Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith?

I am new here, so don't kill me on my first try...As far as I have understood RAZDs position, the point is that a position of no consequence is not believed or unbelieved until evidence displays itself. Some say it is unscientific, others (string theorists f.eks.) feel the need to theoretizise the possibility even though there is no evidence one way or the other.If we assume for mental exercise that there is a god, th first thing we have to ask ourselves is what are the consequences of this proposed god. If we assume that this construct performs miracles on a daly basis, everyone will agree that it is very very unlikly such a god exists.If there is a god that can't change anything in "our Universe", there would be no possibility to find out if or if not this god exists (per definition of our Universe being the thing we interact with physicly), and we would have to be in a 50/50 believing position. That dosn't mean I believe that there is a 50% chance that such a God exists, but science is not going to give me a different answer than that.Therfore the most logical position to assume to a god that has no influence on the physical world would be "I do not know, I do not care." Of course, such a god would never be included in any scientific theory, because it is of no concequence to any, but that doesn't mean that science assumes that the proposition is wrong, it just means that it isn't relevant.ps: English being my second language, please feel free to ask for clarification where my language gets in the way of thinking. Being german in norway tends to confuse the english part of my brain...Edited by tis---strange, : signature wasn't showing

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"Hey, hvor hen du er i verden...
Det er deilig slve i skyggen!"-Dumdum Boys

Well I (I wouldn't dare speak for RAZD) wouldn't say that in any field where we have a model that we have evidence for. If there is a model we have evidence for, it is of course much more likely than any model we do not have evidence for. So that stars are formed by collapsing clouds of Hydrogen, is much more likely than believing that some kind of superbeing created them with their hands. Someone here talked about water on the sun being an undetectable phenomenon, but any big amount of water on the sun would certanly be detectable (and any small amount of water would not count as water on the sun, and it would not stay there very long before falling apart in a little hydrogen and a little oxigen...), therefore the absence of (predicted) evidence IS of course evidence against water on the sun.There are however concepts that we KNOW of that the evidence for them is undetectable by our modern day machinery. Nobody would claim that the higgs-boson doesn't exist because "we havent seen it yet" (some say even that no evidence is evidence for the higgs... ) but even that is not what I mean by an undetectable concept, because it makes predictions that can be right or wrong.Now about a concept, like the god concept: It would of course not be part of a physical, biological, or any scientific theory. Why? Because physics deals with concepts that interact physically. Biology with concepts that have the "life" property. All other sciences with some concept that is well defined and has more or less well defiend borders. So no, it wouldn't be scientific to consider it as part of a ph.d... But we can still not say anything about it being right or wrong. Well yes. But the question I am asking myself is: If I am presentet with a ("crackpot"?) theory, how do I react?Christian God? There is a lot of evidence that there is no such thing. We have evidence that there are no higher powers communicating directly with human brains and so on...Newtons laws? I conduct experiments and find the evidence good, although I get problems when looking at Mercury (the planet).Marxism? Well, though one. I ask a social scientist?The Whuluhulu god of kikiwoko that only listens? How the hell am I supposed to know? But the theory of this god (that has no concequence) and my personal theory (there is no such thing as supernatural beings that leave no trace) have both equally no evidence against them. I do not especially care about the kikiwoko people, so I will probably have a personal oppinion that the god does not exist, but how say I have evidence for that? I haven't. And I do not care at all.You see my point?

Reading my post again, I am not sure I do either. I got lost somewhere. Let me try again, just to discribe my position from the beginning:
I think we agree on that the concepts we use in science and in our daily life all have a certain amount of evidence for or against them. I think we agree on that we can not "proove" any of these concepts, but that a lot of them have so much evidence for them that we need to consider them as "as good as true", others are less certain.The question I ask myself, is what happens when we get confrontet with a new concept?
Of course we compare with our existing model, if it conflicts, we need strong evidence that it is more correct then our previous model.We will also look at the consequences of the concept, and compare them to reality, if the agree, we assign the concept a higher truth value.And it depends on who is presenting the issue: When a math professor is presenting a new (conflicting?) mathematical concept, I will give it a higher truth value, then the same concept presented by a pre-school math teacher, if the evidence is inaccessible to me (of course, I can be made to understand, and agree if the evidence is there).What, if the new concept is a concept of something you never have thought about before?
I think we disagree in this point. You say, we have a standard position of everything we do not have a model of, being it does not exist.(meaning, the model discribes every known part of reality there is. Please correct me if I am wrong)
I think of my model of incomplete by default. If I find something new, undiscribed, I will at least consider the possibility of it being part of the model until I have a reason not to.I think you also have a different definition of reality than me. I do not think of any of my models as being real. I only know that reality (the thing discribed by the model) interacts very similar to the model. But that doesn't mean that the model is reality. (does that makes any sense?)But I would not say that this position is the 'right' one at all, it is only my understanding of reality.

Ok, so you say that anything existing has the possibility to have an effect? Meaning that anythin not having an effect, does not exist (per definition of the word "existing")?
I guess that makes sense.I do, else, agree totally with your position. Especially on the point that you can not have a position (edit: in this post) on anything not well defined.Edited by tis---strange, : Just making clear...

Well, I would expect that a concept is either identical to my worldview, or in some way different, thereby being conflicting or completly different from anything I have thought about before. If it is identical, I have some kind of evidence for it already (since it is part of my model), else I will look/ask for evidence. I should have made that clear... That depends on how "new" it is. If somebody presented me with newtonian mechanics, I would know how to place it in my worldview, since I have considered it before. But this is of course an idealized model(sic!) of how I form my opinions, in praxis I would almost certanly always ask questions about the concept until I understand enough to place it in my model.