Science, Religion, and the Surrounding Confusion.

[smoothmoniker]

Originally Posted by Troubleshooter

Your present example of faith is so semantically skewed that faith and probability and induction could all be the same word.

They are aspects of the same mental transaction.

Your example of the chair isn't faith. A chair is designed to catch your ass and suspend it above the floor. It's not faith to sit in a chair without looking.

You see a chair, and if there are no obvious flaws in it, and you sit down expecting it to do its job based on your experience with past chairs and your understanding of the concept of a chair.

That's a probability assessment on your part.

And acting on that probability without having access (or choosing to investigate) to the data needed to make it certain. That's the definition of faith that I'm trying to give here. My whole point is that it's a very standard mental transaction, and that the variables are the kind of data accepted into the transaction, and the extent action taken when the conclusion is assumed.

Internal revelatory events aren't testable. They can't even be compared against those of another person. While that may be acceptable as evidence for personal use it has no merit outside of that person's skin.

If you read back, I said the same thing. Nobody has any external access to that data in a meaningful way, so it doesn't carry any weight in dialog. My point was that a religious person still has access, and may accept as data, something which is only available for internal investigation.

I think there was some confusion in how you read the last part of my post. The fifth paragraph ("It's completely irrational if I believe that my present life ... blah blah blah") is all referring to the action of selling everything. I'm not saying that it's irrational to be a religious skeptic, to believe that there is only the material life. I'm saying that the act of selling everything and living an ascetic life devoid of pleasure is irrational. It was speaking to my point of the radical nature of actions undertaken by people who are religious.