From: posting-system@google.com Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 5:53 AM To: brian@holtz.org Subject: Re: Death From: brian@holtz.org (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Death References: <31rh2u4s803bu08h7mi056a120a1q00e77@4ax.com> <200201012106.NAA13890@lsil.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.236.1.8 Message-ID: <29c16047.0201160553.2b322a66@posting.google.com> "Paul Filseth" wrote > Faith isn't belief without solid proof; it's > belief without evidence. Do you mean belief without *any* justification? I doubt many religious believers would admit to any such beliefs. Or do you mean belief without *sufficient* justification? If so, you lose the distinction between religious faith and merely less-than-well-justified belief. From section 1.1.2. (Philosophy / Metaphysics / Theology) of my book: Faith is not simply an absence of doubt, because tautologies are beyond doubt and yet are recognized not revealed. Faith is not simply any confident reliance on authority, because an authority can be relied upon even confidently without being held exempt from all doubt. Faith is not simply any provisional hypothesis believed without complete evidence, because a proposition can be provisionally believed without being held exempt from all doubt. Faith is belief based on revelation and exempt from doubt. Fideists often say skeptics too have "faith" in science or reason, but this corrupts the definition of 'faith'. Faith must be embarrassing if its only defense is the claim that everybody is guilty of it. > The claim I'm attacking is that atheists have no faith. > We're talking about people, not isms. Do you have any faith (by either your definition or mine)? If so, in what? > there's no evidence of any kind whatsoever to favor the old-universe > hypothesis over the faked-recently hypothesis. He thinks he has some, > but he's mistaken. People favor one over the other on the basis of raw > intuition or illogic. I favor the old-universe hypothesis on neither intuition nor illogic but rather parsimony. > It's one form of faith when a child believes a star is a sun > because her mother tells her scientists say so. Again, faith is not simply any confident reliance on authority, because an authority can be relied upon even confidently without being held exempt from all doubt. Such reliance may be more confident than is warranted, but calling it "faith" therefor is to equate faith with any less-than-well-justified belief. This tramples the distinction made when calling oneself an "infidel". > there's nothing on which to base the premise that the Pope > wouldn't make a false claim. Catholics believe him without > any reason to. Actually, the Catholic Church bases its reasoning that the pope is infallible on scripture: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm. One could (try to) argue from empirical evidence that this scripture is the revealed word of an infallible God. But even with such an allegedly empirical justification, I would say this is still faith, because it posits an authority whose statements are exempt from doubt. Infidels are precisely those who posit no such authority. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net