Quote from: BADecker on November 17, 2019, 10:48:39 PM

Quote from: styca on November 17, 2019, 11:20:03 AM

Quote from: af_newbie on November 16, 2019, 04:58:45 PM

Do you think faith is a reliable way to discover what is true and what is false?

I'll just interject to add another voice to the side of reason here.
Faith by definition is not the way to distinguish what is true from what is false.
We determine the difference using logic, a form of which being science. Accumulation of evidence to support a theory, so that it becomes quite obviously fact - like evolution, for example.

'Faith' is just a word to denote belief in a thing for which there is absolutely no evidence - God, Russell's Teapot, Flying Spaghetti Monster. But can also equally well be applied to beliefs where the evidence is stacked against it - flat earth, creationism etc.

While faith is not the way to determine what is true or false, faith is at the base of the determination. Simply what I mean is, even if you do an experiment the same way 10,000 times, and you get the same result all 10,000 of those times, there is no way that you know for a fact that 10,001 won't be different. Until you do 10,001, there is a tiny nagging doubt, one that you may have hidden under loads of experience, that this time it might be different.

Science alleviates this idea of faith as much as they can by stating that the experiment is an absolute fact if it happens the same way 10 to the 40th power number of times (or thereabout), without being different once.

Regarding the existence of God, there is no faith. There is knowledge. The knowledge is based on going beyond 10 to the 40th power regarding some things that are literally impossible without God. It is based on the Machine-Maker of the universe; we have no other evidence of machines coming into existence but by makers. And there is the complexity of what exists... the knowledge that the more complex the machine, the more capable the maker. If FSM can be shown to have been able to make the machine universe, then the FSM might be God. The point is that God exists.

Faith regarding God is faith in what God says. God says things in different ways. The quality of us having all kinds of things for life shows that God is capable. It suggests that He will continue to be capable just in the fact that we see the needs of life taken care of all over the place. But because we see problems in life, the good things become faith things. But this isn't God speaking by words.

When God speaks by words via holy books, this is another way we have faith. We see if what God says in the holy books matches what exists. It's a form of faith in God if we believe Him... even if the belief is only based on His past truthfulness.

When God speaks to any of us directly, we might have faith in Him by believing what He says directly to us. The rest of us shouldn't place trust in what any person says he heard from God, directly, except if there is evidence that what the hearer says He heard from God is the truth. And it should be checked out to see if it isn't something that anybody could have discerned had they looked. It has to have the quality of being unique to the God-hearer.

The point is, God isn't believed to exist. He is known to exist. The believing (faith) part is believing what God says.

Cool

The moment you start using faith as your base, you've made your first mistake.

Remember that if watchmakers have makers; their makers also have their own makers, ad infinitum. If you follow your logic to its conclusion, it is not logical to assume that a maker would not have his/her maker.

Some properties in nature are emergent. Maybe life is just that. A carbon-based, self-replicating dune.

It is not reasonable to believe in something without evidence.

God does not speak, God does not exist. If you hear God you are a delusional schizophrenic.