More Definitions of Faith

Take a look. Care to add your own?

Robert said:

The thing people label ‘faith’ cannot be captured in a single definition.

1. Faith is the Thing I should feel bad for not having if I say to someone, “Why do you choose to believe that unverifiable claim, as opposed to some other unverifiable claim?”

2. Faith is exactly the same as inductive reasoning; thus, you have “faith” that the sun will rise tomorrow.

3. Faith is similar to the concept of trust: God must be good (believed for any number of reasons, including faith), and I’m sure He knows what He’s doing.

4. Faith is similar to the concept of credibility; the Bible’s always been right before, so I imagine it will be right on this other issue here, even though I’m not sure how.

5. Faith is a direct meddling of the Holy Spirit in the internal workings of your brain, so that you are able to mystically come to the right answer about whether or not to believe something despite otherwise insufficient evidence.

6. Faith is a decision to believe something even though you have insufficient reasons for doing so.

7. Faith is a decision to follow some idea that seems intuitively true, and to give empirical evidence less weight than these personal intuitions.

8. Faith is an incomprehensible thing for the limited human mind – don’t even try to think about it.

9. Faith is a circular and properly basic assertion: “I know that I exist because I know, and likewise I know that God exists because I know, and likewise I know that the apostle Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit because I know, and likewise I know that the Bible is perfectly true because I know...”

Sir_Russ said:

Faith: the human faculty that rejects the supernatural when a child has gone missing.

Faith: the human faculty that rejects the supernatural in life-threatening emergencies.

Faith: the ambient psychobabble of the religious who actually conduct their lives in the same way atheists conduct theirs.

Faith: the human faculty which Christians are observed to reject in their providing humanitarian aid.

Faith: pathological hope.

Faith: abandoning what is real in favor of social fantasies and wishful thinking.

Can we all agree at this point with George H. Smith? He tells us in Atheism: The Case Against God, that “The conflict between Christian theism and atheism is fundamentally a conflict between faith and reason. This, in epistemological terms, is the essence of the controversy." And from the atheist perspective, "Reason and faith are opposites, two mutually exclusive terms: there is no reconciliation or common ground. Faith is belief without, or in spite of, reason.” (pp. 96-98)