Form is always actual, but there can be potential that isn't matter. The biggest example comes from De Anima. The intellect is immaterial, but there is distinction between the active (agent) intellect, and the potential (possible) intellect. The intellect can obviously change. We can merely potentially know French and then learn it, and actually know it. We actually get a gradient of first and second actuality.

This gets at the heart of my confusion: hopefully you can help clarify it. If the intellect, or anything, has no matter but has potential; then matter is not the substrate of being of a thing nor the parts which comprise it. So may main question to you is: what is matter?

It seems like matter is just the physical or perhaps material substrate of a thing—no? Aristotle wasn’t using the term matter in terms of ‘having mass’: so what is it? I can’t wrap my head around what it is supposed to be. If a thing is comprised of parts but has no matter (such as an angel, the intellect, etc.), then what is matter?

EDIT: or are you saying that Arstotle would deny that non-material things have parts? This seems to betray the idea of divine simplicity, but maybe Aristotle doesn't care about that.

They cannot be just the parts, or the replacement of parts makes them cease to be. They cannot be just the current arrangement, or else when the arrangement changes (when Socrates breaks his nose) he ceases to be and becomes something else

I think I see what you are saying here, now: I was conflating formality with 'structure of being'. The form of a thing provides the structure of a thing, but is not identical to it. Otherwise, you are right that what the thing is would not exist: it was just be 'that which it is' and this would change when its parts change.

To say, then, that a thing is pure form is to say it is without parts; which would then entail that God is pure form which has no structure (other than speaking about Him analogically) because He is One.

@Count Timothy von Icarus

Chewing over this more, here's what I'm thinking. What tripped me up is really Aquinas' view that a thing could exist that has form but no matter and NOT Aristotle's view that beings are composed of both matter and form (other than God).

The parts which receive the form are the matter, and the form is the arrangement of those parts towards some end. Angels have to have parts to be distinct from God, so they must have matter (if they exist). Otherwise, if they have no matter, then they have no parts; and if they have no parts then they are absolutely simple. But only one absolutely simple being can exist (God), so they can't be without parts.

It seems like Aquinas is incorrectly supposing that matter is some sort of material or physical substrate.

If I am correct here, then the substrate that bears the properties of a thing is its parts (matter) in conjuction with what is supposed to be (in form); and the ultimate substrate for this is Being itself (God).

I don't really disagree with what you said here; but then isn't the arrangement of parts the form and the matter is just the parts themselves?

Let's Angels for example, if an angel has parts and form but no matter and a chair has parts and form and matter; then that would suggest that matter is distinct from the arrangement of parts and the actuality of parts: it is a third thing. What is that thing?

@Leontiskos

I already asked Timothy this, but I am curious as to your thoughts as well:

Likewise, if God is pure actuality because He has no parts (and thusly no possibility of receiving any actualization) and actuality actualizes what is actual and matter is a substrate of potency, then how could God create matter? Wouldn’t the existence of matter, in this sense, necessitate that that which can receive actuality (i.e., matter) must be so different than what actualizes that it is coeternal with it?

What do you think?

All well and good, perhaps, unless or until we want to know what each thing is, how it is to be known as that thing and no other. In such case, the tracing back of its identity through time holds no interest for us.

Well, yes, but it is required for change to occur.

On the other hand, for that family of things of perfectly natural causality, the knowledge of which is contingent at best, as opposed to man-made assemblages of things in general for which knowledge is necessarily given, to trace the “mere causality of forms upon forms” inevitably leads to at least contradictions, and at most, impossibilities.

It seems like you are separate causality a prior from causality a posteriori; and I guess I don’t see the relevance. We use what is causally given to us to determine what actually is caused: they have a relation to each other—don’t they?

If matter is missing….what thing can there be? 

If I am understanding Aristotle correctly, form is actuality. It’s not like there’s being and this being is imposed with form: there’s some substrate of potential that is imposed with being (form). So this would mean that matter isn’t referring to being: it potential for being. This means that what would be, is some being that isn’t conjoined with a substrate of potential.

It’s confusing me, to be completely honest.

But you asked for a better Aristotle-ian hylomorphic understanding than your own, which I admittedly don’t have, voluntarily confined to the Enlightenment version of the matter/form juxtapositional attitude.

Not a worry at all: I always appreciate your input.

What does this mean, "it exposes it to having potentials that could be actualized"? How are you using "expose" here?

The arrangement of the parts which makes the whole that whole of this type is the form imposed upon parts (actuality imposed on actuality); and if this is true, then the parts and their arrangement are what dictate potential that a thing has—not some substrate of potential (viz., matter). There’s no extra entity called ‘matter’ going on here.

What would be the difference between having potential and being exposed to potential?

In the sense of what I think Aristotle means, I would say that ‘having potential’ is to have a substrate that can receive actuality in some way (viz., to have matter) whereas ‘being exposed to potential’ would be to have the possibility of being affected because of the parts and their arrangement that the thing has (viz., to have form composed of form). For me, composition entails potency; for Aristotle it seems like a substrate of potency entails potency.

If the apple doesn't have potential, but is exposed to potential, where would that potential exist other than within something else.

I agree that the potency of a thing is relative to that thing—not something external to it; but I don’t get what it would mean for their to be this extra ‘matter’ that is potency that is really conjoined with the actuality (‘form’) of a thing. To me, the parts expose the whole to the possibility of change; because parts can, in principle, be affected and in ways relative to how they are arrangement and what they are themselves. There’s no ‘matter’ and ‘form’ here: it’s just form composed of form.

A dead man is not really a man but a corpse, substantial change. So now the parts you have been relying upon are no longer parts of a whole. They aren't a "composite." The whole has ceased to be. But the body of dead Achilles is still the body of Achilles. There is a persistent identity here that matter explains.

My problem with Aristotle’s view seems to be that he posits some real nothingness (potency) which is conjoined with the actual thing; whereas I am thinking that the underlying actual parts in some arrangement (form) makeup the whole. So I would say that the man persists through time insofar as his parts still compose, by way of arrangement, that of a man; and a dead man is not in that arrangement that an alive man is in. I don’t see why we would need to posit a real potency in the sense of a substrate of potential as opposed to positing that ‘real potency’ is merely the ways something that is actual can be affected relative to what it is (i.e., it’s form as received by its parts).

But what receives form in generation without matter?

Like you said, an object is composed of other objects; so each part is composed of form composed of form. You would, at least insofar as you play Devil’s advocate, say that it’s also composed of matter upon matter. However, if form is what is actual and matter is what is potential; then form upon form is just actual beings upon actual beings: it is being composed. So, then, we can explain it this way: an actual object is composed of other actual objects in some arrangement. That arrangement is the actualizing principle of that whole (which composed of actual objects) which is it’s form. This form, or arrangement, is imposed (or received) by the actual parts of that object; and those actual parts, in turn, are made up of actual parts and their arrangement which makes of that whole is it’s form. So form is being imposed on form because being is imposed on being; until you get to God as the pure actuality that has no parts.

I guess one way of thinking about it would be that Aristotle would say there’s a substrate of potency conjoined with actuality; whereas I am thinking about it as an imposed arrangement (form) conjoined with actuality. I don’t see what this ‘magical substrate of potentiality’ is doing.

Likewise, potency is nothing: it is not actual, but what could be actual relative to the nature of a thing—relative to what its parts can receive. Therefore, real potency is a contradiction in terms: a substrate of potential is a nothingness that is real.

Likewise, if God is pure actuality because He has no parts (and thusly no possibility of receiving any actualization) and actuality actualizes what is actual and matter is a substrate of potency, then how could God create matter? Wouldn’t the existence of matter, in this sense, necessitate that that which can receive actuality (i.e., matter) must be so different than what actualizes that it is coeternal with it?

This goes along with the idea that you cannot change a rabbit into something like a frog

I agree that there is a persistence of identity through time and that change requires this; but I don’t see how this entails matter in the sense of real potency. The rabbit cannot become a frog because the arrangement of parts that produces a rabbit is contradictory to that of a frog; which, to me, is to say that the form of a rabbit and a frog are contradictory. Why tack onto this that the rabbit has a substrate of potential that is contradictory to the substrate of a frog?

You might be interested in what Aquinas says about angelic beings and intelligences.

Yes, this is what got me thinking about it more; because I started getting very confused with the idea that an angel is pure form but not pure actuality.

Form is supposed to be actuality that was imposed onto something; and that something is its parts; and Angel’s have parts—just not material parts—otherwise they would be purely actual. The very idea that an Angel can learn entails they have parts that can be affected. So what exactly does it mean for a being that has parts to be ‘purely formal’ in contrast to something that has parts but is ‘not purely formal’? I don’t get it.

For instance, every angel must be its own species because it lacks matter to individuate it.

This is a very interesting thought from Aquinas that I was recently introduced to. Don’t Angel’s have parts though? By ‘part’, I mean something which contributes to the whole without being identical to it. If an angel has no parts, then how is it not God (i.e., purely actual)? If it does, then there can be individuation between them just like material parts: two Angels could have the same Form imposed on different immaterial parts. What do you think?

There is both something that is common to the seed and the seedling (matter) and also something that is different (form)

But by ‘matter’ he is not referring having mass but, rather, a substrate of potential—right?

If so, then how does this seed’s actuality (form) conjoined with its potency (matter)? If it is potential, then it is nothing (non-actual); which would entail there is nothing conjoined with the form (the actuality). Otherwise, there is something that is real which is mere potential (matter) that is conjoined with what is actual (form); and this admits of a nothingness that is something—doesn’t it?

Where my head is at, I would say that seed and seedling are both different developments of the same plant insofar as the seed, as a whole composed of actuality (parts), is affected by something else (e.g, the water, soil, it’s own internal parts organically functioning, etc.). This view would entail that actuality affects actuality by realizing the potential an actuality has relative to the possible ways that actuality can be affected. For Aristotle, it seems like potency is this real nothingness that is conjoined with the actuality and I am not following how that would work.

Aristotle does not think it is right to say that there is only a change in form, with no underlying matter which accounts for the continuity between the seed and the seedling.

But isn’t it the actualizing principle that actualizes something already actual in a way that that actual thing (which was changed) could have been affected that accounts for change? Why posit some real potency which receives the form?

:roll:

:up:

@Banno

First becasue faith is not restricted to trust in authority, and second becasue any definition fo that sort will be inadequate, so should not be used.

I think the problem is that your approach doesn't even attempt to rise to the level of a conception from intuitions; and for me it has to in order to have a robust theory.

The mark of faith is that a belief is maintained under duress

Maintaining a belief (in general) under duress is wildly different than this:

The mark of faith is that when challenged, one's commitment is not to be subject to reevaluation, but to be defended.

Maintaining a belief that one believes they have good evidence to believe under duress is noble; but maintaining the belief because they have committed themselves to never subjected it to reevaluation is dogmatic and ignoble.

Your counter-examples are interesting though; for example, Job, prima facie, seems like he had good reasons to believe God had forsaken him and the moral of the story is to have unwavering faith. My response to this, is that:

1. Faith here is being used in terms of having trust in an authority, and more specifically a kind of unwavering faith that is despite the evidence: "unwavering" faith is a subtype of faith; and

2. Prima facie, Job, unless I am misremembering, should not have had faith, given the context in Job, that God had not forsaken him because his faith was against good counter-evidence (of distrusting the authority); and

3. Job, when taken literally, is an example of God being immoral because He discusses with and allows Satan to inflict evil on Job for a bet that has been placed between them. This is not like an allowance of evil in the sense of allowing the possibility of tornadoes given natural laws: this is a purposeful allowance of evil when it is completely unnecessary. This, under my view, when taken literally, is immoral of God and is impossible of God: God cannot will the bad of something and definitely cannot place a wager in that manner. God cannot nor would not use a bad means like Satan to prove a point about Job (let alone kill off his entire innocent family to prove a point); and

4. On a deeper note, I think we can know that God cannot forsake things and that evil is a privation. Consequently, these, if true, would be good evidence to support an unwavering faith of God even in terrible times (assuming that God didn't place a wager and allow Satan to do it in that kind of sense or something similar).

Faith, unlike ordinary belief or trust, is best understood through its persistence under conditions of strain, doubt, or suffering

True, but this doesn't imply having faith despite the evidence: it implies having good reasons to have the faith and not bending to will of others or to just any willy-nilly counter-fact that may place doubt in their minds. There some doubts I might have about the security of flying, but I wave them off not because I am dogmatically faithful to flying being secure but, rather, because I know my reasons against do not rationally outweigh the reasons for.

Is the word 'assent' in this post mean anything different than 'to agree or affirm'? I get the feeling it is doing more work here in your explanation than I am appreciating.

Yes, I think so.

Thank you for the recommendations! I will check those out.

I'm just noting it is at least logically possible.

I am a theist that does not believe in an eternal immaterial mind/soul but that because God is all just God must resurrect at least those that did not get proper reward or punishment during their lifetimes [to reward or punish them].

@Banno

The mark of faith is that when challenged, one's commitment is not to be subject to reevaluation, but to be defended.

Ok, so, to you, faith is 'trust in an authority to verify the truth or falsity of a claim in a manner where it is dogmatic'. Is that right?

I've never encountered any serious theist that considers faith to be essentially about never allowing their beliefs (of that type) to be reevaluated.

Let's amend my example: imagine that this person who believes some fact about black holes based solely on trusting a scientific article is dogmatic about it such that they refuse to reevaluate their belief in the aforesaid fact [about black holes]: are they, then, according to you, acting with faith?

Agnosticism traditionally refers to the suspension of judgment, and your etymological-style definition is a rather new emergence in colloquial spheres. At the end of the day, I don't really care as long as the terms are clarified at the beginning of the discussion.

Yes, but they have every reason to believe that the currently accepted canon of scientific knowledge is based on actual observation, experiment and honest and accurate reporting by scientists. That this is so is evidenced by the great advances in technologies we see all around us.

This is just a giant begging of the question. My point was that your beliefs about scientific propositions are largely faith-based, whether you like it or not, just like how religious propositions are largely faith-based. Now whether or not the evidence supporting religious propositions are as robust and plausible than the evidence for science is a separate question.

The source of knowledge for established science is observation and experiment.

The source of knowledge for you establishing scientific truths as true is evidence about whether or not to trust the authorities that purport the scientific facts. This is true for religion as well.

Now:

The question is as to what is the source contained in the religious texts if not faith in revelation? Would you call that knowledge?

Not all of religious truths are purely revelation; but for the ones that are this would require that one believes that the witnesses of the revelations are credible to be testifying to what they saw and that the evidence, empirically and historically, surrounding the event point sufficiently to the plausibility of the event being revelation.

Am I saying that I believe there are good reasons to believe in that divine revelation has happened? No. What I am saying is that the kind of belief you formulated about science is the same kind of belief that religious people formulate about their religious views. The conversation shifts from “religion is about this blind faith while science is about the scientific method” to “both scientific and religious knowledge that I could have are faith-based by-at-large, but is there good evidence for either?”. Instead of debating faith vs. science we correctly thereby pivot into a discussion about the evidence for each.

Would you say it is based on evidence or logic?

Both involve evidence and logic: that’s never been unique to science—ever. There’s tons of studies outside of religion that are also based on evidence and logic—history, ethics, logic, math, psychology, etc.

Is that your "evidence"? That being homosexual is a bad orientation because it goes against the "nature qua essence of a human"? Are you an expert on human nature and the essence of being human, Bob? You don't think that might be a tad presumptuous?

I think you mean it doesn't appeal to you, and that's fine. It's the next step of universalizing what doesn't appeal to you personally where you go wrong.

It's been sad to watch your thinking going downhill, Bob.

Lol. I am an Aristotelian/Thomist on ethics. To get into this, we would have to get into each other’s metaethical, normative ethical, and applied ethical positions; and I am not sure you are open to that.

Are you a moral realist?

I think the real issue is that when considering the dignity of the offended the punishment is supposed to proportionately reflect it; but how can a finite punishment proportionately reflect a being that has infinite dignity being offended?

With a being with finite dignity, we could scale up or down the punishment depending on the ends, means, and circumstances involved when the dignity is the same because the dignity has a finite weight (because it is finite itself and so a proportionate weight will likewise be finite); but with an infinitely meritorious being, this gets tricky fast.

As far as I can tell, genuinely, you believe 'faith' has a plurality of meanings and that it has to do with (1) trust and (2) believing despite the evidence.

Do you explain, predict, and revise, Investigate the objection, and use Assertive/testable claims? Then you are doing science.

In my example, it was of a person who isn’t doing the science: it is laymen that is believing that the information from the article(s) are true. This is a red herring.

DO you express loyalty, identity, hope, defend against the objection, and use declaratives, commissives, and performatives? Then that's not science.

Notwithstanding that science itself requires faith, the laymen, when believing the article about black holes, is trusting the source as credible information and, yes, is not doing science.

Science or faith?

This is a false dichotomy under my view, but you already know that. What I was asking is that if you believe that faith has to do with trust, and that’s what you said before, then a person that believes something about black holes because they find an article to be a credible source of information on the topic is believing on “faith”—not “science”.

That's a good point: I like that.

Those arguments are just about creating larger conversations through the smash and grab of polemics

This is fair to a certain extent: I get what you mean, but I do think it is the philosopher’s duty to try to rise the conversation to a level of ample clarity.

I've been an atheist since the 1970's. In relation to the New Atheists - I haven't read their works.

To be fair, ‘New Atheism’ doesn’t forward particularly new ideas; but it has made quite a bit of them notorious around these parts. A lot of what you have been saying is straight out their old text book, although I understand you are not intending it that way.

For me atheism isn't a positive claim that god doesn't exist. It is simply that I am not convinced

I would say this is agnosticism (viz., the suspension of judgment about a proposition); whereas atheism, traditionally, is the belief there are no gods.

To me belief in God is similar to a sexual attraction - you can't help who you are drawn to

I would say, even if this is true to some extent, it is irrelevant to theology. Either one has good reasons to believe God exists or not.

The arguments in my experince generally come post hoc.

That is fair: most people do operate this way, and Nietzsche calls it the Ass arriving most beautiful and brave.

I would say that I have a reasonable confidence in Bob's judgments because he has empirically demonstrated himself as reliable over many years

Having this reasonable confidence in Bob is trust—no? You trust him. Right?

However if Bob said to me, 'wash your hands in this water and you will be cured of any cancer because the water has been impregnated with a new anti-cancer vaccine', I would not accept his word because the claim requires much more than trust. It is an extraordinary claim

There’s a lot to unpack here; but the most important note I would make is that you are suggesting that some claims cannot be validly believed through trust in an authority; and to me anything in principle is on the table. If there are sufficient reasons to trust the authority, then one should believe it; and if there isn’t, then one shouldn’t. However, to say that some claims are “extraordinary” (which is straight out of Hitchens’ playbook btw) that cannot be, even in principle, verified other than through a belief devoid of trust—well, I don’t know what that kind of claim would look like.

The reason you might not put your hands in the water (given your version of the thought experiment) is that you don’t believe Bob is qualified properly for you to trust him in this regard. Imagine, e.g., Bob was an expert—certified—doctor that pioneered this new anti-cancer vaccine and was ultra-truthful (like before in my version of the hypothetical): would you trust him then?

when I am talking with someone who says they have it on faith that homosexuals are corrupt, I can safely tell them that they are using faith as a justification for bigotry and for a lack of evidence.

This doesn’t make any sense on multiple different levels.

Firstly, if they have it on valid faith, in principle, then it would be warranted to believe it; and you are implying it would be irrational for them to.

Secondly, homosexuality, traditionally, being immoral has nothing to do with corruption per se: it has to do with a person practicing in alignment with a sexual orientation that is bad; and it is bad because it goes against the nature qua essence of a human.

Thirdly, saying it is bigotry and that there is a lack of evidence to support homosexuality as being immoral just begs the question. For me, for example, I do think there is good evidence to support homosexuality as a sexual orientation as being bad and practicing it as, subsequently, immoral.

Ok, let's roll with it **rolls up sleeves**:

So one last time, faith involves trust, adherence to a belief, and commitment, and is shown most clearly when the faithful are under pressure.

Believing, e.g., that black holes exist depends, at least in part, on trusting the scientists that are purporting those facts; so it is, in part, faith-based. No?

Yes. E.g., murder is a larger offense than saying something mean.

So then instead of, "If humans are not eternal then Hell doesn't exist," you could read, "If humans are not eternal then eternal punishment doesn't exist.

I thought by 'eternal' you meant having a part of oneself that is not subject to time. I don't see how this is necessitated from eternal punishment; e.g., God could revive people.

I don't believe @Banno or @Janus are even attempting to give a clear definition of what faith is. Instead, they are using notions without clarifying what the idea of it is that we should use for the discussion. I agree that anyone that believes faith is belief despite the evidence is deploying a straw man of theism: I am just not sure if they are even committing themselves to that definition.

But that doesn't answer the question I asked. If there are no immoral acts which are not sins, then your defense doesn't work (because in that case there is no immoral act that does not offend a party with infinite dignity).

No, you are absolutely correct; and that’s what I was arguing. The aspect of the sin which pertains to offending God is an offense against a being with infinite dignity; but whether or not the sin as it pertains to the direct object offended (e.g., the other human, the dog, the tree, etc.) is not.

There’s two interesting points here:

1. “With respect to the sin qua offending God, are all sins thereby equal?”. If infinite dignity warrants infinite demerit and offending God is to offend something with infinite dignity, then the part of the sin which offends God warrants infinite demerit. Every immoral act is a sin because every immoral act goes against God’s will, so, therefore, every immoral act—i.e., every sin—warrants the same infinite demerit. This doesn’t seem right though: like I said before, murdering a human vs. a rabbit doesn’t seem to violate God’s will the same and thusly to the same degree—but how then could they have the same demerit? It seems like infinite dignity does not per se warrant infinite demerit of an act which offends it.

2. “With respect to the sin qua offending the direct object (e.g., the human), an infinite punishment seems disproportionate to such an act or choice with finite duration and repetition which pertains to two or more beings with finite dignity—unless, to your point, the consequences are infinite”.

If humans are not eternal then Hell doesn't exist. If humans are eternal then it is possible for an act to cause infinite "spillage."

Hell doesn’t have to exist for God to punish you after you die; at least not in the strict sense of being a place absent of God for eternity. Likewise, we are talking about the causes in the universe of one’s sins and not in Hell; so I don’t understand how humans being eternal in the sense of living in another place than the universe after dying necessitates their act in the universe may have infinite spillage. A human could be eternal in this sense and the universe is finite in time; which would mean that their sin would not be capable of infinite spillage.

Banno, I am not asking for a historical account of what faith means; and I understand you seem to take a pluralist account of faith. I am wondering what you think faith means, if not just as it relates to the kind of faith in question in our beliefs about the world around us. We can't make headway if you won't commit to some meaning of the word faith.

Let me grant you that there are N valid definitions of faith: which one, out of the N, would you say pertains most closely to what we are discussing and what definition does it have? Is the kind of faith in science a different type of faith than in religion?

I said science is predominately evidence based and religion is purely faith-based

This isn't really true if we are talking about the scientific beliefs the average person has. The average person cannot verify or at least has not verified themselves the vast majority of what is the scientific body of knowledge: it is by-at-large mainly faith in the scientific institutions that make people believe. E.g., when we hear about how black holes work, we don't verify any of that ourselves in any meaningful sense: we trust the source that is telling us because we find the scientific institution and the expert-at-hand credible. Whereas with math or logic, e.g., if one understands the axioms and formulas then they don't have to take the mathematician or logician's word for it: they can a priori verify it from their armchairs.

Likewise, religion is not purely faith-based: it is predominantly faith-based for most of the average people out there.

For both, they require mostly evidence for or against trusting the source of knowledge for the claims.

The bit of truth that I think you are conveying, in imprecise terms, is that science tends to involve purported evidence that has less speculation in it and more empirical grounds; but still this is controversial. I would argue that the arguments for God's existence are more certain than a theory determinable through the scientific method because they involve reasoning about the necessary consequences of the existence of things which are presupposed in science to begin with. E.g., the argument from change derives God's existence from change which is presupposed for the scientific method: there is no experiment one can perform to verify that every effect has a cause.

On your reckoning that would be a syllogism, given that it is a series of assertions.

That’s fair. What I should have said is that the major and minor premise of a syllogism are both assertions.

I am not going to enter into prolonged interaction with the theory given that it feels a bit like a new OP.

Fair enough.

Are you claiming that there are immoral acts which are not sins?

In principle, a sin is a concept which extends the concept of immorality; such that the former is an offense, at least in part, to God. We could also word this as the immoral act is simultaneously a non-sin and sin act: the offended party which is not God being the non-sin immoral act, and the offended party as God as the sin immoral act. I prefer to just say sin is any immoral act which, at least in part, offends God to keep things simpler.

What we are asking is whether you have the burden of proof to show that there is nothing infinite about human acts

True, but I think this burden is sufficed given that humans have finite dignity, a human cannot repeat a sin infinitely since they live for a finite duration, and the consequences of the sins cannot be infinite if the universe is not eternal. I think all three of those statements are widely accepted as true.

I generally hold that “faith” isn’t a useful term outside of the religious use. But I see that perhaps my position here is unorthodox. For me it’s about a reasonable confidence given empirical results of flight. There is no need for faith.

Yes, I understand where you are coming from; as I used to also be in a similar mindset. After all, this is what the new atheism movement has produced throughout our culture (and, to fair, it is a response to poor argumentation and reasoning which common theism has offered). The layman theist tends to emphasize ‘faith’ as juxtaposed to ‘belief’ or ‘knowledge’ and brings it up mostly when they are referring to what is really ‘a high degree of faith of which this belief is based on’; and, naturally, the layman atheist latches onto this disposition and becomes the counter-disposition, equally flawed and vague, that ‘faith’ is a useless concept which only refers to blind belief that only makes sense within the context of religion.

Most of the time when I hear a layman theist and atheist debate, I think they both are getting at something that is correct but the ideas are malformed and malnourished; and each’s consciousness is developed parasitically on the other: their view is worked out through a response to the other’s view.

However, if we challenge ourselves to rise above these futile disputes and ask ourselves “what is ‘faith’?”, I think we find that it really is about trust in an authority; and we all do have beliefs that are conceived out of high concentrations of faith. For example, imagine you have a friend, Bob, who throughout your entire life has only been honest with you, even when there were grave consequences for telling the truth, and you are about to put your hand in a bucket of liquid that you think is water because you have some chemical on your hand that is burning your skin. Imagine Bob yells at you that this ‘harmless water’ is really some dangerous liquid which will spontaneously combust with the chemical on your hand if you put it in. Imagine, because of the urgency to get the chemical off your skin (to avoid further pain and damage) you cannot reasonably test nor verify directly what this liquid is in the bucket and you don’t have time to sit down and hear an elaborate spiel about how Bob knows it will combust. Would you put your hand in or trust Bob and find some other way to get the chemical off? I would bet you would trust Bob, given his serious track record of honesty; and this belief that the liquid will harm instead of help would be an act of pure faith. Is this pure faith irrational? I don’t think so; because the evidence to support having that pure faith, in this case, adds up. Bob always tells you the truth and has even has commonly done it when he knew he would get in serious trouble for doing so; and he never lies even to make a practical joke. This seems to be a rational and smart move to trust Bob when making this quick judgment call.

Ok, but what do you take 'faith' to be? Do you not have a precise definition? If not, then it seems like you are just working with vague intuitions you have.

I find this account GPT gave to be fitting in terms of the resources it has available and its current ability to "reason". It is right that faith arises when there isn't certainty and necessarily so because every instance of trust in another as a source of truth is inherently to verify something through a means which one cannot deduce the truth therefrom; however, this is also true of some non-faith based beliefs: it can be the case that one verifies through a means that does not require trust in another and yet the verification method does not necessitate the conclusion (e.g., performing an experiment, examining the condition of a car oneself as an expert, etc.).

The strength of my theory is that, unlike yours, it accounts for all the main uses you had GPT outline by providing the precise definition which can be found hazily in each. Even with people who use 'faith' in the sense of 'a belief of which there is no evidence to support it', this oftentimes is convertible to 'a pure act of trusting an authority that something is true' which is perfectly coherent with my definition.

This agrees with what I was saying, so I am confused as to what you are critiquing of mine. A purely faith-based belief would, indeed, be one which is purely based off of trusting an authority; but, as I noted before, this is very rare in practical life. Most of the time we have a little of both faith and non-faith mixed up in the belief.

:fire:

It is worth mentioning that one can be for free speech while being against tolerance:

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions

-- Chesterton.

Just because one has to respect another's right to speak, it does not follow that one need do business with him or welcome him into their life.

I don't see that you have. P2 is merely an assertion.

The entirety of a syllogism is a mere series of assertions; but I can elaborate. I have been thinking about this more since the creation of the OP, so my explanation might veer off a bit therefrom.

An immoral act is evaluated relative to the (1) the object(s), (2) the end(s), and (3) the dignity of the offended party (parties) involved. The order of importance is 3, 2, and 1; and 3 is a subtype of 1. EDIT: it isn't really coherent to say 3 is a subtype of 1, I should have called 1 "the means".

3 holds the most weight, when considering punishment, because the thing offended (i.e., the object of the offense) is what is owed justice and punishment is about justice; and, so, punishment must firstly evaluate the value of the thing offended to determine how severe the punishment should be. E.g., skinning a rabbit alive is not as bad as skinning a human alive, disobeying the wishes of a random fellow-citizen is not as bad as disobeying a court order by a judge, etc. The objects and ends (1 and 2) could be identical in every regard and the dignity of offended party could cause the punishment to vary significantly.

2 holds the second-most weight because, after determining what was offended, what was intended by the culpable party is what is most closely tied to culpability itself (since morality is about right and wrong behavior as it relates to rational deliberation—to willing freely through thought which necessarily is determinable through ends that one had in store for the act). E.g., a person that runs over a kid because they were distracted with their phone hasn’t done something as bad as running over that same kid purposefully even thought the kid has the same dignity in each scenario. Likewise, the objects involved (1) are tied to the ends (and intentionality) of course, but their could be a divergence; and what was intended is how we investigate the act since an act is a volition of will.

The last aspect, which holds the least weight, is the objects involved as it relates to the means. E.g., a person that murders someone else by way of murdering someone else to get their body to fall on the other person’s body (to kill them)(perhaps they shoot someone on top of a building so that they fall 1,000 FT onto the target victim thereby murdering both for the sake of murdering the one) is doing something worse than someone who just, ceteris paribus, murdered the same target victim because a part of the means was bad.

A sin is just an immoral act that has as one of its offended parties God. A sin, therefore, has at least two offended parties: the object of the sin (as the object of the act) and God (as the perfectly good being which wills the perfect order to things).

For the latter, a being with infinite dignity has been offended and this part of the sin does not fall prey to my OP’s argument; however, the punishments varying by objects or/and ends would have to be distinguished in varying by something—I am not sure what that would necessarily look like. E.g., having the end of killing this tree for no reason other than to go against God’s will is worse than killing the same tree in the same manner but self-gratification: both are against a being of infinite dignity, but they have different weights in terms of the ends one had; likewise, disrupting God’s will by being mean to someone in a relatively trivial manner (so to speak) is not as bad as disrupting God’s will by murdering someone: both are against a being of infinite dignity, but they have different objects (and ends, but I am emphasizing objects here) and dignities of those objects which were offended. Does this mean that it would be proportionate for God, if He did not forgive someone for their sin as it relates to offending Him, to infinitely punish them with some kind of infliction? Maybe: I don’t know.

For the former, no object of the act can have infinite dignity because it is a contingent being and none of them have been of infinite repetition (historically); however, to your point, it is in principle possible that the universe continues for infinite time and that some sins which are not rectified would “spill out” infinitely. If there’s nothing infinite about the act or its consequences, then it cannot be proportionate to punish the person responsible for the act with something infinite because something infinite is disproportionate to something finite.

So I have always held that faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have a good reason.

To be fair, I do think that there is a prominent sense colloquially where confused theists will explain faith in this manner; but I think if we are iron manning the position then what they really mean is that some propositions that they believe as true they could not completely verify themselves but, rather, they trusted some authority, in this case God, to tell them. This isn’t really what it strictly means to “have no good reasons”, but people will describe it that way colloquially (sometimes).

It is also worth mentioning, to @Bannos point, we do see instances of religious people that may find that there good evidence that proposition X is false but yet they believe it is true because God has revealed it to them; but it is important to note that this is still trust in God which is based in some sort of evidence, of which they at least believe is good and sufficient, that God is trustworthy to reveal it.

My original issue with faith is that Christians often tell me that choosing to fly in a plane is an act of faith equivalent to belief in God
…
So, at the risk of becoming boring, if I trust that a plane will fly me somewhere safely because of empirical evidence that they do, almost without fail, would it be fair to call this 'faith' in flying? How does this compare to faith that God is a real?

If you believe, even in part, that the airplane will not crash because you trust the pilots to do their job (e.g., without drinking on the job, without making an improper turn, etc.); then that belief is in part faith-based: it has an element of faith mixed up in it. However, if you believe that the airplane will fly just fine because you are in expert in airplane manufacturing and you inspected the plane beforehand, then this is a non-faith-based belief.

It is important to note that this distinction doesn’t appear cleanly in practical life: odds are, e.g., even if you are an expert on airplane manufacturing that your beliefs accredited from your learning and experience which make you an expert have faith mixed up in them since you probably are not capable of verifying, all the way down (so to speak), those beliefs without appealing to trust in some authority.

First, we can demonstrate that planes exist.

Of course, a theist is going to say we can demonstrate God exists: you are just begging the question. If we are talking about faith as trust in an authority for our belief about a proposition, then IF God exists then certainly God would have the authority to tell us quite a bit about reality (if He so chooses)---right? You don’t have to accept that God exists to accept that God WOULD BE a credible source of information BUT THAT one would have to trust in God as the source, at least in part, of the truths which they believe because God revealed it to them.

Second, they almost always fly safely.

I am assuming you are referring to statistics here; but statistics are faith-based. You have to trust that the people that conducted the stats did it in an unbiased, professional, honest, and proper way to determine them.

Forget the New Atheists - that was a publishing gimmick. I think this definition of faith has been used by freethinkers for many decades. It was certainly the one Russell used, long before Hitchens and company were being polemicists. I was using it back in the 1980's.

I am not familiar enough with Russell to comment; but in common life it seems like New Atheism is to blame for people commonly thinking of faith as belief without or despite evidence: this has never been the common understanding in the literature of faith (by my lights) if we are iron manning theism that depends on divine revelation.

It is also worth mentioning that not all forms of theism are faith-based, just like how not all forms of theism are religions, since someone might not believe that God has revealed anything to them; so they don’t have any faith in God even though they believe God exists.

What is your definition of "faith"? So far, it sounds like it is "believing something despite the evidence".

Ok, so you are defining "faith" as "belief despite the evidence" and not "belief which has an element of trust in an authority mixed up"; so I think we are just talking past each other. I don't think faith historically has ever referred to "belief despite the evidence" and that kind of usage is almost exclusively done by "new atheism" as a straw man.

It is also worth mentioning that your definition, contrary to what you wrote before, has nothing to do per se with trust in anything at all: I can have a believe despite the evidence without trusting anyone that it is true (e.g., believing I can fly because it makes me feel good).