You've moved the goalposts considerably with your definition of faith being merely a reasonable acceptance of a proposition based on evidence. This is far from the prescribed as well as the descriptive definition of faith.
Pick your favorite ancient European or Middle Eastern religious or philosophical writing and look at the actual usage of the word "faith" (or the word translated as "faith"). You'll find that its definition is something along the lines of "reasonable acceptance of a proposition based on evidence" with the followup of "acting upon that proposition in the face of emotional uncertainty". Or, more simply, classical faith is the triumph of reason and experience over emotion and fickleness.
It's only been about the last 140 years (with the rise of Christian Fundamentalism and the associated mysticism and anti-intellectualism) that "faith" has been used to refer to belief without reason or evidence. The parent poster is moving the goalposts, but he's moving them back toward where they actually belong.
Not much longer than 140 years ago, /nice/ had pretty much the opposite meaning it does now.
You can't just pick a word's meaning from hundreds of years ago (worse, a foreign-languag equivalent) and drop it into modern conversation without stating that that's what you're doing.
Let me state it more strongly: the definition of faith I gave is not only the historical standard from prior to 140 years ago, it's also the modern standard among religious scholars and in most religious traditions. It's only in the last 140 years, within one particular anti-intellectual religious tradition (and among critics whose primary experience is with that tradition), that "faith" means the other thing. Their usage is decidedly in the minority. As such, I think it's perfectly fair for people to use the more correct definition, and it's unreasonable for those who are ignorant of that definition to cry foul when presented with it.
It's not a fallacy to move the goalposts back to where they belong after someone else has misplaced them. It is only a fallacy when the same person places them in one place and then another.
Maybe we're not seeing eye to eye on what was being said. erikpukinskis defined faith as "unexamined, culturally imprinted beliefs". Okay, fine. Then he states that atheists imagine they are free of those. crasshopper's comment basically means (correct me if I'm wrong), "don't assume that atheists imagine they are free of unexamined, culturally imprinted beliefs." I agree. At most, atheists claim freedom from a more severe subset of those kinds of beliefs specifically regarding religion. PakG1 then stretches the definition of faith to include even those beliefs which are examined and based on knowledge and past evidence. Let me know where you think the first misplacement was.
The first misplacement was long before this comment thread. But erik was the first to explicitly state it and use it in an argument (arguing for a position I would not agree with.)
That said, PakG1 is not stretching the definition of faith, he's correcting it. It is appropriate to classify erik's position as incorrect and his definition as lacking, but not to classify Pak's correction as a fallacy.
I doubt it? Take the following statement, "I have faith in your ability to get the job done." Do not such statements arise from reasonable acceptance of a proposition based on evidence?
You're playing a semantic game with the word faith here that makes it indistinguishable from the word "believe" in every single one of its definitions. A typical next step from there is to equate an atheist's acceptance of a scientifically supported theory to a religious person's belief in a supernatural claim. Thus all belief is faith and all faith is belief and everyone is equally justified in it.
Nobody is playing semantic games here, nor have the goalposts moved, because faith is the application and confidence in a given belief.
From a Christian perspective, the Bible defines "faith" as confidence in that which we hope for and that which is unseen. (Hebrews 11:1)
That's pretty simple, and secondly, that pretty much lines up with every "dictionary" definition of faith -- i.e. a confidence (or an assured belief) in that which cannot be presently assured. Everything in this world has differing degrees to which we must use faith.
When I drive my car, I don't need much reassurance of faith (i.e. confidence in a belief) that when I turn the wheel left, the car is going to make the turn. (My belief being in the car's ability to make the turn). However, if you were rationally honest, you would agree that just because the car turned left 1000 times prior, that does not truly give you a reason to be 100% rationally confident that it will continue to do so.
Why? Because the environment and every single factor has changed. The road is different, the car is older, the wheel bearings may be a little less greased, the tires have worn, the gravel lays differently, the weather is different, thousands of tiny different universal factors have changed, which really forms an entirely unique model for the 1001st left turn you are about to make. Not to mention, you aren't God, so you have no possible way of knowing all those factors. The perfect mathematical model exists for determining whether that car will make the turn, but you will never know it, so you can only generalize based on prior experience. So you go on, ignoring that tiny little chance (using faith -- a confidence in a given outcome) that the car will not perform as expected.
Faith is the confidence in an expected (hoped for) outcome, don't make it out to be more than it is. Some things in this world require larger doses of faith, like whether or not God exists. Empiricism helps to make faith easier.
So you have defined faith as the thing that fills the gap between the amount of confidence we can reasonably have in a proposition based on evidence/knowledge and the amount of confidence we would like to have. Let me be the first to rush to the common ground here, as I believe this to be a useful definition.
Some things in this world require larger doses of faith, like whether or not God exists.
Exactly. To put an even finer point on it, it would also take a great amount of faith to confidently assert that there are dragons in your basement.
Ok, so you've facetiously applied our correct definition of faith to include dragons in basements. However, under further analysis, we also realize it takes an equally great amount of faith to claim that science can rationally answer questions that cannot be empirically validated. Existential questions like:
- Where did we come from?
- How did we get here?
- What happened X billion years ago?
- etc, etc.
We can establish mathematical and physical models in the present, but knowing present models does not rationally give us any clue as to whether those models were the same in the past, especially as we go farther back in time. Even knowing present rates of change do not establish whether that delta was the same throughout history. Extrapolating present models into the past functions on several underlying assumptions (oh hey, faith!), and ultimately we realize we truly have no way of empirically validating the past.
So yes, I think it's good we've come to common ground on a definition of "faith". Now apply it to your own models of thinking, and you can see why on existential issues we stand on common ground of faith. I'm all for science, but it's good to recognize the limits of empiricism.
I don't know if you're trying to denounce the scientific theory of evolution or if the question you're really trying to get at is, "What is the universally applicable cosmic meaning of our existence?" If it's the latter. then I'd suggest to you that the problem lies in the question.
As far as your past versus present comments go, I cannot tell whether your indulging in philosophical navel gazing about the Problem of Induction, or if you actually have a particular scientific theory in mind that you think doesn't stand up to the evidence. In the former case, you can quickly reason that accepting any scientific principle takes as much faith as picking your nose, which renders the conversation meaningless and contradicts your given definition of faith to begin with. After all, you don't know that the universe wasn't created 15 seconds ago with all of our memories intact. If it's the latter case, and you really believe that there are some important underlying assumptions in a specific area of science that scientists have not stated up front, then I think the best thing to do would be to contribute your insights to the scientific community by writing a paper on it. If you can demonstrate previously unknown shortcomings in a widely accepted scientific theory, then you will be listened to and heralded. If you cannot, then your vague accusations that scientists overstate their assumptions and thereby use "faith" to back up their research are baseless.
Eh, I think I may have somewhat got off track about the original "Atheists ... imagine they are free of faith." statement.
Regardless, I think we both came to agreement that faith is a necessity.
After all, you don't know that the universe wasn't created 15 seconds ago with all of our memories intact.
You're being absurd. What I was trying to get at is that empiricism has its limits (and that everyone uses those "large doses" of faith). The only valid past that can be legitimately (i.e. rationally) studied is the past which has been subjected to empirical observation.
We cannot rationally establish beliefs about a past which we have not (nor any human) ever empirically observed. The scientific method relies on empiricism to validate its claims. Therefore science which attempts to describe a past that nobody has ever experienced is functioning on faith (origins, existential answers, etc). Pretty simple and really all I was getting at for a typical atheist's worldview.
I think you're worried about me lumping blind faith and assured faith together as one thing. I don't think that's what I'm trying to do here. Also, I think it's erroneous to dismiss all religious faith as blind faith, and that most people haven't thought through the logic of that. But that's a lengthy debate that shouldn't be done here. This comment alone would probably be enough to get me downvoted plenty. :)
It's not a "semantic game" to present the correct definition of a word when someone else has misused it.
It is, however, a fallacy to poison the well by suggesting that the person who has presented the correct definition is about to engage in the "typical next step" of making an erroneous claim that the person hasn't actually made.
