Monday, September 10, 2018

Faith spam

From the AutoExpert:
Religion is just a system of faith or worship - so it’s broader than just worshipping Jesus or Allah. It’s any system of faith or worship. It all hinges on and devotion. And faith - according to respected critical thinking academic Peter Boghossian (Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University) - is (quote): “Pretending to know something you don’t know”.
He then goes on to attack 'faith' on this straw man definition.

But here's how Christians view faith:

One might think that the first step is Hebrews 11:1:
“being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see"

This does not float in the air, however, but is based on the Biblical history of God's action in history. The certainty, the 'sure'  comes from the reliability of God's doing what God says he will do. Demonstrated capability. The foremost exemplar is the resurrection of Jesus.

If your faith sits on anything less certain, then it is faith by leap; Kierkegaard's 'faith'.  But Christians to not 'leap' to faith. Faith is a reasonable step based on confidence in the evidence to hand.

Boghossian's straw man is the 'common  man' interpretation. Embarrasing for a philosopher to promote this! A philosopher should know better. Faith is extrapolated confidence in something yet to be verified directly. It is  empty if it is not based on reasonable grounds, and futile if there is no possible future verification.

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