Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
And that's the difference between science and faith - science wants to know the answer to the question, and faith asks you to not to be concerned about the answer, just to suspend your disbelief.
Which is why I never ask anyone to justify their faith - belief is enough for them, and I don't have an issue with that, but when they try to impose their beliefs on others, my viewpoint changes (about the person/group, not the faith).
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I don’t mind justifying my faith, as long as the one asking me isn’t asking for a scientific thesis. That would be a category error. Faith and science are not the same thing, and one is no more or less valuable than the other. They are simply categorically different, and aim to do different things. Those who devised the scientific method never intended for it to be used to infer answers to questions that could not be tested by that method and they certainly never intended anyone to conclude things that cannot be tested by science are therefore false. They are simply beyond science.
If you do ask a person of faith to define faith, you won’t get a definition that sounds anything like suspension of disbelief. Christian faith, at least, is grounded in trust of a being who is personal, and worthy of that trust. At the most basic level, the teaching of Jesus, which exists in its simplest form in what’s often known as the Sermon on the Mount, is worth following because it just works. “Do to others as you would have them do to you”. A whole lot is then built on that, but as a starting point for a way of life, it just works. From that first germ of trustworthiness, faith may grow.