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To: grey_whiskers
What do you do with things like the Mons Angels, Shroud of Turin, etc. where you have either credible eyewitnesses without other axes to grind, or disputed physical evidence (carbon dating of a non-representative sample to muddy the waters, suggestions of Maillard reactions which are consistent with the chemical structure but not "topography" of the image...)

Those are interesting examples, but they apply to the Catholic faith, which has no issue with evolution. It's the Protestants who we're having the argument with.

108 posted on 02/09/2006 6:46:09 AM PST by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: <1/1,000,000th%
Those are interesting examples, but they apply to the Catholic faith, which has no issue with evolution. It's the Protestants who we're having the argument with.

I wasn't thinking primarily of evolution, but with an earlier post (95, from you) where the issue came up over the definition of faith:

the belief in something for which there is [ no material evidence / sufficient material evidence]...

that is, I was raising the distinction between degrees of faith. The Shroud of Turin can be seen, weighed, X-rayed, what have you; there is more evidence there than just "God told me". The Mons angels are not directly physically measurable, but there were apparently multiple independent witnesses.

The "line" is at a different place, might be one way to put it.

I wanted to make the distinction for the purposes PH's and Coyoteman's definition: otherwise, "faith" might become synonymous with "Pickwickian".

(One might also think of the word "trust", by analogy to the trust a person has in an unfaithful spouse. At first it might be easy to ignore the evidence of cheating...but after you start finding lipstick on shirts or other people's underwear in the bed, it is not so much trust as "willful blindness." )

Cheers!

110 posted on 02/09/2006 5:43:10 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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