John Mikes wrote:
> Tom Caylor wrote:
>> This looks like Tarski's trick to me. It is an act of faith any
>> time we take what we say as truth.
> On 12/24/06, *Brent Meeker* < meekerdb.domain.name.hidden
> <mailto:meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>> wrote: "When I take what I say to be true
> based on evidence it is not a matter of faith" JM: it is based on
> your faith in your evidence and its truth.
"My" evidence, being empirical, can be checked by others. Hence I needn't threaten with hellfire or obfuscate with metaphor - I can let the evidence speak for itself. If I'm right I'll be confirmed - if I'm not I'll change my opinion.
> A religious person accepts
> as evidence "God said so" - of course it is based on HIS faith, and
> so are physicists evidencing by collapse of wave function, .by
> calculations on the inflation after the BB, and other kind of
> 'scientists' (believing) in the tenets of their (today's) science,
> just as (in Ptolemy-time) on the flatness of the Earth.
If a religious person has considered the evidence and decided that some writing in a holy book, or a voice out of the clouds, is God speaking, I'd say that's not faith. But the Abrahamic religions have explicitly rejected "evaluation of the evidence" and raised blind faith to a virtue.
“When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe anything else, for we begin by believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe…. I warn people not to seek for anything beyond what they came to believe, for that was all they needed to seek for. In the last resort, however, it is better for you to remain ignorant, for fear that you come to know what you should not know…. Let curiosity give place to faith, and glory to salvation. Let them at least be no hindrance, or let them keep quiet. To know nothing against the Rule [of faith] is to know everything.”
--- Tertullian
"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of
his Reason."
--- Martin Luther
Brent Meeker
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Received on Mon Dec 25 2006 - 18:44:55 PST