Originally posted by rwingett
Faith would be if you drove your car from the brake shop at a high rate of speed, not knowing whether they had finished the job, but trusting completely that the car would stop when you stepped on the brake..
Originally posted by rwingett
All you're doing is tampering with the definition of faith to try to make it synonymous with belief.
Who's tampering?? You said regarding faith and belief that they are not "synonymous." You wrote:
Originally posted by rwingett
They are not the same thing
This contradicts the almost every definition of faith you yourself provided:
belief and trust in ... belief in ... firm belief in something ...something that is believed
So obviously you are wrong. And your own references show that. The only deference is that faith tends to be firm beliefs, or strongly held beliefs. But essentially, you can substitute "firmly belive" with "faith."
Here's a Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary definition:
something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
If you look up belief and look at the list of synonymous you will see "BELIEF" is the very first one. Again, you could not be more wrong.
Now lets look at your biased view of faith:
Originally posted by rwingett
... Faith and reason are opposed to one another. As the amount of reasonable evidence is whittled away to nothing then the need for faith increases in direct proportion....Faith and reason are opposed to one another... Faith is believing something very strongly in spite of the fact that there is no good evidence to do so.
But your definition in your last post says:
Faith implies certitude and full trust and confidence in the source whether there be objective evidence or not
You said faith means there is "in fact no evidence." But your definition say it is regardless of the presence of objective evidence.
Now you have also said that faith is oppose to reason:
Originally posted by rwingett
Faith and reason are opposed to one another.
And bbarr asserts:
Originally posted by bbarr...his firm beliefs are irrational
Lets look at rational.
def: having reason or understanding b : relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason
Compared to belief:
Belief: an assent or act of assenting to something offered for acceptance
and
conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence
Both reason and belief speak of mental acts with regard to knowledge, statements, information, ideas. If fact, they entail understanding and knowledge. You can not have mental assent to ideas if you don't understand them, and you can not understand anything unless you can logically reason about them.
All beliefs depend on the functions of reasoning and understanding. You can not believe the irrational - because by definition - it is not something that can be reasoned about. You may disagree with a belief, you may think someone's beliefs entail contradictions or inconsistencies, but unless that person is speaking complete utter nonsense, to simply say someone's beliefs are irrational is, in itself, a moronic thing to say.
bbarr, that was probably the stupidest thing I've read from you, and I am greatly disappointed. I may often disagree with you , but I'd never say your beliefs are irrational. I think I deserve a little more credit for my capacity for reason than you have just shown me.