Originally posted by LemonJello
This conversation will be fruitless until you actually make it clear what you mean by 'faith'. My experience has been that there are any number of ways that term is taken, and they can diverge greatly. I try to avoid the term, but when I do use it I use it as an epistemic pejorative. Regardless of how I use it, what do you mean by the term here, specifically?

Originally posted by whodey
Are these definitions acceptable?

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
What do you mean? Why would you want to stipulate multiple, incompatible definitions for the one term that is at the very crux of the discussion?

Originally posted by whodey
Ok, since the word faith is often synonomous with religion, I think it is identified soley with religion. However, by the definitions provided I think it is clear that the common denomenator is the word trust.

Edit: Now do I have to define the word trust? You know, this is kinda like chasing your tail....that is if I had one to chase.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Do you hereby stipulate that faith is trust? If so, I'm happy to accept such a stipulation without further definition. The topic then becomes, "What do you trust?," correct?

At the bottom-level, I put my reliance in clear-mind, or Buddha-mind. That is a kind of raw, pre-conceptual being-aware, a sort of empirical bedrock.

Stepping up from that, I put my reliance in reason, in my ability to form concepts and draw conclusions that are isomorphic* to the reality experienced in Buddha-mind.

However, as Starrman pointed out, I don’t live strictly according to reason, but also according to aesthetics. These aesthetics are also rooted in the perceived coherence and connectedness of the tathata (“thusness” or “suchness” ) of the world and myself as part of that tathata.

I have my own personal definition of “faith”, which has nothing to do with belief in the sense of deciding whether a proposition is true or false. For me, “faith” is an existential term, that has nothing to do with, say, expected outcomes from reliance on anything. Although I don’t recall him using the term, it has a bit to do with Camus’ vision of Sisyphus; it is purely an existential—and aesthetic—attitude. (If Camus did use the term, I suspect that it was with respect to the kind of “leap to a belief” that he rejected, among existentialists as well as religionists.)

* Attribution to Douglas Hofstadter and , recursively, to Dr. Scribbles.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Do you hereby stipulate that faith is trust? If so, I'm happy to accept such a stipulation without further definition. The topic then becomes, "What do you trust?," correct?

Originally posted by whodey
OK so the definitions that I have listed previously would include the term trust. So tell us, at what point did you trust your wife? What evidence was provided for you to do so? Also, even though you must have evidence for being able to trust her, is such evidence proof that you can trust her? And perhaps most importantly of all, does she believe in the tooth ferry? 😛

Originally posted by whodey
Thanks for doing my dirty work for me. However, my dictionary says this:
1. a) A confident belief, trust
b) belief in God; religious conviction
2. Loyalty, allegence
3. A system of religious beliefs.

How are these for definitions for everyone? Are these definitions acceptable?

Originally posted by Starrman
Only 1b and 3 are acceptable to me and then so, only in that they are simplistic definitions.

Originally posted by amannion
Hmmm, I'll start with the last one.
No, she doesn't but she'll claim otherwise in front of our kids.

I'm not sure about the notion that I must have evidence to trust her. I suppose that's true, but I don't treat my relationship with her as if it were some sort of scientific experiment.
I guess the evidence is in the nature of that relationship.
My tru gger. But look at them from one day to the next and nothing seems to change, size wise.

Originally posted by vistesd
At the bottom-level, I put my reliance in clear-mind, or Buddha-mind. That is a kind of raw, pre-conceptual being-aware, a sort of empirical bedrock.

Stepping up from that, I put my reliance in reason, in my ability to form concepts and draw conclusions that are isomorphic* to the reality experienced in Buddha-mind.

However, as Starrman pointed out, I ...[text shortened]... ll as religionists.)

* Attribution to Douglas Hofstadter and , recursively, to Dr. Scribbles.

Originally posted by whodey
I think we have all decided that what we are talking about is trust. Therefore, what say you?

Originally posted by whodey
Ok, what about the definition we have arrived at? What is your opinion about trusting? Surely this has nothing to do with whether a proposition is true or false either.

Originally posted by Starrman
Why not call it trust then? Why reifiy it as having some other mystical qualities by using the word faith?

I put my trust in things which my experience suggests have probable outcomes.