If you choose to read those connotations into it when I have provided an explicit definition that is your problem.
I also think you need to recognize the fluidity of language use. The word “faith” does not have a single, rigid definition. I believe I’ve made my arguments pretty clear; if there are specific aspects you think are ambiguous then please point them out.
Believing that no deities exist requires as much faith as believing the opposite.
Most creationisms still believe in genetics.
So I’ve heard. I don’t agree but given that you’re throwing a temper tantrum about a relatively unobjectionable usage of the word “faith” it doesn’t seem worth arguing the point with you.
(Also note I said “don’t believe in God” which has a different connotation than “I believe God doesn’t exist”. I don’t think “belief in a lack” and “lack of belief” are symmetrical in that way.)
No.
I’m taking it on “faith” that when a large enough portion of the scientific community has tested the evidence for it to become “scientific fact” that the evidence is solid enough. If I have the expertise or can find someone with the expertise, I can get additional confirmation of that evidence when needed. And if evidence appears that contradicts that “scientific fact”, either through my observations or someone else’s, that new evidence will be looked at and either integrated into new, combined facts or disproven.
And the way “Faith” is used in a religious context has absolutely no similarity to that.
It’s the fluidity of language that I’m recognizing when I take issue with what purports to be a reputable study. I’d like to see more precise language from a poll that claims authority, and in the discussion surrounding it.
Agreed, if you first confirm that a scientific fact has been tested by a “large enough portion of the scientific community” then you have not accepted it on faith.
Agreed, in such a case it would not be taken on faith.
Those aren’t the cases I’m discussing. I said very clearly that I’m only talking about cases where I hear a “scientific fact” and then don’t follow up by looking at how the “fact” was established.
You guys are straining to find exception with my use of the word “faith”. It’s very silly. Also a little boring. Can you stop doing that, acknowledge my meaning, and substitute a word you like better since you have such an irrational distaste for the word “faith”?
The aspects that are ambiguous have already been pointed out. And, in fact, you point them out in your preceding sentence:
If you’re going to argue that there is no difference between religious Faith and acceptance of scientific principles, then you don’t get to be wishy-washy about the definitions you’re using to apply the same word to both. You’ve admitted twice that the word you’re using is ambiguous and you’ve admitted that you’re avoiding the way the term is used in religious contexts. Why should anyone just accept your attempt to cherry-pick definitions?
This is either a straw man or a radical oversimplification of what I’ve been saying.
I think you can draw a “faith” Venn diagram where “religious faith” and “faith in science” are non-overlapping (or mostly non-overlapping) circles and are contained within a larger category of “faith” which also contains beliefs that are neither religious nor scientific. (“You can do it, boy…I have faith in you!”) I think there are important differences between faith in religious principles and faith in scientific principles but I also think that belief in scientific principles is often of a dogmatic form that is very much akin to faith in religious principles (thus the potential overlap in the Venn diagram). As an example, Lysenkoism was a (false) scientific principle that was believed for essentially ideological reasons.
Pretty much all words are ambiguous in the same way. They have different meanings in different contexts.
I’m not cherry-picking definitions. I provided an explicit definition of a term I used. That’s pretty much the oppose of cherry-picking definitions.
Once again, we can skip this tedious bullshit if you simply offer a term you think is acceptable for unexamined belief in purportedly scientific explanations in lieu of the word “faith”.
I’m curious what you guys think about Halton Arp. Is he a heretic bad scientist?
I know someone who claims to simultaneously be a Christian Republican and a Lesbian Wiccan who believes in Crystal Power. Admittedly, she is also a statistician who thinks she can influence dice with her mind, so she just might be crazy.
Perhaps you should clarify, then, why you’ve repeatedly responded against me when I’ve said that you cannot compare “faith” in scientific principles with “Faith” in religion?
Wait… providing your own ambiguous hand-picked definition for a term and ignoring any attempts to clarify it in the discussion’s context is the opposite of cherry-picking a definition? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Please let us not turn into alt.atheism in 1998
Wow, the U.S. are doing better than Turkey.
Dude, you need to chill. There’s no reason for you to be this upset about the way I’ve used the word “faith” in this discussion. I’ve offered many times to use any other word of your choosing instead of the word “faith”. If it’s ambiguity you’re worried about why didn’t you just take me up on this offer?
I’ve offered a clarification every time I was asked. You didn’t ask. You simply declared my use of the word “faith” in this context illegitimate (a declaration with which I disagree). I very much get the impression that you’re looking for reasons to disagree with me instead of trying to understand what I’m saying.
There is a significant difference between something some scientist says, and something sufficiently well established that the relevant field puts it in textbooks and regards it as the foundational explanation for many other phenomena.
Except one of those scientific conclusions is that evolution is unguided. So if they think evolution is “guided by a supreme being”, they are at least rejecting part of the science. I suppose if you said that god set up the rules at the beginning of time so that evolution would work, then it might be empirically indistinguishable, but that seems very different from “guided”.
The breakdown of the data according to gender seems to indicate that women are more aware that the father’s genes determine the sex of the offspring i.e 68% correct for females vs. 52% for males. The question about human descent instead has males answering true at 54% while females answering true at 40%.
Yes, and I’ve never argued otherwise. In fact, this observation seems to be completely irrelevant to what I’ve been arguing. For example, “something some scientist says” could very well be a well-supported scientific finding and “something sufficiently well established that the releant field puts it in textbooks and regards it as the foundational explanation for many other phenomena” could be false pseudo-scientific results. I’ve already provided the example of Lysenkoism which is quite a good fit for that.
How is that conclusion established scientifically?
It’s not. It’s established scientifically that mutation rates are random which kind of sounds like the same thing but isn’t actually. I could still maintain either of the following, for example:
Let me just establish real quick: I’m an atheist and I do think evolution operates through unguided natural selection. However, I regard this as a philosophical rather than a scientific conclusion.
Good point, sfx. Here’s an article in Slate about different ways of using the word “faith” click here.
There is something to be said for different tastes in facticity. Few people would argue with me if I said I had two cats. They could count them, check the collars for my phone number. If they’re very suspicious, they might think I could be hiding one, or had put a collar on a neighbor’s cat, but most people would be comfortable with the statement, “I have two cats.”
Past that, I think a lot of people aren’t interested in confining “beliefs” to those domains with lots of evidence. I have heard Christians who proudly say that their religion has evidence (I think Paul pumps up the number of eyewitnesses to the resurrection to about 500!). So Xtians don’t discount the importance of evidence, just what constitutes it. Frankly, I think it’s science-envy (but what about Paul? Why inflate the number of “witnesses”? Who would be converted only if he claimed lots of people saw the magic?)
And lots of people believe lots of things without any hard evidence - racial superiority, crystal healing, the New Soviet Man (atheistic they may have been, but still not evidence-based), UFOs (I always thought the evidence for the Resurrection to be on a par with evidence for UFO abductions - folk say they saw it/them!).
Then again, there are different contexts - in my family, what do I care is someone says they don’t “believe” in evolution, or do “believe” in the Resurrection. In a political context, I’m still not sure what I’m worried about… that they’ll round me up for “Darwinism”? Maybe…
Talk about a troll. sad sad sad
