Tamayo wrote:
I will take "faith" to be "belief in some statement unprovable by logic or science".
I agree with that to some extent. To me faith is a belief in something
unproven--i.e. not necessarily unprovable-- and lacking valid reason to support it. So my answer to the first question would be "No", because the "belief without proof" definition, though accepted by many, is incomplete and allows for cans of worms like "belief in evolution is faith."
Tamayo wrote:
(2) No. All scientific statements are "supported by evidence but not positively proven". You might argue that I should classify my trust in science to explain the universe to me as faith, but I can reply that unlike all other methods of phenomenal explanation, science's explanations are both (a) falsifiable and (b) predictive. (By definition -- if an statement has those two qualities, it is a scientific explanation. Note that not all logical arguments are scientific explanations!)
I would have said something similar but I couldn't have put it so eloquently. Cheers.
Quote:
3. What is the difference between faith and trust?
If I lend my car to a stranger, I would say that I have faith that that person will return it (on time and unscathed). Why? Because I have no prior experience to justify my belief in that person's honesty and reliability. That person may actually be reliable and honest and I may find reason to believe so in the future, but as of now I have diddly-squat.
If I lend my car to a friend, I would say that I trust my friend to return it. Since I have prior experience with that person and found reason to believe that that person is reliable and honest, my "faith" is justified so it becomes "trust" (I don't make friends with lying dipshits). Now, I'm not saying that trust is a certainty; my friend could very well return my car a week over due, full of scratches in the paint, missing a hubcap or two, and the seats smelling like cat urine and whiskey. Of course if that happens, my trust is broken just like how my friend's nose will soon be when I give him a sound beating.
Hopefully I made my examples clear enough to deduce how I differentiate trust and faith.
Tamayo wrote:
(4) and (5) I'm not sure of the difference between these two. If I believe that there is no god, then I believe something that I acknowledge is unprovable by logic or science, thus I have faith in that statement.
Ah, pardon me for not making it clear what Strong and Weak Atheism are. Weak atheists are simply people who lacks belief in god/s which is actually what atheism is, etymologically speaking. But since there are atheists who positively claim that there are no god/s, it created the Strong and Weak athiest categories. I believe that Weak Atheism is the logical default position in the god/s issue since the burden of proof, after all, lies on the one claiming the existence of a phenomenon. Agnostism is not the logical "middle ground" as some agnostics proudly proclaim it to be and it is definately not a disbelief in god/s, atleast not necessarily. Agnostism has more to do with a belief on human limitations as it does about wether or not god/s exist.
So here's my position on the questions I posed:
4. Weak Atheism is a disbelief. It is merely a lack of faith in god/s therefore it is not faith. ("I have found no compelling reason to believe in dieties." -
James Randi, paraphrased
heavily)
5. Strong Atheists claims that there are absolutely no god/s. They believe it to be an impossibility. If you subscribe to the "nobody can prove an unrestricted negative" maxim, then Strong Atheism could be considered a faith. But when it comes to a Three O God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent), strong athiest have compelling logical arguments so Strong Athiesm is possibly not faith if all gods or the god is not Three O. I'm still on the fence on this one.
6. Agnostics believe that man can never know the nature of god or simply man can never know one way or the other. I agree that nobody knows right now, but who knows what the future may bring. Some things considered to be fantasy a couple centuries ago is now reality (horseless carriages, personal computational machines, visiting the moon, ect.). So agnostism is faith. There are agnostics who believe in god/s and those who don't, but that's irrelevent.
EDIT: Here's the
Wikipedia entry on
Weak Atheism that explains it better than I can.
Wikipedia wrote:
Weak atheism or negative atheism is the lack of belief in any God or gods, without a positive denial of the existence of any god or gods. Weak atheism contrasts with strong atheism, which asserts that gods do not exist, and theism, which asserts that there is at least one god. The weak atheist generally gives a broad definition of atheism as "lack or absence of belief in god or gods", which defines atheism as a range of positions that entail non-belief, disbelief, doubt, or denial of theism. A narrower definition of atheism as "denial of the existence of gods" is also in common use. Those who favor this definition prefer to use other terms, such as agnosticism, for skepticism of or non-belief in theism.
Some weak atheists may simply hold no opinion on the existence or non-existence of God or gods. Others may find arguments on both sides of the question equally compelling. Yet others may doubt or disbelieve the existence of God or gods, being unconvinced by the evidence or proofs put forward by theists, but hold that it is not currently known whether or not gods exist.
The position that it is not known whether God or gods exists is called weak agnosticism. A stronger position is strong agnosticism, the view that it is not possible ever to know whether God or gods exist or not. Agnosticism, in both strong and weak forms, is not necessarily an atheist position; it is a position regarding what is known, and can be known, about the existence of God or gods. A theist can also take the position that he does not know (and if a strong agnostic, cannot know) whether God or gods exist, although he believes it, through faith.
Weak atheists often argue that their position is the default one; that it is not known whether or not gods exist (and if the strong agnostics are right, can never be known); that neither theists nor strong atheists fulfill their burden of proof; and that theists and strong atheists therefore rely on faith. For these weak atheists, beliefs which cannot be fully justified and which rest on faith, are untenable, making both theism and atheism untenable.
Herbal Enema wrote:
So, by my definition of faith, everything that you know to be True is only believed to be true because of faith. This puts everything under the catagory of faith.
Even though your definition of faith is acceptable and, as Tamayo already said, can be found in the dictionary, I think it's just plain weird (but not wrong). Let's assume the following statements are true:
I am thinking.
I named my dog "Roderick".
I was born.
By your definition of faith, it is also okay to say it this way:
I have faith that I am thinking.
I have faith that I named my dog "Roderick."
I have faith that I was born.
Doesn't it seem weird to use the word "faith" that way? Not talking about it being superfluous. It's just that it's weird to say faith when you already know something to be true. Of course if we substitute your definition of faith with mine, those sentences could still be valid but that's a little too solipsistic(?) for me. That particular philosophy frightens this poor utilitarian pragmatist. In fact, I'm already frightened. I have faith that I'm going to pet my dog Roderick for comfo...GAH! *runs away*