book".
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All that i'm saying is that accepting perception implicitly requires belief without evidence.