No its not. Faith is what you need when there is no evidence of God, its what one puts forward when one has nothing to put forward. To have confidence in something based on evidence is reasonable but claims that one has faith is akin to saying "I believe cause I want to and recognise faith is something I pulled out of my pants that shuts up further discussion that my unsupported claims have no foundation. And so here we are in a great thread openned to provide opportunity to any believer to put forward something and although we see some excellent penmanship sadly we have had a dismal responce from those originally invited to come forward. It has been observed folk talk about religion without knowing zip however why not given the whole deal is set upon a mythical foundation...sure its significance in history and culture deserves study but its significance is not a prohibition upon an observation that the god invented by humans is no more than a product of wishful thinking. One may as well study any fairey tale and claim anyone who does not understand its depth is ignorant but wait its a fairey tale a made up story... And look still nothing from any believer seeking to explain one damn thing. And those who dabble in the hostory ignore the astrology connection and labour within the safe boundaries they set. Alex
Do you believe there is life because you can make reasonable observations that is around or do you rely upon faith. Alex
No it's not. It's evidence of faith. Lots of flat Earthers have faith that the Earth is flat. That doesn't make it flat.
Not really since we only have his word that he has faith Without corroborating evidence (which is impossible to get considering said faith exist (only) within his brain) There is always the problem said person professing faith could be lying Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Not even that An expressed statement without any physical evidence is not evidence Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I disagree. An eyewitness to a murder, who testifies in court that he saw the accused murder the victim, is indeed evidence. Physical evidence is great, but is not the only sort of evidence.
Ok true you got me there What the witness states would be taken into consideration but a lot of corroboration would be available But a statement selfcontained within a person's brain is not available for examination Mention Lie Detectors and any type of brain scan I'm out Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Eyewitness testimony, while admissible in court, doesn't rise to the level of reliability needed to establish facts about the universe. The courts have different standards than science.
Perhaps. I am sure you would agree that the eyewitness testimony of a dozen scientists, each repeating an experiment to verify a hypothesis, would go a long way towards establishing facts about the universe.
...while handing over their entire paper, documenting, in excruciating detail - not only how they set up the experiments, but how they controlled for confounding factors, as well as their entire analysis of the data - all the while saying "Don't take our word for it. Here is everything we did. Feel free to repeat it, and do your own analysis and come to your own conclusion. Heck, pass it on to the entire community and see if they can find anything wrong with it. In other words: I have removed myself from the picture as one the potentially confounding factors.".
As Dave said, it's the experiment part, not the testimony, that is the evidence. Testimony can be part of an experiment, for instance, self reported improvement in a medical condition, but we don't expect people to lie about that, and the stakes are low, since it will even out statistically with enough reports. We can even test for self-deception with a placebo.
