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To: reasonisfaith
I see the reason as being the relevance of the word "faith" as used in these discussions (theism vs. non-theism). If apologists for religion are going to insist that faith in physics equations and faith in ancient mythology are the same thing, then they have effectively rendered the word meaningless. It doesn't move the discussion along in any way (which may be the point). "Faith" has suffered the same fate as "hope" and "change".

However you may view "the tradition of atheism" (whatever that is), I can tell you that I've had discussions with many dozens of hyper-religious people, and they do not see their beliefs as being "without evidence". In fact, the more religious the person, usually the more evidentiary the discussion becomes. It's actually the religious moderates or the halfway believers who get more into themes and ambiguousness, whereas highly religious people will spout out tons of evidence.

Now, none of it is actually GOOD evidence, or evidence that stands up to even cursory scrutiny.

But if I'm sitting across from a hardcore theist, and he spends the first 20 minutes of our discussion talking about how faith in the Burning Bush and faith in the value of pi are the same thing, it's really a waste of time. Dump the silly discussion of a single word and move on to more relevant things.

30 posted on 02/01/2014 10:13:18 PM PST by GunRunner
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To: GunRunner

This thread is not about evidence for God’s existence. It’s about how to define the word faith.

All atheist/agnostic argumentation has defined faith as belief without evidence. It is the most prominent reason for their choice of agnosticism/atheism.

If atheists/agnostics are confident that their answer to the question of God’s existence is the best answer, then they will necessarily have confidence in their own reasoning.

If however they have lost confidence in use of the term faith to mean “belief without evidence,” and if they are interested in truth more than in saving face, then they should come to terms with it.


41 posted on 02/02/2014 1:08:09 PM PST by reasonisfaith ("...because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." (2 Thessalonians))
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