Creation, Evolution, and faith

Well I guess you're right. That kind of evolutionist would be taking things on faith. Although, I've never met anyone like that before There's a lot more to it than NS being the SOLE catalyst in the process from NOTHING. There's more involved and there never has been nothing. And there's a lot of evidence to back it up.I accept evolution and I have faith and I can say that I have no faith in evolution, the evidence has persuaded me to accept it as an accurate model. And it doesn't rule out god. Um, no. What was all that time spent out in the field gathering data for then? Really!? Did you actually read the book and then pull those quotes from it? Or did you copy and paste those from a creationist webpage?Because they look just like the dishonest quote-mining that creationists use.

I see something wrong....Given: You conclude: To the person who has "seen" Jesus, their belief isn't from blind faith.Regardless of the lack of objectivity and replicability, the person's experience would make their faith not blind.

I see what your saying, but it doesn't really reflect how people with faith have beliefs and which are or are not blind. There's a distinction between blind faith and other beliefs that are faith-based but not really blind. You're failing, or refusing, to ackowledge it.Maybe if we move from beliefs in Jesus/gods then I can show you the distinction. Lets use ghosts.Person A has heard about ghosts from stories and believes they exists. Let this be blind faith.Person B gets the shit scared out of them by a vision of an incorporeal person and believes it was a ghost. I wouldn't even really call this faith, but I can understand why you'd call it that, what with the whole lack of empirical evidence, although I wouldn't consider this faith to be blind like person A's is because they're actually basing the belief on something they've experienced rather than pretty much nothing at all.Make sense?

Okay. I get what you're saying and my disagreement is a matter of personal preference.But, I think that the only person who really knows whether the faith is blind or not is the person holding the belief and that you can't really tell a person that their faith is blind just because you don't find their evidence as convincing, or valid, as they do.

Most likely yes but not necessarily. They could speculate about its properties from what they have observed. Say, the ghost they saw was wearing clothes and spoke english and was somewhat transparent. They could believe that the ghost they saw was not one of a chinese dragon without the need for blind faith. Ya know what I mean? Or it could be the observations themselves that lead to it. As in, its a possibility. I get it, and that would be blind faith, but I don't think it must be that way every time. Its possible for it to be another way. It depends on what they saw and what they're claiming.I'm with you that seeing a shadow and saying you saw grandma's ghost takes a lot of blind faith. But you can't take that across the board.Actually, I just heard a funny story about just this from a friend this weekend:They had thier grandma staying the night and they have one of those automatic air fresheners that sprays every 15 minutes or so with a somewhat audible "psshht". The grandma woke them up in the middle of the night telling them they had a ghost and it was calling her name. She actually heard her own name from a psshht noise. (I forgot what her name was)But she was convinced from the evidence she gathered that there was a ghost there. I don't think she had any blind faith in the sense that people use the term when discribing beliefs in god.Now, I can see calling it that when a bunch of other information is thrown in to the mix. But its not like those are taken to be true, or even actaully believed to be true, but are more like some simple speculations. Like I said, if the ghost you saw looked like a transparent person, then saying that it looked like it was a dead person is not blind like seeing a UFO and claiming that it is most certainly true that they had used type-x propulsion systems.I don't think you're allowing for as much distinction as there can be.

That's beside the point...The reliability of it, or lack thereof, doesn't negate the fact that reason and logic are being employed.Smart theists don't just pick some god willy-nilly and then have faith in it.

I'd say they inheret their religion from their parents... My concept of god is different from my parents' and I think most peoples' are. It matters to me for my beliefs and faith. I find them useful. I'm more comfortable with a belief that I've come to through reason and logic better than one I just pulled out of a hat. I'll pass... I'd rather not share my intimacies, It'd be a lot to type, and I don't think we're going to get anywhere with the judgement of the output (that is, I already realize they're not reliable or anything like that and I don't think they can be shown to be actually wrong so I don't see the point in it).I think the point kb was making was that some people who have faith do get there with reason and logic. I don't see any reason to get into whether or not what they have faith in is accurate.

Somewhat... It provides the framework, but much of the details comes form the individual. (although I'm speaking from a Catholic persepective [which is funny because everyone thinks the church just determines all that stuff for us, which they technically do, but if you polled a church I bet you find all kinds of different answers for what people actually believe for themselves]). I'm torn on that one... Most believers will say that they do choose to believe (we had a thread on that once and I went home and asked my girlfriend if she chooses to believe and she was all: "Uh, yeah... duh, of course.")On one hand, I'd argue that you are unable to choose a belief because something either convinces you or it doesn't. But for matters of faith I think its different. I think the phraseology of it is a little off. Its not like they're actually choosing to actually believe, its that they've decided to accept it with insufficient reason and they're purposefully resistant to opposition. Or something like that. That's a fundamentalist attitude, of which I am certainly not. And some of them might very well have their god concept determined for them. I'm just too honest with myself to be like that.