Dragon
Senior Member
- Sep 16, 2011
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Faith is belief unfounded in verifiable evidence and/or valid logic; and is validated by the denial of verifiable evidence and/or valid logic.
Just nitpicking because this is slightly off-topic, but I'm going to disagree. You're confusing faith with dogma, a common mistake made by both atheists and dogmatic theists.
Faith is founded in verifiable evidence that is incomplete. Moreover, it is not a belief that but rather a belief in. That is to say, it is not the assertion of claims of fact that can be expressed in language, but rather a confidence that is expressed in action, and that bridges the inevitable gaps in knowledge.
Faith is what allows us to put one foot in front of the other when we cannot be certain the ground will support us. Faith is what allows us to go on living when we have every reason to believe our lives will inevitably end. Faith is what allows us to love when we can never be certain our love is returned. Faith is what allows us to be happy when we know that happiness can never be assured.
On a more cosmic level, faith is what leads us to the certainty that the cosmos is benign, even when objective evidence does not support that conclusion.
The insistence that a proclamation of authority is The Truth regardless of conflicting evidence or lack of supporting evidence is not faith. That is dogma.