Life After Death

Originally posted by twhitehead
That is different. I think you will find that even she will not accept personal experiences as related by other people- if the experiences in question do not match her beliefs.

Just as she doesn't accept as true that which other people believe on faith
where those beliefs contradict those beliefs she holds based on faith.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I said I do not believe anything based on faith.

I did not say that I had no beliefs, or knowledge, about the world.

Electrons, Protons, Neutrons, and Gravity all have evidence for their
existence.

No FAITH is required to believe that they exist, or know their properties
to the extent that their properties are known.

It certainly seems like it takes faith to me. I believe by faith that such things exist just as I was taught in school because it makes sense of the theory of electricity and I have not heard of a better explanation.

However, I don't believe in all the speculations concerning the theory of evolution because much of it does not make sense to me and I have heard a better explanation.

Now as far as what these people experienced when they should have died, I don't know if I should believe them or not. I don't write them off as crackpots because it does not violate what I believe is possible.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Now as far as what these people experienced when they should have died, I don't know if I should believe them or not. I don't write them off as crackpots because it does not violate what I believe is possible.

So basically you only accept what they have to say if what they say agrees with beliefs you already hold. Yet for some reason you thought it worth posting in this forum? I am afraid I write you off as a crackpot.

Originally posted by twhitehead
So basically you only accept what they have to say if what they say agrees with beliefs you already hold. Yet for some reason you thought it worth posting in this forum? I am afraid I write you off as a crackpot.

The feeling is mutual. 😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
The feeling is mutual. 😏

You have been written off as a crackpot years ago.

Originally posted by sonhouse
You have been written off as a crackpot years ago.

You have been written off as a numbnuts years ago. 😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
You have been written off as a numbnuts years ago. 😏

From you, I take that as a compliment.

Originally posted by googlefudge
No!

Of course I don't.

Have you not read ANYTHING I have written here over the years?

I do not believe ANYTHING on or by faith.

You even say that you cannot even believe your own experiential evidence.

Have you ever loved someone? How do you know?

Has anyone ever loved you? How do you know?

If you really, truly do not believe ANYthing 'based on faith', I feel sad for you, for you will never know love.

And that's just one of the many things you will never know.

According to you.

It is not a mark of faith to believe in the evidence cited above for an afterlife. I am not even convinced that it is a mark of "faith" to believe things because they are written in the bible. Treating the bible as evidence and choosing to believe the bible, which may rest on faith at one step removed or may confirm faith, but still it is on face value simply "belief." Belief is different to faith. This becomes important when we appreciate that historically, most people have had only a limited education in the belief systems to which their faith associates them.

So relying on the bible as evidence of anything is not faith, it is belief. And there are curious features to this because there are things for which the bible is not a terribly satisfactory ground for a belief. Of these the most obvious is the fact that Christians wrote the New Testament to describe their beliefs, setting out their account after the event of what they say Jesus did and said. There is no other source of confirming information or evidence that supports their account. Some sources which survived destruction by the censoring Church over the centuries, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, give somewhat divergent stories about this period of time. So it is highly convenient that they got to write their own history and then refer to what they wrote as evidence that history took place in the way they claim it did. This just does not work as evidence! The new Testament is not even written, by and large, by witnesses who were present at the events they claim to describe. And there are aspects of their account for which nobody could have been present as a direct witness.

Faith is all very well. People have faith who do not know much about scripture at all. But what we are offered here is not faith at all. It is beliefs based on poor evidence.

To say Christians believe all they are told they believe is patently false. Most Christians are not well informed on vast areas of scripture. The process rather is one by which people decide they have faith, and subsequently explore the associated belief systems. These beliefs are not based on faith - they just come along later than the act of commitment called faith. They are often surprising. And frankly, they are largely dependent in their details on which Christian sect happens to benefit from their discovery of faith.

It is just bluffing to hide behind "faith" as a way to evade serious consideration of what it is people believe. Not only do people of faith often hold stupid beliefs, they often hold beliefs that are flatly contradictory to their professed faith.

Originally posted by Suzianne
You even say that you cannot even believe your own experiential evidence.

Have you ever loved someone? How do you know?

Has anyone ever loved you? How do you know?

If you really, truly do not believe ANYthing 'based on faith', I feel sad for you, for you will never know love.

And that's just one of the many things you will never know.

According to you.

Sigh.

As I have explained many times before and apparently must do again...

The word faith has many meanings, like most words frankly, and you have to consistently
use the same meaning throughout a discussion otherwise you are committing the equivocation
fallacy.

The meaning of the word faith used most often on these forums [especially by atheists] and the
one I use almost exclusively is this...

Faith: Belief [a firm conviction] that a proposition is true, without evidence to support that
proposition being true, or despite evidence against that proposition being true.

This is also sometimes written as blind faith.
Believing without evidence or justification for doing so.


Faith can also mean something like 'trust', or it can mean a religious belief, ect ect.


Now what I claim [and is true] is that there is no belief that I hold where I do not have
evidence/reason to hold. Reveal Hidden Content
However that doesn't mean I can't or don't have trust [which incidentally is not a binary thing,
you can, and should, have degrees of trust] but that trust is proportioned according to the
available evidence.
I trust that an aeroplane I am going to fly in will not fall out of the sky and crash because of
the impressive safety record of aircraft and the incredible rarity of planes crashing.
I do not have faith that the aeroplane will not fall out of the sky because I have strong evidence
that it wont.


Given that, we turn to your questions... and find them idiotic. I'm sorry but we have gone over
this topic enough times that you should know MUCH better. These are rookie mistakes.
Don't know what idiot thought that deserved a thumbs up.

Have you ever loved someone? How do you know?

First, none of your business.

Secondly, I am a human being and have emotions, I tell if I feel or think something just like
everyone else does. What did you think the answer would be???

Has anyone ever loved you? How do you know?

Again, none of your business.

Secondly, this is the equivocation I was talking about at the top of the post, you are using
faith to mean trust. Which is not the meaning I have repeatedly stated is the one I use almost
universally, and is not the meaning that contextually makes sense. the meaning that makes
sense is the one I gave at the top of this post, at which point the answer is obvious.
I believe that someone loves me [or not] the same way anyone else does... When they show
evidence [of many different kinds] that they do.

If you really, truly do not believe ANYthing 'based on faith', I feel sad for you, for you will
never know love.

And that's just one of the many things you will never know.

According to you

This is on the same level of stupidity as those who claim that you cannot have morals without god.
I can and do expect much better from you.


Belief and trust are both sliding scales, you can have a strong belief or a weak belief.
You can have a lot of trust or only a little bit [I trust you as far as I can throw you]
and you can have varying amounts of trust on different aspects of the same person.

I trust Bob with my accounts, but not my wife.
I trust Alice with my life, but not my wallet.
I trust Fred with my house keys, but not with my car...
ect ect.

I really and truly do not believe ANYTHING on faith.

Believing based on faith is stupid.

This doesn't mean that I [or others like me] don't have a rich and full social and emotional
life. Being rational does not mean being a Vulcan, or Data from Star Trek.

And you should know that by now.

I have had 3 supernatural experiences - all very frightening.
Until I caught my breath and rationalised them as hallucinations/trick of the light/dreams.

I could of course believe they were really supernatural events.

But that would be STUPID.

🙄

Originally posted by finnegan
It is not a mark of faith to believe in the evidence cited above for an afterlife. I am not even convinced that it is a mark of "faith" to believe things because they are written in the bible. Treating the bible as evidence and choosing to believe the bible, which may rest on faith at one step removed or may confirm faith, but still it is on face value sim ...[text shortened]... stupid beliefs, they often hold beliefs that are flatly contradictory to their professed faith.

One can believe something without putting one's faith in that which he believes. For example, Satan believes that God exists, yet he does not put his faith in God. I doubt that I could put my faith in the Holy Bible unless I believed it to be true, however, some people seem to be able to do just that. Maybe that is the difference in having little faith and having much faith.

Originally posted by RJHinds
One can believe something without putting one's faith in that which he believes. For example, Satan believes that God exists, yet he does not put his faith in God. I doubt that I could put my faith in the Holy Bible unless I believed it to be true, however, some people seem to be able to do just that. Maybe that is the difference in having little faith and having much faith.

So you agree that faith and belief are different concepts doing different jobs, which was my point.

(Sorry Googlefudge - this edit took longer than your response to the original very brief post)

A modern philosopher remarks in a lecture that it is impossible for an atheist to refute a religious believer by arguing from factual evidence, because each group follows its own rules as to what type of evidence is permissible and relevant. This is a variation on the older William James observation about the "Ladder of Faith" in which he argues that "faith" is a commitment that has to be made in the first place, in order for the "believer" to proceed and consider religious arguments positively.

I am interpreting both remarks to say that religious faith acts as a sort of bias, which makes the believer willing to accept material as evidence that falls grotesquely short of the standard of evidence that would be demanded in a rational debate among atheists. Now one might take the position that this gives believers a get out of gaol free card, such that atheists are not entitled to attack their beliefs, and maybe I would defend that position in the context, for example, of objecting to racist attacks based on Islamophobia. Yes, in a secular world, people have the right to their religious beliefs.

However, what I find tiresome is the technique of appealing to faith as a defence for beliefs systems which are not based on faith at all, but based on very human and earthly forms of reasoning or (more often) rhetoric. My ground for this objection is that people of faith can and do disagree on their interpretation of their beliefs. To take a concrete example again, I would observe that many Christians, Muslims and Jews object to fundamentalist misreadings of the relevant scriptures based on literalism, which all religions consistently have pointed out can only lead to error and confusion. This is not a matter of faith. It is a matter of belief hiding behind appeals to faith.

Originally posted by finnegan
So you agree that faith and belief are different concepts doing different jobs, which was my point.

As I said. the word faith has many different meanings.

And both of you are committing equivocation fallacies by using multiple different meanings
without clarifying which one you are talking about.

The meaning I use, which I consider to be the most appropriate for these discussions,
is faith as a description of the nature of that belief and their justification for holding it...

Faith: Belief [a firm conviction] that a proposition is true, without evidence to support that
proposition being true, or despite evidence against that proposition being true.

This is also sometimes written as blind faith.
Believing without evidence or justification for doing so.

Originally posted by googlefudge
As I said. the word faith has many different meanings.

And both of you are committing equivocation fallacies by using multiple different meanings
without clarifying which one you are talking about.

The meaning I use, which I consider to be the most appropriate for these discussions,
is faith as a description of the nature of that belief and the ...[text shortened]... lso sometimes written as blind faith.
Believing without evidence or justification for doing so.

You are equating the concepts "faith" and "belief" in a way that is certainly adopted in places like Wikipedia and online dictionaries pulled up by Google, so it is not wrong as such. However, the differences are in reality very significant and historically important. There are good reasons to distinguish the two terms. Indeed, my argument above is based on my objection to people failing to make that distinction.