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Who says anything must be believed? Maybe one is a nihilist and believes that reality does not actually exist and real knowledge is not possible. Nihilists believe in nothing.
Agnostics don't really believe anything either, not like theists and atheists do. Agnostics are more just weighing evidence than believing anything. You could say I have faith in mathematics or science, but that's only because I have a mountain of evidence to support it.
This is also a definition, from merriam websters dictionary,
Faith,
b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof
By that definition many people have no faith, including myself.
The only people that really believe something for which they have no proof are religious folks and the mentally ill.
However, there are certainly people who do not give trust without first having reason to do so. Just because some trusts someone does not mean they do not have a reason (versus faith) for doing so.
I understand what you are saying, from your other argument stating that trust is gained through past experiences.
Though the word trust is interchangeable with the word hope. Hope certainly has no warrant.
When you 1st meet a person you may trust that they will speak English, or you may trust that they won't attack you. When trying to date someone you hope that they don't reject you.
No... trust and hope are by definition quite distinct. It is a considerable stretch to conflate faith with hope; faith is a belief without reason, whereas hope is desiring and possibly believing in something while realizing that it might not happen (or even that it is unlikely to happen); hope is not necessarily irrational because it can acknowledge its own improbability and is really nothing more than an expression of desire.
Addressing your examples: No, when I meet someone I do not "trust" that they will speak English (although I may frequently assume it) and I do not "trust" that they will not attack me (I assume it because it is biologically non-sustainable and thus infeasible for an individual to live in a constant state of fight or flight). When I am trying to date someone I do hope that I will not be rejected, but I do not have any faith or belief that they will not reject me- I merely have a desire which I readily recognize may not come to fruition.
Yea, they are I was mostly fishing on that one, sorry.Though they do get used interchangeably in the poetic sense.
From what you described hope as, hope is desiring and possibly believing in something while realizing that it might not happen (or even that it is unlikely to happen) I see that as the same thing as trust. To trust is to be sure, based on past experience, but also to hold out on the possiblity of what you're trusting not to come through.
As for faith, being the same as trust, the defintions are this
Faith: Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
Trust: Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.
Faith even uses the word trust, showing that faith is in some part trust. So to trust is to have a tiny amout of faith.
You have taken my statement out of its original context, and in so doing omitted what I consider to be an important qualifier: Hope is an expression of desire that does not necessitate believing in someone or something. When I said "possibly believing" it was an indication that hope and faith may coincide, but that hope is not always a matter of faith. In other words, not all hope is faith-based but it may be; the implication of this being that one may have trust that does not entail faith.
Your definitions are intriguing but neglect my above point, namely that while faith and trust are similar (both involving as they do a confidence in someone or something) faith necessitates believing without and even against reason whereas trust does not. You argue that faith is a sort of trust, however that does not make all forms of trust a matter of faith.
You argue that faith is a sort of trust, however that does not make all forms of trust a matter of faith.
That got me to thinking also. Faith is belief without any proof or evidence, but as you had said earlier real trust is with the proof of an earlier example. Even the saying, "Forgiveness is Free, Trust is Earned" shows that you don't have to believe something without a real proveable reason to.
I'm also embarrased to say that I was originaly on this side, and after making a silly comment have been trying to fight for the otherside.
oh wow, as long as I have been alive, and have held that God could be false, but didn't want to jump into atheism, I did not know what I was. I now know. I Googled agnosticism by the way. Thank you.
Jesus Christ, that is my only point of being here lately. I'm just trying to get people to understand that there is more than just atheism and theism. Not being religious does not necessarily make you an atheist! It would be nice if more folks around here could wrap their minds around that.
Thank you for getting it, Quocalimar. You are a free thinking individual. Welcome to agnosticism.
Sure I do. Not once do I think " Oh that was odd, maybe just maybe there is some God..." Nope, I know there isn't, I don't need to believe there isn't because I know as a fact there isn't! It's dead simple. Like me saying " Have you ever once thought that 1+1 doesn't make 2, and it makes 46 instead?!" Ridiculous. I have no faith in anything, just take life as it comes, that's the beauty in it. Wheres the fun in knowing that once this is over there's something else coming up, so this 'first life' doesn't really matter. Death is a whole new adventure!
Some really stubborn people absolutely refuse to believe anything with out hard evidence, that they can test on their own. Not nesccarily relating to religion.
I believe trust, in someone coming through on a promise is an example of faith, and I know quite a few people who would not even trust their mother.
So yea, I believe that there are some people who have absolutely no faith in their life.
Yes. I like to say I don't have a political party. I think that that is reasonable. I also don't really have a religion but i'm not an atheist. I believe you can have no faith at all.
That is one definition of faith. Other dictionaries have the meaning we atheists refer to as faith. Redefinition of a word does you no justice. We can just stop using the word faith and say "belief without evidence" in its place. Arguments are more about meaning than words... You know what you mean and redefining a word doesn't change what we are actually talking about.
The problem is that his construction of what constitutes faith conflates knowledge and fact with unfounded belief. There is a difference between believing in something without any real reason to and thinking that something is likely true because you have evidence or significant reason to think as such.
He is trying to argue against atheists, this was all supposed to bec at atheists. At least "TheWayItIs" behavior has shown before. Which it is not bad to argue, but if you are going to do so, grabbing definitions of other words to try and make you right does you no justice, and shows me your stance has little substance. If we are arguing over what 2 + 2 =, where I said 4 and all of a said someone decided to try to change the meanings of plus, plus meant pie all of a sudden, the other person would obviously know I'm not trying to argue 2 pie 2 = 4... Or if I said I was getting married and they pull up the alternative defenition marriage meaning getting a king and a queen of one suit in a certain card game, and kept acting like that was what I was talking about WHILE the marriage is going on. It is the stupidest way to argue ever...
If I'm not mistaken I made this point to him a long time ago when he pulled out an alternative definition for god, and tried to argue a certain man was our god, I made this point and he never did refute it, just like how he won't refute this, because he knows he's being intellectually dishonest.
It is the new generations that use alternate definitions of words. Your generation keeps trying to redefine words that have been around for thousands of years. Get the facts straight.
Example Artist:
1a) obsolete: one skilled or versed in learned arts
b) archaic: physician
carchaic: artisan 1
2a)one who professes and practices an imaginative art
it is the new generation that use alternate definitions of words. Your generation keeps trying to redefine words that have been around for thousand of years. Get the facts straight.
My facts are straight, I don't remember saying that the definitions of words haven't been changing. Are your facts straight? Yes New generation changes vocabularies always. Our language has been evolving since we created it, our vocabulary since Shakespeares time has multiplied by 5. Can you objectively prove the older generation is more correct than the new generation? You are missing my real point, arguing with others by using alternative definitions doesn't do your actual stance justice. If I'm arguing with a vegetarian about which food is better, meet or vegatables and redefine theword vegatables to mean pie, I'm essentially not arguing against the vegetarian anymore am I? When we call faith out as unreasonable and what we mean as faith is "belief without evidence" and you grab an alternative definition of faith that we aren't talking about, you are not arguing with atheists anymore. That is nothing more than a cop-out of a debate which tells me you have nothing left to argue with. All words really are is a string of sounds with meanings assigned to them by people n order to communicate with each other, objectively words are meaningless. Though we are very much on the same page on what most words mean broadly, we can not objectively prove one way or the other. If by coincidence a language that uses all the same words as English happened to also be invented but all meant different things this paragraph would be expressing something very different or express non-sense to them. Though it would be unlikely.
zephyr, I have haven't redefined the meaning. The meaning has always meant as I stated it. Just because you are unaware of all meanings of a word, it doesn't change the meaning of it.
A pie will always be a pie and vegetables, vegetables. One can however argue that the pie is not made from strictly vegetables because it may contain eggs, or that the pie is a Mince pie (Which contains meat)
sigh you once again missed my actual point... I don't know how to make myself any clearer or explain it any better for you so I'll just leave it at that rather than argue with a brick wall. Have a wonderful day :D, I genuinely mean it.
The questioner did not specify whether he/she was talking about religious faith.
If people get married, they probably do so because they have faith in the other person to treat them well and be a good future parent. I wouldn't marry someone unless I thought those things of them, at least.
If one is an evolutionist, one has faith in what they have been told from educators. But since evolution, and a lot of other things, climate change among them, cannot be proven using conventional scientific methods (i.e., forming hypotheses based on seeming evidence and then trying to DISPROVE it, and IF it holds up, eventually accepting it as fact), then if one believes them, there is their 'faith.'
Some people have faith that religion is true because of the same reasons. They are either simply told to believe and they do, or else they require more elements of proof, and so they believe.
So, no, one cannot go through life having no 'faith' at all in anything. That's ludicrous. We all decide what we are going to believe, and why, whether that faith is in religion or anything else.
Regarding marriage, trust is not an innate consequence of faith; for some it is earned and thus a probabilistic assessment of the likely future behavior of those whose behavior we have previously experienced. That is to say, we trust when reliability has been established not because we have faith in that other person.
Evolution, climate change, and other scientific theories or facts possess the greater balance of evidence, and consequentially they are more probabilistically true than are beliefs wholly unfounded upon any science or reason. Thus, people who hold beliefs on the basis of religion are not the same at all to those who hold scientific and analytical views. Theology is a matter of faith, while reason and science are matters of objective probability.
Honestly, it is impossible to completely have no faith at all. I am an Atheist, yet I still have faith. Just not toward religion. Faith, by definition is "complete trust or confidence in someone or something" It does not specify religion by any means in this definition. You can have faith in other things. EVERYONE has at least a little faith in something or someone. So No, one can not realistically not have any faith.
I do not have faith in anything. I take nothing for granted or without question. I trust only those people and things which have demonstrated their reliability to me. That is not faith, it is a reasonable and probabilistic conclusion.
every people must having faith on other and him/herself ..if we dnt hv faith on others than from our points of view everythings become wrong and we never trust to anyone..
I do not need faith to have trust. For me, trust is earned through experience and someone fulfilling their promises and commitments or reasonable expectations. Distrust is earned by failing those same principles. For someone I do not have a basis to assign trust or distrust to, I hold them as neutral. Furthermore, everything does not become wrong to me - why would it? For me, things just are, and they may be desirable or not but faith does not determine which way they fall.
