[ExI] People of Faith, not

[Khaled Aly]

Emlyn

I agree with you in the sense of the common use of the term. In The American 
Heritage dictionary, "Faith: Confident belief; trust. Belief in God; 
religious conviction." None of these definitions explicitly precluded the 
use of reasoning to conclude or affirm faith. The common practices (probably 
in every faith) is what brings the common definition. For sure you can drive 
evidence on certain aspects, but not all and you'd always be left with many 
axioms. I just don't see faith and reasoning contradictory. It's a choice to 
make them so.

I'll stop to avoid involving religion in the discussion! And you heard Eugen 
:)

Cheers
ka

Note: I didn't mean to defend (neither attack) atheism, but just to make a 
point that an atheist may be able to present good reasoning, that is not 
necessarily correct.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Emlyn" <emlynoregan at gmail.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 7:44 AM
Subject: Re: [ExI] People of Faith, not


> On 17/09/2007, Khaled Aly <ka.aly at luxsci.net> wrote:
>>
>> People of faith are those who reason and can stand to argue their
>> reasoning (i.e. faith). On this basis, Atheists are people of faith since
>> they have some theory to backup their belief.
> <snip>
>>
>> Cheers
>> Khaled
>
> Well, no. I think you are defining terms differently to the accepted
> meaning.
>
>>From Dictionary.com, Faith is "belief that is not based on proof".
> That's what the faithful mean too. People of faith explicitly eschew
> reason, in favour of believing something for which there is no
> evidence (ie: the existence of a creator god). To the extent that they
> do reason about their faith, it is with the implicit acceptance of a
> whole lot of axioms, which are never open to debate (eg: the Bible).
>
> Emlyn
>
>>