The Forbidden Soul
stealthmongoose
The Forbidden Soul
Verene
This is why it is called "having faith." The evidence I need to believe in God is different from the evidence that you may need to believe in God, is different from the evidence that some one else may need to believe in God. How and why each person believes or disbelieves is relative to the kind of experience that an individual needs in order to affirm God's existence or lack thereof.
Faith does not take empirical, scientific, laboratory repeatable experience. It takes an experience capable of convincing the one experiencing said moment or action.
SO basically faith is believing in something without any proof, and only basing it on provoking incidents? JS
I assert that what you're describing is fiction and imagination, though religion may fall into this category it does not exclusively claim drawing power from belief.
I know that. You do realize that I was strictly addressing faith right? Not all religion, just the concept of faith.
My mistake, i read your opponent's post and thought you were combating the deist side of his argument.
On the subject of faith, i don't know how to differentiate it from raw belief, but i'll do my best.
Belief, since it is not exclusive to religion, can run a gammut of ideas ranging from santa claus to the idea that your shoes are exactly where you thought you left them.
I make this distinction because a lie can be based on very true structure (an insurance scam for example) and still be believed.
Faith is in itself the religious aspect of all of this, and while faith requires belief, belief is on a much more rational (not always reasonable) level than faith.
I just wanted to make that distinction because religions uses relatively little real material in it's presentation, while a lie can be based on truths but still believed, and you need faith to believe religion rather than just belief.
This does not in my eyes put religion into any kind of positive light or even the idea of faith or belief into any positive light, i just want to point out that faith is more exclusive to religion while belief can be placed on just about anything, so if you are arguing faith you are by virtue of your argument arguing against religion categorically, and not just the belief of things.