Faith isn't a bad thing.

[McCulloch]

Faith isn't a bad thing.

Is faith a good thing or a bad thing?

What is faith anyway? I think that we are discussing definition (2) below.

faith [feyth]
–noun

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith (accessed: January 09, 2007).

[Confused]

But even with the highest probability, you are leaving some of it up to faith just to hold that belief or perform an action. Unless you don't do or believe anything that is 100% proven to be true, then for you to do it or believe it( it may not be blind faith because you have weighed the options) in part with faith. Otherwise you would hold no belief or perform no action that wasn't 100% proven to be true.

I think that we have confused you further by moving the goalposts. We started by defining faith as believing something without proof. I am proposing that we change definitions. There is a sliding scale of the sureness that you can get for a belief from evidence. On one extreme, where there is no evidence, to believe such a thing requires what we are now calling blind faith. On the other extreme, where convincing proof has been provided, to be believe such a thing requires no faith at all.

The problem is that most of us live in a world where the evidence is neither completely absent nor absolutely conclusive. The skeptic's problem with the average theist, is that he or she is expecting and projecting a kind of certainty of belief based on evidence which supports, at best, a low degree of confidence.

I take back my "thanks for my asks back". I agree that the average theist may hold on to a belief despite evidence or lackthereof based on faith. But science in general relies on faith in a theory to start out with, they then test that theory and either disprove or prove it (to a statistical degree of assurance). They may not retain that theory on faith if it is disproved, but without faith, they may have never tested it to begin with. Newton had so much faith that his law of space and time being absolute was 100% accurate, Einstein came around and proved that space and time were actually relative, but spacetime was absolute. If Newton hadn't first postulated his theory, would Einstein have ever questioned it to find the truth? So what started with faith led to a revolution in physics. Is that bad?

[McCulloch]

If Newton hadn't first postulated his theory, would Einstein have ever questioned it to find the truth? So what started with faith led to a revolution in physics. Is that bad?

In the scientific model, when you propose an hypothesis, you need only imagination and an understanding of the model, not faith. After being tested, the hypothesis becomes accepted as theory, not based on faith but on evidence.

[Aslan]

If Newton hadn't first postulated his theory, would Einstein have ever questioned it to find the truth? So what started with faith led to a revolution in physics. Is that bad?

In the scientific model, when you propose an hypothesis, you need only imagination and an understanding of the model, not faith. After being tested, the hypothesis becomes accepted as theory, not based on faith but on evidence.

Yet it is still a theory, not a truth. So you don't put your faith in it, but you believe it to be true...you base many other scientific theories off of it.

I would say that the problem with debating Christianity in scientific terms is that Christianity itself is not a science. You cannot place it in a laboratory and reinact it so as to prove or disprove its existance. Here is a quote that sums up what I mean to say.

"What cannot be trusted to recur is not material for science: that is why history is not one of the sciences. You cannot find out what Napoleon did at the battle of Austerlitz by asking him to come and fight it again in a laboratory with the same combatants, the same terrain, the same weather, and in the same age. You have to go to the records. We have not, in fact, proved that science excludes miracles: we have only proved that the question of miracles, like innumerable other questions, excludes laboratory treatment. "

[Cogitoergosum]

I would say that the problem with debating Christianity in scientific terms is that Christianity itself is not a science. You cannot place it in a laboratory and reinact it so as to prove or disprove its existance. Here is a quote that sums up what I mean to say.

"What cannot be trusted to recur is not material for science: that is why history is not one of the sciences. You cannot find out what Napoleon did at the battle of Austerlitz by asking him to come and fight it again in a laboratory with the same combatants, the same terrain, the same weather, and in the same age. You have to go to the records. We have not, in fact, proved that science excludes miracles: we have only proved that the question of miracles, like innumerable other questions, excludes laboratory treatment. "

Science can confirm history not by having everybody come back and repeat what they did, but by reenacting the event using the traditions of the time and what was reported in history, this might disprove the historical account or prove it.
for example: A reenactment of custard's last stand was done and studied scientifically after a lot of bullet fragments were recovered from the battle site. Since the native americans and the federal army used different rifles and so different bullets they were able to figure out how the two armies were positioned, where the federal army retreated and where the last stand was. Why the battle was won by the native americans?Among other reasons, Their rifles had shorter range than the federal army but were faster to reload, so once they were in close position they had an advantage. a lot of reenactments and scientific studies are done to understand the accuracy of historical accounts, you can catch them on the history channel.

[otseng]

Also, there are too much subjective criteria to determine if something is faith or not - "enough evidence", "reasonable person", "high probability".

But doesn't this reflect reality? So instead of looking at the admittedly fuzzy border areas, let's look first at clear cut cases.

Yes, reality is more fuzzy than how our mind would like to compartamentalize things.

But I still maintain that it is impossible to use your new definition and apply it objectively. For example, I believe I have enough evidence for myself that Christianity is true and thus have a reasonable belief. But, you might look at my same evidence and believe it is false and think it is just faith.

We can extend this to other theists as well. They themselves might belief they have a reasonable belief. But nontheists might see them as just having faith with an insufficient logical basis for their belief.

[Confused]

If Newton hadn't first postulated his theory, would Einstein have ever questioned it to find the truth? So what started with faith led to a revolution in physics. Is that bad?

In the scientific model, when you propose an hypothesis, you need only imagination and an understanding of the model, not faith. After being tested, the hypothesis becomes accepted as theory, not based on faith but on evidence.

Correct, but what is the motivating force behind you taking that step to first question the model, then postulate multiple hypotheses, then narrow them down based on probability, to come up with a few hypotheses to test. Einstein intuitively felt that what Newton determined as absolute was wrong. It lacked much to him. So he took on a major accepted truth for that time on instinct, his faith in the fact that Newton was wrong, that space and time are relative, but spacetime was absolute. He then set out how to prove it. This to me is faith. Perhaps I am so far out to the left field that I am no longer puttting faith in the same criteria as originally posted or even the modified version. But faith can be a motivating force to challenge something without direct proof. In doing so, you work through the discrepancies to find the truth. But you still don't start out with truth, you start out with "questions" and faith leads you to test those questions.

[McCulloch]

But I still maintain that it is impossible to use your new definition and apply it objectively. For example, I believe I have enough evidence for myself that Christianity is true and thus have a reasonable belief. But, you might look at my same evidence and believe it is false and think it is just faith.

So we disagree not so much on the definition but what falls within the definition. You believe that a reasonable person with the available evidence could not help but to believe that the doctrines of Christianity are, it not absolutely true, at least probably true. I do not.

[otseng]

So we disagree not so much on the definition but what falls within the definition. You believe that a reasonable person with the available evidence could not help but to believe that the doctrines of Christianity are, it not absolutely true, at least probably true.

I can agree with that.

And with your new definition, I don't believe that faith is necessarily bad either.