The statement does not say faith in God is ignorance so I am going to assume that you mean any type of faith. There are times when faith is not ignorance.

I have faith that my car's brakes are going to work. This faith is based on my experiences. My car's brakes have never failed me in the past and have given me no indication of immanent failure. I haven't proven that my brakes are fine by inspecting them so my belief that they are fine is faith. But this faith of mine is not based on ignorance but rather on knowledge gained from experience.

Naturally, there are times when faith is ignorance.

Faith is human. Ignorance is laziness, stubbornness, and refusal to adapt. Although one can easily have faith and be ignorant, the two are not linked by any study.

However, if you combine faith and ignorance... that's how we end up with all those sheeple churches. Oh and one particular wing of a particular American political pary.

Definition of faith according to Dictionary.com:

2. belief that is not based on proof

I posted an argument that not all faith is ignorance. I used an example of my car's brakes. There is a nonzero probability that they will fail at any given time. This probability is small but it is not zero. I drive my car confident that my brakes aren't going to give out. I drive as if I know they aren't going to give out. I haven't proven that my brakes aren't going to give out by inspecting them etc. I have faith that they will not give out. This faith is well deserved and rooted in the statistical reality that the chance that they will give out is quite small. It is faith, nonetheless. And so this is an example of where faith is not ignorance.

Faith is a belief that something is true without proof. So obviously my faith that my car's brakes aren't going to give out the next time I drive my car is a belief.

Having evidence that something is true is not the same as having proof that something is true. So, even though my experience with cars leads me to believe that my car's brakes aren't going to give out, this experience does not constitute a proof. I can't prove that the car's brakes will not give out because every time I use them there is a nonzero probability that they will give out.

In a strict sense I can not prove that gravity exists. All I can say is that there is an overwhelming evidence that it does exist and that there are no legitimate competing theories in my mind. Faith is belief without proof. So, I have a measure of faith that gravity exists. Likewise, I have faith that electrons exist. I have never proven their existence myself but I have faith that there isn't some grand conspiracy amongst physicists to make me believe that electrons exists when in fact they don't exist.

Faith is not a dirty word and there are certainly degrees of faith. It doesn't take much faith for me to believe that electrons exist even though I have never proven their existence. It takes far greater faith to say that God exists. We all exhibit faith to some degree in many, many things.

What are you talking about? I did not bring up God in the post you responded to. I like how you define faith to be something 'positively bolstered by ignorance'. It's very convenient to define the word in such a way that there is nothing to discuss. You are free to define words as you want but I gave the definition I am using. It is invalid to attack my argument based on a definition of the word that I am not using, especially in light of the fact that I supplied the definition I am using. I would love for you to reference a dictionary that defines faith as 'a belief that something is true positively bolstered by ignorance'.

More than just one wing of one party, I'd think.

To define faith as ignorance is a view supported only by tautology: i.e. "Since I cannot support my belief empirically, it is faith; since I am ignorant about the empirical support, my faith is ignorance." While it sounds good, it fails standard logic. A statement cannot be offered to prove itself. Logic demands that, for this statement to be taken as fact, there must exist no viable point where faith is based on something other than ignorance.

However, such a viable point exists. All scientists, regardless of personal convictions, admit that science does not and cannot explain all the mysteries of the universe. There is still much to know and more to find out. With our current levels of learning, we cannot in any way disprove the concept of God; that Being exists outside of our science and all our knowledge will not even come close to allowing us to emulate the power ascribed thereto. Occam's Razor drives us to admit that when we cannot empirically disprove the existence of something, we must accept that it may be so. We cannot empirically prove that God is not, or does not hear, or does not notice when we behave in traditional or nontraditional worship. Ergo, we must accept that it is possible for a living, real, listening and noticing God to exist. And if we admit this possibility, is not that admission alone faith? What you do in response to that is the extension of faith into action (the technical definition of religion).

Faith is capable of being the reaction of ignorance; I do not deny that. Superstitions are also such a reaction (i.e. why exactly do you toss salt over your shoulder?). But to categorically assign all faith to ignorance is logically fallacious.

Faith is not ignorance

yes it is believing with out evidence but there is a common misconception that this is only to do with religeon. can you not have faith that you will pass the test or have faith that you will get the job?

with out faith you result in a very "screw it" attitude

no one cares no one hopes

ignorance is when you are blind in the face of wisdom. this is how faith and ignorance can get confused

yes there is overwelming evidence from the pesimistic viewpoint that religeon is false but religeon can not be proven true or false, therefore it requires faith

in this way religeon can be milled with ignorance but faith is in acctuality just hope

Faith isn't ignorance, it's intentional disbelieving the facts. Ignorance is when you don't know better. Faith is knowing better, but still believing in fairy tales anyway.

The title lacks detail, but I'm going to presume it means Faith in God or a higher power.

As a builder every day I'm faced with faith decisions, do I stand on that timber? Is it secure? so I investigate it and find that it seems secure. I stand on it because I have faith in it.

Sometimes I put my faith in timber that is not secure and a painful lesson results.

When I say I have Faith in God it means I've been in numerous situations where I've had to trust him and he has not failed me. I now believe that when I trust him he will come through for me and that he will for everyone that has faith in him.

If I then after repeated lessons of the faithfulness of God refuse to put my faith in him then the reverse is true isn't it?

Lack of faith is ignorance

In fact if anyone can look at the world around them in its infinite complexity far more than that of the most intricate machine or powerful computer and say there is no design behind that then they prove themselves ignorant and Faith right.

I agree that faith is a lack of knowledge and explanation, but I disagree that ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Rather, ignorance is a lack of desire to obtain knowledge. If I had a chemistry test and decided not to study, I would clearly be ignorant of what I am expected to know. If I studied for the test and came across a difficult question, I would not know the answer. It's not a matter of ignoring the problem; I simply don't know.

Sadly, many people attribute faith with ignorance because many ignorant people are faithful. The blatant refusal to accept something other than God is ignorance, yes. But many people who believe there is a God and still seek scientific answers are not ignorant - they're just looking for an answer other/better than God; they don't know and would like to find out.

I agree with Hillary Clinton's skull being chock full of miniature devils but I don't agree that my trusting timber is not faith as defined here.

We cannot divorce faith from its object its always faith in something and thats why I clarified the point.

If you're looking for irrefutable proof of anything before you put your trust in it then you'd be leading quite a sheltered life. In fact nothing can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt not God and certainly not a Godless evolution. Even if Evolution could be proven it would not disprove the existence of God. I believe in a creator, I presume you believe in a process that creates life? IE. There is something in matter that tends to arrange itself into an orderly and functional form... For which you have no proof. I mean you cannot prove that its matter doing it to itself and not God doing it to matter so you'd have to at least concur that we both believe without evidence.

I agree though that we Christians or those of other deistic religions do take a leap of faith to believe in God without evidence. I would not call it ignorant though. I would call it choosing an option, and for me it was choosing the option that made the most sense.

I have had numerous examples of God's faithfulness but none that you could not re-butt saying "that was just coincidence" but when I have coincidence after coincidence in my life pointing towards a loving God then I choose to believe my instincts which tell me to believe

The title may make a cute sentence but if you think about it longer than half a second ; you may notice that everything requires a bit of 'faith': in a response, in the correct answer, in a question..not just mysticism... EVERYTHING even faith; requires 'ignorance' if it is to advance along the "cycle of knowledge-ignorance,faith,change-Santi P" .They are not the same if one requires the other (like good/bad).

There are few faiths that do not stand on logic, reason, or some facts. Not that all of the followers of a particular faith understand these bolstering concepts, but it is improper to judge an idea or practice by its lowliest practitioners.

No matter what, we all have a faith; in either science, a philosophy, or a religion. We all have beliefs and concepts that end with themselves, ones which cannot be objectively proven.

When someone says "well, it doesn't meet the "falsification principle"" they don't realize that the falsification principle is itself a belief or faith. Why is it that that principle gets to define what is or is not real? It "seems" correct, on its face.

Science itself falls victim to this contradiction. Why is the scientific method the right way of doing things, why is it that repeated experimentation causes something to be a "fact". And what of all the countless things we cannot experiment on, we can't replicate? We cannot replicate orbits or atoms, we cannot replicate the beginning of the universe (yet), we cannot replicate history, we cannot replicate the sun (or experiment on it).

Most things are a matter of faith, faith+probability. Most atheists simply take science as a more probable faith (and they are probably right in many respects). Religious adherents take up Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Paganism, Hinduism, Taoism..etc... as their more likely probability. It usually rests on the type of person, the personality of the individual when it comes to what a person deems true or untrue, likely or unlikely.

Nonetheless, it stands to reason that we are all believers; but whether it is in a god or a thermometer it matters little (when you get right down to it). Results, of course, vary.

faith is not ignorance!...its actually HOPE.

when you want somthing to happen your actually crossing your finger,waiting for the results you been expecting.its actually hoping for the best,then the faith comes in.maybe literally faith defined as belief of absence of evidence,could not be proven,but it existed instinctively on our minds,on our hearts.ignorance is lack of knowledge,very diffrent from faith that cannot just be proven its just means theres knowledge on faith that just hard to define,just like some secrets that needs to remain as secrets.

There's definitely wish-thinking baked into the meaning but by and large, it's ignorance.

"maybe literally faith defined as belief of absence of evidence"

Not maybe - actually.

"when you want somthing to happen your actually crossing your finger,waiting for the results you been expecting."

I want the cookie monster to climb in through my window one night and leave a trillion euros under the pillow. This could be hoping I guess but to believe it's possible with no evidence (and sometimes even because of no evidence) is just stupid. Maybe the debate should have been entitled 'Faith is a common stupidity'.

faith is having something to believe in and truly believing it with all your heart. it is NOT ignorance.

Faith isnt ignorance, its believing without seeing.

Whenever you go to sleep each night, do you go to sleep afraid, thinking you wont wake up the next day. NO, you go to bed and say well see ya tomorrow because you have the faith that your gonna wake up the next morniing, How is that any different from having faith in God knowing that someday we will see him in heaven.

That is YOUR definition of faith. Faith is nothing but another word for trust. You can have faith in things you can prove - which is the best thing to have faith in. But, proving something requires going through a process. For many, faith in God doesn't begin as real faith, or trust. It begins as hope, and people learn to trust the more and more they see their religion working for them. For them, living their faith is the "scientific method" they use to hang on to it. You can rip that apart if you'd like, but you can certainly see the logic in that.

Ignorance is the state in which one lacks knowledge, is unaware of something or chooses to subjectively ignore information. I don't see how trusting in something that is working so far is ignorance. At the very least, it is hypothesis. At some point, the hypothesis becomes convincing and duplicatable enough to become theory. However, if there is something you have not yet considered, you are ignorant of that. But, in that sense, you are igorant ever time you count on something that you believe to be concrete. If you walk on the street not knowing what cars are coming, are you walking in ignorance - and ignorant for believing that you will make it to the other side? Hope births risk. Success births faith. We just have to be sure to consider the counter arguments and be willing to modify our conclusions if the tests come back negative at any moment.

Faith is by definition ignorance. If faith is believing without evidence, then that is in essence belief from ignorance.

I have faith that my car's brakes are going to work.

Actually it would be closer to a belief, as in "conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence".

his faith is based on my experiences. My car's brakes have never failed me in the past and have given me no indication of immanent failure.

You refute yourself by saying your faith is based on tests and experimentation. Faith is belief without evidence, not belief based on inductive reasoning. By the same token, you would believe it takes faith to be believe in the laws of physics, because they've been tested time and time again with perfect consistency, but that says nothing about what will happen the next time you test it.

I haven't proven that my brakes are fine by inspecting them

Your right. You haven't proven it by inspection; you've proven it (beyond a reasonable doubt) by reason and the theory of falsification. In reality, it would take more faith to not drive.

That's not an example of faith because brakes exist, brakes have failed, brakes don't last forever - it's a known quantity therefore you maintain a belief based on reasonable evidence and experience. Faith is a belief that something is true positively bolstered by ignorance.

E.g. 'someone has told me something which is completely outside of human experience, is massively logically flawed in its own terms, stands in the face of everything we know about the material world and complies with all that is known about all the dead religions and philosophies from our humblest beginnings as a critically thinking species. I'll buy that!'

To have faith in a 'traditional' notion of a god is exactly as reasonable as a faith in the pink and blue axolotl god of Venus because the required level of ignorance is equitable.

"Faith is ignorant" would be a more appropriate way to phrase the debate, as a lack of knowledge is necessary to faith. Faith describes a belief despite a lack of knowledge. Ignorance is that lack of knowledge.

To my mind, faith is inextricably linked with religion and the deities it postulates - this was my original intention. I don't think people as a general rule apply the word in different contexts but when they do, they actually mean a 'belief'. Faith then in the religious sense can be said to be "positively bolstered by ignorance" because its cultivation and profession is praised i.e. the more 'faithful' a person is perceived to be, the 'better' that individual is along some sort of religious metric.

"It's very convenient to define the word in such a way that there is nothing to discuss."

Well you're right there, there isn't anything to discuss because it is ignorance by definition!

"It is invalid to attack my argument based on a definition of the word that I am not using,"

Not really, I agree with your definition although, I think it would be more accurate as 'belief that is not based on proof or evidence' which would be more in line with the OED.

"I would love for you to reference a dictionary that defines faith as 'a belief that something is true positively bolstered by ignorance'."

I've defended my wording.

Can you give another example of how faith isn't ignorance?

"yes it is believing with out evidence"

And also evidence to the contrary.

"can you not have faith that you will pass the test or have faith that you will get the job?"

No, that's belief.

"religeon can not be proven true or false, therefore it requires faith"

Or ignorance.

That's not true for all cases. I agree that a lot of faith is either outright lies fostered to impress a peer group or wilful ignorance but many of the faithful (I'd wager the majority) are simply ignorant of the massive facts which suggest there is no god e.g. they haven't the first clue about progenitor or similar religions throughout history.

Faith is ignorance to an extent. However, not all people who have faith (in religion, in this case) are ignorant. I am not a religious person but I know many who are and those people take great comfort in their beliefs. Religion helps people get through difficult times and it can be comforting to think there is an omniscient, omnipotent being looking out for you. However, when Faith reaches the level of rejecting facts that have been proved, there is a problem. Those who reject evolution in favor of creation, for example, are ignorant. When you believe something for which you have no proof in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you are being ignorant.

Its not quite fair to say that faith and ignorance are the same thing, but they do go hand in hand -- without ignorance there is no need for faith. We choose to believe things for many reasons. Sometimes we are persuaded by experience, others times we accept ideas because of social pressure, and occasionally we choose to believe things that just seem to "resonate" without being sure why. Faith is necessary to sustain a belief when experience isn't available. When we uncritically accept an idea with neither persuasive experience nor "resonance", we are guilty of being ignorant of our own views. Stubbornly holding a belief in the face of contradicting experience isn't faith: that's willful ignorance.

Faith is believing what you know (logically) ain't so. You must have faith to believe a talking snake talked a woman into eating a fruit. You must have faith to believe the earth is 6000 years old. This isn't simply because you don't personally verify the fact, but because it is possible to do so, and well documented at that.

"The title lacks detail, but I'm going to presume it means Faith in God or a higher power."

I would have thought the debate being in the 'Religion' section might have been a give away.

"do I stand on that timber?"

That's simply not faith. You're confusing faith with belief. You make the decision to stand on the timber based on sound knowledge and experience. Faith is when you believe in that for which there is no experience or knowledge and in religious terms, that which is stupendously incredible e.g. 'I believe Hillary Clinton's skull is chock-full of miniature devils.'

"When I say I have Faith in God it means I've been in numerous situations where I've had to trust him and he has not failed me."

Please provide a detailed example.

"If I then after repeated lessons of the faithfulness of God refuse to put my faith in him then the reverse is true isn't it?"

A correlation doesn't have to mean there's a cause and effect.

"In fact if anyone can look at the world around them in its infinite complexity far more than that of the most intricate machine or powerful computer and say there is no design behind that then they prove themselves ignorant and Faith right."

I agree to an extent. It would be ignorant not to believe there is design in the world, but it's a design implemented by a process. You speak here from the classic argument of ignorance: 'all this complexity must mean there's a god' i.e. 'I/we cannot currently explain abc therefore xyz is true. This is tantamount to saying 'I don't know what's on this part of the map so I'll just write 'here be dragons''.

"You must have faith to believe a talking snake talked a woman into eating a fruit."

With no evidence and evidence to the contrary, would it be too harsh to say:

"You have to be dumb to believe a talking snake talked a woman into eating a fruit."

Faith is a dirty word. Every example you've given is of belief. You believe your brakes aren't going to fail. You know your brakes could fail, but you're willing to risk it because you know it's unlikely they will. This is not faith. It is at worst a form of weasel words at best, a redundant duplication.

are you talking about "day dreaming?"...

well thats stupidity.

what evidence people want to see before they believe/before they have faith?...

somtimes we actually dont believe on what our eyes showing to us,faith here doesnt only mean it could be faith to god or any religions,it could be faith for the husbands,wives,kids,future etc.you dont see but you feel.

dig deeper.:)

3 Points

a. "supported only by tautology", the correct term is begging the question, since p then q and since q then p.

b. "Occam's Razor drives us to admit that when we cannot empirically disprove the existence of something". Occam's razor proposes that given two equally likely explanations, the simpler one is usually correct. This is not an argument for the ambiguity of disproof. However, Faith cannot be disproved, yes, because it is a metaphysical trait, it is like disproving an concept, you can never 'prove' communism or anarchy, you can prove it exists, but you can never prove they're right, because it is metaphysical. You might be able to show advantages and disadvantages of a metaphysical concept, but you cannot absolutely prove or disprove a metaphysical value like one can with a physical, concrete law or theory.

c. "Ergo, we must accept that it is possible for a living, real, listening and noticing God to exist". That is a false dichotomy, why should 'god' be listening and noticing? Why endorse it with such attributes? When physicists use the word god, it is not always used to describe any omni salient being, rather it's an all encompassing term to include everything they don't know about the universe. It is even speculated that 'god' is nothing but a natural phenomenon that occurred concurrently with the creation of the space time continuum. Endowing god with such anthropomorphic traits is quite presumptuous, if not ignorant.

I believe that perhaps it is the wording of the debate which is causing much confusion, I would support "Faith is ignorant", but to assert metaphorically results in much more turmoil as interpretation is at the discretion of the responder. To that extent, I do cede that to categorically assign all faith to ignorance is logically fallacious.

Faith is the belief in something without evidence to back it up. A lack of evidence is ignorance, no matter how much you believe with all your heart that it's true.

If you believe in a god that is deemed false and you believe in him that he is real and you should love him that kind of faith is blind faith which is also ignornace.

I agree. In fact, I've come acknowledge that everytime someone describes something as "faith" (like in the bolded statements), it sounds more like expectations. Is it really faith that your car's brakes are going to work, or is the expectation that they should, would, and probably will work? Is it faith that you get up in the morning and expect your feet to touch the ground without thinking that they will, (because that would be considering compulsive thinking if you think that way about everything to take away the sense of "faith"), or is it the reality that for every morning you've woken up since you learned to walk, that the floor has been there and you subconsciously expect it to be there?

You can look at it all either way, really. In my opinion, I think those falling on "faith" are those that like to ignore psychology...which has so many awesome explanations about how the human mind works. Is faith ignorant? To a degree. But I think it's the point that the word is so applied to religious belief that those of us annoyed with religion, just hate the hear the word when you could use something more... real... like, the word "expect." :-)

Could you tell us what's YOUR definition of ignorance then?

"Ignorance is the state in which one lacks knowledge, is unaware of something or chooses to subjectively ignore information. I don't see how trusting in something that is working so far is ignorance."

Exactly, and faith fits this description of ignorance. When you say "something that is working so far", that's where the self-deceiving part of faith comes. Have religion and God been working so far? You will only say this is true if you are subjectively choosing information. People of faith tend to thank God for little good things that happen in their lives and leave the little bad things unnoticed. They choose not to look for the real causes of a "virgin Mary" appearing on a toast, therefore they ignore the real cause, which usually is randomness... Why did the rain stop right the moment you left the house? A person of faith would take that as one more proof that God loves them, and ignore the fact that a bunch of other faithful people have been getting wet all day. And surprisingly, for the wet people, this went unnoticed, and their faith is still strong. Every faithful person subjectively picks and chooses information.

Faith keeps people from looking for the real causes of events, and this leads to ignorance about how the world actually works.

About your car example, I'm not sure what you mean... Do you usually cross the street without checking first if there are cars coming? Because if you do check, and see that there are no cars, you are not crossing based on hope, but in evidence. You see the size of the street, your brain compares it to all your previous experiences with cars coming in your direction, and it tells you that even if the fastest car you've ever seen comes up now, it couldn't possibly be fast enough to hit you before you reach the other side.

Now, imagine if the brain worked based on faith, picking and choosing information which agrees with your preconceptions. If you come with the fixed idea that you can cross the street, your brain would tend to remember the slowest cars you've ever seen, or maybe a donkey, a bicycle... It would tell you it's ok to cross this street even though you hear the motor of a F1 car coming just around the corner.

Luckily, we've been taught to analyze data properly before crossing a street, but unfortunately, millions of kids in the world are growing up being taught to be ignorant. Have faith that God is watching you, that God is the creator, that God is the answer to all your questions! Don't question anymore, just be ignorant.

Without ignorance it is hard to have faith. Faith is not hope its delusion spurred on by the unknown.