Re: faith
Posted by
Eric Charles on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Faith-tp7580633p7580681.html
But Russ... if you concede Tory's point, then I think you are quite
stuck.
There are many, many, many people for whom the everyday world
contains a divine being... and the everyday world is the everyday world. There
are people who train hard to see God surrounding them, and there are people for
whom it seems to come quite naturally (which is not to say it didn't develop,
just that it came easily). For these people, by your definition, belief in God,
and belief that God will continue to be with them forever, are NOT issues of
faith.
Eric
P.S. I have no idea what Nick will say about "faith"
vs. "belief"! I think the concepts overlap pretty obviously, i.e., faith seems
like it should be a subclass of belief. On the other hand, one could treat them
as two different ways of talking about the same sort of thing. If we can get
past your odd claim that faith has to be religious AND that religious things
are not part of everyday life, I would be very interested to know how you think
the two relate.
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 12:41 AM,
Russ
Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:
Nick,
As I
understand your position the words "faith" and "belief" are synonyms. I
would prefer a definition for "faith" that distinguishes it from
"belief."
Tory,
Thanks
for you comment on my posts. I'm glad you enjoy
them.
My definition
of faith makes use of the notion of the everyday world. But I'm not saying
that the everyday
world is the same for everyone. Your everyday world may be
different from mine. I'm just saying that believing that the world will
continue to conform to your sense of what the
everyday world is like is not faith; it's simple
belief.
Eric,
I would take
"having faith in something" in the colloquial sense as different from
"faith" in a religious context, which is what I was focusing on.
On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Victoria
Hughes
<victoria@...> wrote:
Russ wrote, in part-
Faith, I would say (in fact I did earlier)
is believing something that one wouldn't otherwise believe without faith.
Believing that the everyday world is the everyday world
doesn't seem to me to require faith.
Russ, with all due respect for the enjoyment I get from your posts, I find this suspiciously tautological.
Who are you to define for the rest of humanity (and other sentient life forms) what 'the everyday world' incorporates? Numerous 'for instance' cases can immediately be made here. All you can do is define what you believe for yourself. You cannot extrapolate what is defensible for others to believe, from your own beliefs.
And this statement ' Faith is believing something that one wouldn't believe without faith'. Hm and hm again.
Eagleman's new book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307389928/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348460523&sr=1-1&keywords=incognito+by+david+eagleman" target="" onclick="window.open('http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307389928/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348460523&sr=1-1&keywords=incognito+by+david+eagleman');return false;">Incognito offers fruitful information from recent neuroscience that may interest others on this list. His ultimate sections bring up hard questions about legal and ethical issues in the face of the myriad 'zombie programs' that run most of our behaviour. This looks like - but is not as simplistic as - 'yet another pop science book.'
A review <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/06/david_eaglemans.html" target="" onclick="window.open('http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/06/david_eaglemans.html');return false;">David Eagleman's "Incognito" - Brainiac
Tory
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Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601
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