Are you a believer?

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Actually, I just got through saying it was NOT sarcasm.

Please imagine a scenario. [I work by examples and analogies, bear with me].

You have known a person for thirty years. In fact, after knowing the person ten years, you married. You have lived together, talked, listened to music, eaten, gotten sick, laughed, cried. You know the person - mind, heart, ethics, humor, every aspect - better than you know your siblings. Better than you know anybody but yourself - and sometimes you think this person knows you better than you know yourself.

Okay. Hold that picture.

One day three grim-faced people come to your door. "We are looking for so-and-so.. This is an escaped lunatic who five years ago went on a killimng spree, going town to town, torturing and killin one in the first town, two in the second, and so forth. Read these eyewitness reports."

So there we are. You have - on the basis of evidence received, examined, tested over years, gotten a sense of this person. Now here is a pile of data that argue this is the diametric opposite of the person you know.

Which do you believe? If you say, I KNOW this person, my knowledge, proved [the word basically means tested, by the way] over and over, outweighs these claims - that is faith.

It is NOT changing your planned route the moment you see sometging does not fit.

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There ARE some people here who would say that as sarcasm. Not I.

FAITH IS NOT - I repeat, NOT "deciding to believe something" out of thin air." Faith is what makes the scientist trust his instruments - what makes some people trust peer-reviewed journals. I myself lost my faith in peer-reviewed journals after seeing too much of how they work [I was working on one for a while]. But - my brother has faith in them. He has seen nothing to rip apart the evuidence HE has seen that they work.

People talk blind faith ? That is just stupid. Neither faith nor love is blind - fanaticism and infatuation are blind [or insane - it comes out the same.]

Oh, okay. You're just ignorant of what the word "faith" actually means, that being belief devoid of evidence.

You've gotten a sense of one facet of them, that being who they are in a specific context, time and place, those being with you,
and those being based on your personal perceptions.

Data doesn't argue.

You're applying the word "knowledge" to concrete nouns, as in "I know this person", "I know this chair"- you know your perceptions of them. That is all.

Faith is by definition belief devoid of evidence. To assert otherwise is sheer ignorance.

I'm well-aware that faith, not being based on evidence in the first place, would not change with emerging evidence.

Well right, because "some people" familiarize themselves with at least the most BASIC of definitions before attempting to converse using the terminology involved.

As, so your implication that someone who does not believe in god can CHOOSE to in order to ask said entity if he or she should believe WAS sarcastic. I should have known, actually. I mean, how many times have you ASKED the Great Sparkly Unicorn if she exists?

If by "faith" you mean "tens, hundreds, if not thousands of years of said instruments being increasingly-refined to yield more highly-refined, specific measurements of natural phenomenon".

Peer-reviewed meaning subjected to the criticisms and expertise of the experts in a given field

Agreed. "Blind faith" is a redundancy.

I would say that just a little differently, but yes, living and walking by faith (or "in faith") amounts to remaining right there in the swamp and keeping the pumps going in spite of all the alligators.

As to the matter of actual definition here:

I believe in God.

Which God? There are several.

ruveyn

There is only one God. He is in three divine persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

You cannot state that as fact without proof to back it up.

Proof is not required for making a statement, proof is required for being deemed credible.

I disagree. If one is going to state their god is the only legitimate one, then they must back it up. Proof could be personal or otherwise.

Is that you Bethie?

I will happily discuss faith, belief, hemonutho, fides, pistis, Glaube, Trust, foi, Fe [santa or otherwise], and any number of related concepts in languages I can extend to.

But there is no point trying to talk to someone who insists that the moon IS green cheese, or black IS white, or Ricky Gervais is a philosopher. Nor somene who really believes faith "by definition" has no evidence.

By whose bloody definition?

Well, by the definition of Coolspeak I was complaining about, that is true. But there are other definitions than those you find in the shallow reaches of the web.

That's education for you.

I disagree. If one is going to state their god is the only legitimate one, then they must back it up. Proof could be personal or otherwise.[/quote]

Allowing for personal proof is generous. I have felt the presence of God in my life and His guiding hand. My story is very similar to other Christians that I know, Catholic and Protestant. As I found out 19 years ago, I can't survive with this condition, without God's presence in my life and for His presence I am grateful.

Also of course, Jesus Christ was crucified and rose from the dead and rose into heaven and this was witnessed by many others and it happened because He is God.

Eye-witness accounts only found in the Bible. You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible is correct.

Actually... There is some evidence Jesus didn't die on the cross. And that he got better and fled the empire.

The Gospel of Mark, he earliest written of the four gospels, didn't originally have anything about a resurrection or ascension. It merely says he got up and left. It also implied that it was too soon for Jesus to have died from the crucifiction, and that the centurion reporting the death was lying because he thought Jesus was actually the Son of God.

Then, some point maybe 100 years later, somebody came along and scribbled in the bits about him getting sucked up into heaven.

dionysian"

"There is some evidence Jesus didn't die on the cross. And that he got better and fled the empire."

What documents are you citing here? Evidence to that point is news to me.

Sounds like they made some ancient makeshift chloroform and knocked him out. Pretty slick, if you ask me.

Read It Here.