Wow, well I'd like to see that definition of faith. Apparently having faith that my chair won't break when I sit in it is blind.
Printable View
That's not faith - you have evidence. The chair hasn't broken any other time you sat in it, and it looks sturdy, and so it is safe to assume that the chair won't break. In fact, you would be very foolish to have faith that the chair won't break, as that would cause to to ignore any other mitigating circumstances, like , for instance, in the event that the legs look termite-ridden.
Faith is, quite simply, belief in the absence of evidence. In fact, I would argue that belief even in light of evidence is foolish. For instance, I do not believe that when I wake up tomorrow, gravity will still be working, despite 13 billion years' worth of counterexamples, because no matter how completely we may think we understand gravity, it could always change tomorrow. Pragmatically, I make the assumption that gravity will still be working tomorrow, because honestly, even if it were to fail, it's not like there's anything I could do about it, and being that in my experience it hasn't, it's not worth worrying over, but this is not belief, this is a pragmatic conclusion based on prior observations.
Believing that your chair won't break when you sit in it isn't faith. You believe it won't break because it's a well-made object specifically created to sit in. You have a logical, fully supportable reason to think the chair won't break.
Faith is essentially the belief in something, anything, without any hard evidence to back it up. People who believe in god, leprechauns, aliens, ghosts, etc, are all operating on faith. If you have no information about the stock market yet firmly believe that Nasdaq will go up by fifty points tomorrow, you're operating on faith. It's blind. You have no real hard evidence to prove that what you believe is true, but you choose to believe it anyway.
Now, at this point I'm going to say that I didn't rush off to my Webster's to look up the definition. And yes, you could probably go to some internet dictionary and run back with a hyperlink and a triumphant look in your eyes shouting "HA, that is NOT what faith means, see?" Well, I'd argue that most of the time, the word "faith" is used exactly the way I described it. So, if it makes you feel better, you can think of my definition of "faith" as definition 8c.
And before you think about getting into a debate over that, I'm going to curtail the argument right now, as well as earn some extra Insufferably Smug Bastard points, by declaring that I have faith that my definition is reasonably accurate and perfectly appropriate, so let's end the nitpicking game right here and move along.
You people have a screwed up definition of faith. Here's the number one definition from dictionary.com
confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
Here's number one from the American Heritage Dictionary.
Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
Any questions?
Come on guys. Smog clouds over cities were created by the devil, not by the emissions from cars or factories that were made by man. Didn't you know that?
If it was an obvious fact that man was causing climate change, why the need for deceptive propaganda? There are numerous sites that detail the factual errors in An Inconvenient Truth. There were highly publicized stories of icecaps melting but when they came back even stronger, it's barely news. Climate change believers continually repeat facts and figures from discredited climate models, even as new ones show other evidence. If it was so obvious, why the need to shout down skeptics, call them "deniers" and try and censor them? If the argument is airtight, then it need fear no debate. Yet the global warming True Believers brook no debate; they claim the debate is over and scientists have reached a consensus.
Science is not a democracy.
Phattonez, just because it's the first definition does not automatically make it the most applicable to the situation. The faith that you have in your chair is not the same as the faith that global warming believers have in global warming or the faith that Christians have in God. In fact, let's trot out definitions 2 and 3 from dictionary.com, because they both seem fairly applicable to the topic at hand.
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.
EDIT: Whoa, this thread is rapidly spiraling out of control. We've got arguments about religion going on, we've got arguments about the definition of faith, and we've got Starkist in the corner apparently arguing with himself, because I still have yet to see anyone actually come out and say "Global warming is an undisputed fact," though I will say I find Starkist's methods questionable at best.
Definition 2 looks strikingly similar to number 1. Either way, I have shown that faith need not be blind.