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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.