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Everyone takes things on faith. For instance most could quite trivially prove PV=nRT, but most just take someone else’s word on faith. In a universe where you

Everyone takes things on faith. For instance most could quite trivially prove PV=nRT, but most just take someone else’s word on faith. In a universe where you can never really know something unless you’ve proven it yourself, you take nearly everything on faith from someone else who claims to have proven it.

aeorgnoieang 7y ago
I don't think 'faith' covers both things. Yes, a lot of people accept lots of things as being true on the authority of others, but there's lots of other evidence that those authorities are trustworthy. The details, i.e. the specific differences, of religious claims aren't correlated with any other evidence, or even possible evidence, which is why it's so much easier for so many different creeds to exist even given that they make different, and often contradictory claims. As an example, most people haven't directly carried out all of the relevant experiments needed to discover the laws and theories of electromagnetism, but the evidence of TV, radio, telegraphs are easy enough to perceive and thereof trust. There doesn't seem to be nearly anything similar for religious beliefs, that would make any specific religion more likely than any other. Most of the evidence that does exist for religions seems to be common to any or all of them, e.g. the benefits of group cohesion, common morality, etc..
magduf 7y ago
>For instance most could quite trivially prove PV=nRT, but most just take someone else’s word on faith. No, that's not faith, not in a religious sense. People accept stuff like that because they believe that other people have followed all the proper procedures to prove this is true (within tolerance of error, etc.), and that they aren't making it up or lying for some reason, and most importantly, that it is independently reproducible and verifiable. Religious faith has no such element of verifiability. So this isn't "faith" at all.

aeorgnoieang 7y ago

I don't think 'faith' covers both things. Yes, a lot of people accept lots of things as being true on the authority of others, but there's lots of other evidence that those authorities are trustworthy. The details, i.e. the specific differences, of religious claims aren't correlated with any other evidence, or even possible evidence, which is why it's so much easier for so many different creeds to exist even given that they make different, and often contradictory claims. As an example, most people haven't directly carried out all of the relevant experiments needed to discover the laws and theories of electromagnetism, but the evidence of TV, radio, telegraphs are easy enough to perceive and thereof trust. There doesn't seem to be nearly anything similar for religious beliefs, that would make any specific religion more likely than any other. Most of the evidence that does exist for religions seems to be common to any or all of them, e.g. the benefits of group cohesion, common morality, etc..

magduf 7y ago

>For instance most could quite trivially prove PV=nRT, but most just take someone else’s word on faith. No, that's not faith, not in a religious sense. People accept stuff like that because they believe that other people have followed all the proper procedures to prove this is true (within tolerance of error, etc.), and that they aren't making it up or lying for some reason, and most importantly, that it is independently reproducible and verifiable. Religious faith has no such element of verifiability. So this isn't "faith" at all.