From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 12:15 PM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: On Perception of Reality Jim Humphries wrote: > [a person having faith] may certainly question the truthfulness > of his religion eg the Catholic may wonder at times whether > Catholicism is true I've never said otherwise. > the believer may base his adherence to Catholicism > on the inconclusive evidence that is available rather > than believe entirely on the basis of revelation. I've never said otherwise. I said, rather, that faith involves positing an authority (e.g. God) whose revealed statements are exempt from doubt. > Plainly your definition- which is self-serving- My definition is only "self-serving" in the sense that it illuminates a distinction between me and people of religious faith that the latter find embarrassing. That this distinction is embarrassing to them is not my fault. > is not descriptive of the faith of many believers. If your statement were true, then you could easily answer my oft-repeated challenge to name even a single person of religious faith who does not consider his god to be an authority whose revealed statements are exempt from doubt. Or, conversely, you could name a person considered to lack religious faith who nevertheless posits an authority whose revealed statements are exempt from doubt. Your inability to do either demonstrates that my definition captures the distinction between those who have religious faith and those who do not. > the issue is not > whether one accepts God's revealed statements as true * once > one has accepted that a given religion is true*, but whether > ( and how )one accepts a religion as true. So is it mere coincidence that my definition precisely separates those commonly considered to have "religious faith" from those who do not? > > Or, please show me a single theological explanation of 'faith' > > that doesn't point out its difference from mere "provisional > > belief". For example, the Catholic Encyclopedia talks > > about "divine and infallible faith" and says: "Faith is faith. > > Believing is just believing." > > > I would like to see that extract. Certainly the Catholic > Church accepts that 'faith' may be based on > incomplete evidence, or on rational argument. > I suspect you have taken the extract out of context. See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05752c.htm. The article distinguishes between religious faith and merely provisional belief: If the authority upon which we base our assent is human and therefore fallible, we have human and fallible faith; if the authority is Divine, we have Divine and infallible faith. Here "human and fallible faith" is clearly not "faith" in the religious sense (which is in fact a theological virtue), but "faith" in the generic sense of confident belief. 'Confidence' and 'fidelity' share the same Latin root 'fides' (faith), but neither has a religious connotation. The encyclopedia goes on to say that "divine supernatural faith" (i.e. religious faith) is a "gift" that is not "due to previous study" nor "can be acquired by human efforts". -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net