Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> Brent Meeker writes:
>
>>> This cannot be explained away by
>>> "faith" in the sense that one can have faith in the gravity god or a
>>> deist god (because no empirical finding counts for or against such
>>> beliefs): rather, it comes down to a matter of simultaneously
>>> believing x and not-x.
>>>
>> Seems like "faith" to me - belief without or contrary to evidence. What is the "x" you refer to?
>
> There is a subtle difference. It is possible to have faith in something stupid
> and still be consistent. For example, I could say that I have faith that God
> will answer my prayers regardless of whether he has ever answered any
> prayers before in the history of the world. However, I think most religious
> people would say that they have "faith" that God will answer their prayers
> because that it what God does and has done in the past. In so saying, they
> are making an empirically verifiable claim, at least in theory. They can be invited
> to come up with a test to support their belief, which can be as stringent as they
> like; for example, they might allow only historical analysis because God would
> not comply with any experiment designed to test him. I suspect that no such
> test would have any impact on their beliefs because at bottom they are just
> based on blind faith, but given that they do not volunteer this to begin with, it
> shows them up as inconsistent and hypocritical.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
OK. But I'd say that in fact almost no one believes something without any evidence, i.e. on *blind* faith. Religious faith is usually belief based on *selected* evidence; it is "faith" because it is contrary to the total evidence. Bruno seems to use "faith" somewhat differently: to mean what I would call a working hypothesis.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Fri Nov 10 2006 - 14:43:00 PST