Sure it can, or might not be. Thus in the traditional use of the word evidence, it's not.gad-fly wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 10:41 amIn dictionary;
Faith is strong or unshakable belief in something especially without proof or evidence.
Evidence is ground for belief or disbelief, data on which to base truth.
Please note "especially" in Faith. A miracle, which may lead to sainthood, can be taken as evidence or not. It is up to you or the Catholic Church.
Faith vs Evidence in Religion
- LuckyR
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
- chewybrian
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
I disagree that you can thrive as a human without either faith or beliefs. It is important to have our physical needs met, but if you stop looking for other needs, and keep trying to fill physical needs beyond what it takes to survive in relative comfort or security, where do you end up? It doesn't make you irrational, but it means that your opinions are like blinders that keep you from enjoying life. You become like Trump, or a failed and frustrated version of him, like a heroin addict taking more and more until you die from the thing you thought was the reason to live. It takes a kind of faith, but not necessarily a religious type of faith to believe in the usefulness of something like this:Sculptor1 wrote: ↑June 12th, 2021, 5:50 pm The answer to your question is about experience.
As long as you live in never helps that you believe. You can believe that you car has petrol in it, but I will not get you fer if it does not.
You might beleive you can get a job regardless of having being qualified for it, but you will remain unemployed as a brain surgeon if you do not know how to fix brains. My can have faith that the fridge is full of food and that the cupboards are overflowing with packets of pasta. When you open the cupboards to find them empty - THAT is evidence.
A small child learns all this, and a life time of experience tells then the usefulness of evidence. This sort of argument is INDUCTIVE.
It lies at the heart of our existential being, at the heart of science.
There are reasons that a egg might survive - and it is not a miracle.
You can survive and thrive with ZERO faith and ZERO believe. Try to exist without evidence. You cannot even live without gaining evidence unless you are blind, and deaf. Gathering evidence is fundemental. It requires no effort.
www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
If I ever desire to move up from the bottom of the pyramid, I will need to have a kind of faith that non-material things can make my life better. I don't need to buy God to make progress, but I do need to believe in myself beyond the physical. Most people do believe this. I can't stack happiness, contentment, self-respect and virtue in the pantry. But, isn't the goal of life bigger than physical needs? If I say my goal is to be happy, does this make me irrational? Our existential being has very little to do with science. People like to wrap themselves in the flag of science for the cold comfort of feeling that have everything figured out. Our existential, subjective self tells us this could not be true. We have desires and needs that go far beyond food and shelter. They are not material things, but they are real and important. Science is only a secondary tool to help you in finding them. The primary tools are within, and science has little to say about them.
- Pattern-chaser
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 2:29 pm I think that's only possible if you confine yourself to a knowledge pool that is much smaller than you would prefer. Perhaps so small that teaspoons start to look enormous? If I understand your view of belief correctly, then it applies where there is no actual fact- or evidence-based knowledge. And this applies to most things, if we apply it strictly.
Those of us who embrace belief realise that it's just guesswork (ideally educated guesswork), and bear this in mind. Belief is not certain knowledge. It sounds like you're saying you do exactly that. Belief is unavoidable for a human. The amount of certain knowledge around is pretty limited: I exist; Objective Reality exists, and I am all or part of it. Each of us can say this and no more. There is no other Objective Knowledge that we can knowingly (i.e. not by accident or coincidence) possess.
You can dress up your position as you wish, and you will, and you do, but you are no different from the rest of us. When we must, we guess. It doesn't matter whether we call it "belief", "faith" or "Skepticism".
"Who cares, wins"
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
This should be a sticky at the top of every page. This is the foundation of real philosophy, and the only statement we can make while also claiming to know it is true. Everything else is argument about beliefs. Some have more foundation than others, but all are beliefs, no matter how we state them or how strongly we believe.Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 8:31 am The amount of certain knowledge around is pretty limited: I exist; Objective Reality exists, and I am all or part of it. Each of us can say this and no more. There is no other Objective Knowledge that we can knowingly (i.e. not by accident or coincidence) possess.
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
Like I said, you can beleive what you like, but that bear no relationship to the truth.chewybrian wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 8:26 amI disagree that you can thrive as a human without either faith or beliefs.Sculptor1 wrote: ↑June 12th, 2021, 5:50 pm The answer to your question is about experience.
As long as you live in never helps that you believe. You can believe that you car has petrol in it, but I will not get you far if it does not.
You might beleive you can get a job regardless of having being qualified for it, but you will remain unemployed as a brain surgeon if you do not know how to fix brains. My can have faith that the fridge is full of food and that the cupboards are overflowing with packets of pasta. When you open the cupboards to find them empty - THAT is evidence.
A small child learns all this, and a life time of experience tells then the usefulness of evidence. This sort of argument is INDUCTIVE.
It lies at the heart of our existential being, at the heart of science.
There are reasons that a egg might survive - and it is not a miracle.
You can survive and thrive with ZERO faith and ZERO believe. Try to exist without evidence. You cannot even live without gaining evidence unless you are blind, and deaf. Gathering evidence is fundemental. It requires no effort.
On the other hand; gathering information about the world- evidence is what you do every day.
Faith does not supply ANY need. Faith makes you demand that your opinions are true. I prefer to reject faith and express opinions AS opinions. It make you look less stupid for one thing.It is important to have our physical needs met, but if you stop looking for other needs, and keep trying to fill physical needs beyond what it takes to survive in relative comfort or security, where do you end up? It doesn't make you irrational, but it means that your opinions are like blinders that keep you from enjoying life.
No. Trump is a man busting with Faith. faith in himself, faith in his own "facts". If you want to epitome why I prefer to live without faith then Trump is a great example.
You become like Trump, or a failed and frustrated version of him, like a heroin addict taking more and more until you die from the thing you thought was the reason to live. It takes a kind of faith, but not necessarily a religious type of faith to believe in the usefulness of something like this:
I can carry on without science and faith as it happens. But to know the difference between the idea you hold that are defensible and simply clouding your mind with faith is what I am talking about....They are not material things, but they are real and important. Science is only a secondary tool to help you in finding them. The primary tools are within, and science has little to say about them.
FOr example I do not need to know all the details of internal combustion engines and other systems in cars to be able to drive. But I KNOW I have to have petrol to make it work despite faith that the tank is full - it is always better to check. And if I have faiht in the petrol gauge and the car does not work then I am only going to confused myself as to why the car does not work. By NOT having faith in the pertrol gauge I have a much better chance of figuring pout that despite what the gauge says I might still need petrol.
If you can give me some sort of example where faith is better than knowlege and healthy skeptikism - then let me know,.
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
First. These three words are massively different.Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 8:31 amPattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 2:29 pm I think that's only possible if you confine yourself to a knowledge pool that is much smaller than you would prefer. Perhaps so small that teaspoons start to look enormous? If I understand your view of belief correctly, then it applies where there is no actual fact- or evidence-based knowledge. And this applies to most things, if we apply it strictly.
Those of us who embrace belief realise that it's just guesswork (ideally educated guesswork), and bear this in mind. Belief is not certain knowledge. It sounds like you're saying you do exactly that. Belief is unavoidable for a human. The amount of certain knowledge around is pretty limited: I exist; Objective Reality exists, and I am all or part of it. Each of us can say this and no more. There is no other Objective Knowledge that we can knowingly (i.e. not by accident or coincidence) possess.
You can dress up your position as you wish, and you will, and you do, but you are no different from the rest of us. When we must, we guess. It doesn't matter whether we call it "belief", "faith" or "Skepticism".
Second, You cannot speak for "me" and not for "we" either. I can speak for myslef.
Third, We are all different. That much is painfully obvious.
Fourth: I have not mentioned "objective reality", nor would I wish to. I am expressing an opinion here
Now..
I think we have a problem here since you are posing a dichotomy between faith on the one hand and "certain knowledge" on the other hand.
My point here is that the direction of progress is against faith and towards certain knowledge. Between the two points of the specturm you have justified knowledge which, though skepticism is challengable. Going in the wrong direction you have knowlege where no justification is required that is the direction whose end is faith. TO gain faith you remove the justifications, and you can even have your own facts.
There is no more simple way of putting it that no one needs to beleive anything for sure. Faith is belief regardless of facts. Knowlege is superior since it has justification. Justification can be challenged. Faith resists challenge.Skepticism is the means to challenge knowledge.
Faith is the death of reason, a plea for a wished for reality.
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
Miracle is rare fortuitous outcome. Rare as in one in a hundred, one in a thousand, and so on. Miracle is often assigned as religious, though not necessarily so. As outcome of event, miracle is evidence, and evidence is fact or truth, not just belief or opinion. That cannot be denied. The same applies to all other outcomes.LuckyR wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 10:28 pmSure it can, or might not be. Thus in the traditional use of the word evidence, it's not.gad-fly wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 10:41 amIn dictionary;
Faith is strong or unshakable belief in something especially without proof or evidence.
Evidence is ground for belief or disbelief, data on which to base truth.
Please note "especially" in Faith. A miracle, which may lead to sainthood, can be taken as evidence or not. It is up to you or the Catholic Church.
But evidence of what? That is subject to interpretation. Some may say miracle indicates God's existence, or his benevolent salvation. Some would give it the benefit of the doubt, and some may even applies the statistical approach to declare otherwise, which is also fine.
- Pattern-chaser
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 8:31 am The amount of certain knowledge around is pretty limited: I exist; Objective Reality exists, and I am all or part of it. Each of us can say this and no more. There is no other Objective Knowledge that we can knowingly (i.e. not by accident or coincidence) possess.
Thanks. It remains a mystery to me that this is not much more widely known and accepted. Perhaps it's just too scary to admit so clearly how little we really know?chewybrian wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 9:38 am This should be a sticky at the top of every page. This is the foundation of real philosophy, and the only statement we can make while also claiming to know it is true. Everything else is argument about beliefs. Some have more foundation than others, but all are beliefs, no matter how we state them or how strongly we believe.
"Who cares, wins"
- Thomyum2
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
It's a very thought-provoking idea here. It occurs to me that all of these terms related to knowing - e.g. certainty, doubt, suspicion, belief, understanding, etc. - are a lot more nebulous that we usually think. In many ways, the sense in which we use these terms communicates our subjective feeling about our relationship to a particular topic. Perhaps we could even say that these all represent a spectrum of how much confidence we feel about the truth or falsehood a particular proposition, rather than being distinct categories of knowledge?Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 12:24 pmPattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 8:31 am The amount of certain knowledge around is pretty limited: I exist; Objective Reality exists, and I am all or part of it. Each of us can say this and no more. There is no other Objective Knowledge that we can knowingly (i.e. not by accident or coincidence) possess.Thanks. It remains a mystery to me that this is not much more widely known and accepted. Perhaps it's just too scary to admit so clearly how little we really know?chewybrian wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 9:38 am This should be a sticky at the top of every page. This is the foundation of real philosophy, and the only statement we can make while also claiming to know it is true. Everything else is argument about beliefs. Some have more foundation than others, but all are beliefs, no matter how we state them or how strongly we believe.
— Epictetus
- Pattern-chaser
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
It is? In what way do you think it's thought-provoking? And do you have any thoughts as to why it "is not much more widely known and accepted"? I'm not challenging what you've written, but only looking for some expansion of your opinions.Thomyum2 wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 12:40 pmIt's a very thought-provoking idea here.Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 12:24 pmPattern-chaser wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 8:31 am The amount of certain knowledge around is pretty limited: I exist; Objective Reality exists, and I am all or part of it. Each of us can say this and no more. There is no other Objective Knowledge that we can knowingly (i.e. not by accident or coincidence) possess.Thanks. It remains a mystery to me that this is not much more widely known and accepted. Perhaps it's just too scary to admit so clearly how little we really know?chewybrian wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 9:38 am This should be a sticky at the top of every page. This is the foundation of real philosophy, and the only statement we can make while also claiming to know it is true. Everything else is argument about beliefs. Some have more foundation than others, but all are beliefs, no matter how we state them or how strongly we believe.
"Who cares, wins"
- LuckyR
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
When a one in 100 million chance event happens (one in 100 million tries), that is expected, not a miracle.gad-fly wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 12:08 pmMiracle is rare fortuitous outcome. Rare as in one in a hundred, one in a thousand, and so on. Miracle is often assigned as religious, though not necessarily so. As outcome of event, miracle is evidence, and evidence is fact or truth, not just belief or opinion. That cannot be denied. The same applies to all other outcomes.LuckyR wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 10:28 pmSure it can, or might not be. Thus in the traditional use of the word evidence, it's not.gad-fly wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 10:41 amIn dictionary;
Faith is strong or unshakable belief in something especially without proof or evidence.
Evidence is ground for belief or disbelief, data on which to base truth.
Please note "especially" in Faith. A miracle, which may lead to sainthood, can be taken as evidence or not. It is up to you or the Catholic Church.
But evidence of what? That is subject to interpretation. Some may say miracle indicates God's existence, or his benevolent salvation. Some would give it the benefit of the doubt, and some may even applies the statistical approach to declare otherwise, which is also fine.
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
Indeed, and at the moment is happens the chance of it happening at that moment is 1 in 1.LuckyR wrote: ↑June 15th, 2021, 1:33 amWhen a one in 100 million chance event happens (one in 100 million tries), that is expected, not a miracle.gad-fly wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 12:08 pmMiracle is rare fortuitous outcome. Rare as in one in a hundred, one in a thousand, and so on. Miracle is often assigned as religious, though not necessarily so. As outcome of event, miracle is evidence, and evidence is fact or truth, not just belief or opinion. That cannot be denied. The same applies to all other outcomes.LuckyR wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 10:28 pmSure it can, or might not be. Thus in the traditional use of the word evidence, it's not.gad-fly wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 10:41 am
In dictionary;
Faith is strong or unshakable belief in something especially without proof or evidence.
Evidence is ground for belief or disbelief, data on which to base truth.
Please note "especially" in Faith. A miracle, which may lead to sainthood, can be taken as evidence or not. It is up to you or the Catholic Church.
But evidence of what? That is subject to interpretation. Some may say miracle indicates God's existence, or his benevolent salvation. Some would give it the benefit of the doubt, and some may even applies the statistical approach to declare otherwise, which is also fine.
When I was diagnosed with a rare cancer, the quesion may well have been why me, but for me the chance at that moment was definitively 100%.
- Thomyum2
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
A miracle is an impossible event that happens, i.e. something which we previously believed couldn't have happened, or couldn't have happened without divine intervention. So whether or not an individual believes that something is a miracle will depend on what they believe is possible.LuckyR wrote: ↑June 15th, 2021, 1:33 amWhen a one in 100 million chance event happens (one in 100 million tries), that is expected, not a miracle.gad-fly wrote: ↑June 14th, 2021, 12:08 pmMiracle is rare fortuitous outcome. Rare as in one in a hundred, one in a thousand, and so on. Miracle is often assigned as religious, though not necessarily so. As outcome of event, miracle is evidence, and evidence is fact or truth, not just belief or opinion. That cannot be denied. The same applies to all other outcomes.LuckyR wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 10:28 pmSure it can, or might not be. Thus in the traditional use of the word evidence, it's not.gad-fly wrote: ↑June 13th, 2021, 10:41 am In dictionary;
Faith is strong or unshakable belief in something especially without proof or evidence.
Evidence is ground for belief or disbelief, data on which to base truth.
Please note "especially" in Faith. A miracle, which may lead to sainthood, can be taken as evidence or not. It is up to you or the Catholic Church.
But evidence of what? That is subject to interpretation. Some may say miracle indicates God's existence, or his benevolent salvation. Some would give it the benefit of the doubt, and some may even applies the statistical approach to declare otherwise, which is also fine.
It's similar to evidence in that whether or not any given piece of evidence is convincing or explains something is going to vary from person to person. No two judges or jurors are necessarily going to see things the same way, even if they're looking at the very same set of evidence.
In this scientific age that we live in, I think we often don't believe in miracles because we tend to operate on the assumption that everything may eventually be explained by natural laws, and so such events are seen as not yet understood rather than as impossibilities.
— Epictetus
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Re: Faith vs Evidence in Religion
Important for what purpose?gad-fly wrote:"What evidence is there to support the idea that evidence is important? It just seems to me that this is an argument that the non-believer's sense of what is obvious and right is valid whereas a believer's sense of what is obvious and right is invalid."
I am not in the position of judge or preacher to defend or argue against the above point. Nor am I to compare which is more important. Suffice to say that I believe both are important.
Saying "X is important" or "X is not important" without mentioning the goal to which it is important doesn't make much sense to me.
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