But the difference from sexuality is that, on some occasions, arguments can persuade some people the religious belief is not based on a rational foundation. — Manuel

:up: I hear you, but there is this. I have gay friends who were convinced by argument that being gay was irrational and unnatural and in some cases, against god's natural order. So they had girlfriends, wives and worked at being heterosexual. I think there are many fairly common arguments put forwards even in these progressive times. And that's just in the West. In many other countries gay people are still killed or jailed.

Conversely I have known many gay people who were able to come out precisely because they were exposed to arguments that allowed them to see same sex attraction as natural and harmless. They had been shut off from this by the moral conventions of their sub-culture. I have personally provided suicide intervention several times for people who were same sex attracted and thought they were evil. One such person was in his 60's and had never accepted the idea that being gay might be ok.

t's not a choice, it's a preference. It's very intricate though. — Manuel

It is intricate and I need to do more thinking about this. I don't want to simplify too much. My point is it is similar, not identical.

Nothing more than being that type of person who, for instance, feels that they are actually communicating with a higher power, as opposed to talking to oneself. As in cases in which people are in a church, and some people once they leave the religion say, they never felt such a force or power in the first place.

Or being the type of person who tend to believe that virtually every coincidence is very meaningful in some transcendent sense. — Manuel

That makes sense. And my intuition here is that some people's experiences serve to establish their habitual sense making in this domain or mode. For some reason, they have found that life makes mores sense to them this way. A world imbued with magic is more interesting and probably offers more alternatives than one without magic.

As most of us know, according to Max Weber, as societies progress and become more rationalized, they tend to lose their mystical and enchanting qualities. This process is characterized by the replacement of traditional religious beliefs, magical thinking, and mystical worldviews with rational, bureaucratic, and scientific approaches to understanding the world.

Might it not be the case that many people bemoan this disenchanted world and flee to romanticisms and superstations for some relief?

The UFO people tend to almost always describe the actual UFO like the ones we see on 50's movie billboards on the topic. And the aliens have the huge black eyes and are green. That's a very strong connection between culture and experience.

But I don't even find a supernaturalist "folk-account" that could explain this belief. — Manuel

I think by now aliens are folk accounts. All such traditions start somewhere. Perhaps aliens are just a technologically updated form of supernaturalism, located in the era's zeitgeist; science rather than magic.

I wonder if functionally there is much desirable psychological difference between aliens and spirits? They are probably founded on similar principles and psychological factors. Note, I am not considering in this account the more reasonable speculative notion that aliens may exist somewhere in reality.

perhaps the mind they have is not readily or easily put in such a receptive state. — Manuel

I wonder what counts as a receptive state? What are you thinking? A psychological state? My candidate explanations for this are personality, psychological health, and individual sense making shaped by culture. Same things that inform most of our choices.

My father's family were fundamentalists. But my father and his siblings were divided into those who 'chose' atheism and those who 'chose' Christianity. Same upbringing but they chose one of the two dominant belief systems in ther culture - Christianity and materialism. Why do people make such choices - why are some 'receptive' to religion and others to materialism/physicalism? I've often likened this to a sexual preference. We can't help what we are attracted to. The justifications and arguments are post hoc.

What's curios to me is that many people, not all, could be put in such a state of mind given specific circumstances, say, being in a cult or being constantly barraged with people saying and believing in these things. But what accounts for this?

Is it just that we experience things to some extent due to cultural circumstances? — Manuel

I don't think it is a 'state of mind' as such that we're looking for. Just a worldview that includes, perhaps even embraces, ghosts and spirits and is therefore receptive to them. Which tends to result in an experience of them readily in ordinary events. A flash of light, a sudden breeze, a movement, a noise and, 'bang' it may a ghost or spirit. I have met many people who default to such interpretations regularly.

For those more elaborate (and much rarer) accounts were an entity appears and talks to the person - we can perhaps include lucid dreaming, wishful thinking, and other brain states.

And yes, I do think that we experince things based on the culturally informed sense making tools and narratives we are immersed in. A person whose culture recognizes demons will see demons. A person whose culture recognizes djinns will see djinns.

I wonder if there is some similarity between some 'ghost stories' and UFO abduction stories. We can find thousands of folk worldwide who are convinced they were abducted by aliens. Is this, as Jung suggested, an expression of our psychological state, our anxieties and fears and, perhaps, an emerging spirituality/religion for this era of technology and science?

But given that such things were universal, say, in the Middle Ages, then it seems to me as if we are inclined to interpret such data consistently in a specific way, such as seeing ghosts or spirits as opposed to unicorns, in terms if repeated experiences. — Manuel

That follows in as much as in a culture where the idea of ghosts and spirts are accepted as real and are culturally important, you're going to see way more of them.

Reminds me of people who have religious visions of saints or of gods. People generally have visions of the saints and gods that are part of their own culture. I'd be more convinced if Mary appeared to people in Punjab. Or if a Hindu deity appeared to a Southern Baptist in Georgia.

I've never heard 'ghosts are only visible to believers' until now. — flannel jesus

That was a standard claim I used to hear amongst New Age types. You don't see them because 'you're a crass materialist who lacks sensitivity' or 'you are a skeptic and so are nto receptive'. I think this romantic approach to occult matters is still popular.

How do you think about spirits and ghosts? And, more importantly, what do you think about falling into such a state as to be suggestible into believing such things to be existing phenomena? — Manuel

A debunker of psychic and 'supernatural' phenomena I knew in the 1980's once told me that he believed in haunted minds, not haunted houses. I am inclined to accept this explanation. We sometimes see and hear things as a consequence of our sense making gone wrong - we are stimulated, prompted and primed by so many things. Heightened emotion often provides the catalyst. The people I have known who have seen ghosts on a regular basis, all tended to have anxiety related issues, often well hidden.

In the 1980's, when I was interested in the superphysical, I attended many seances, slept in cemeteries and in houses said to be haunted and, sadly, never experienced anything.

I think many of us are attracted to stories of ghosts and other occult phenomena because they are exciting, they lift us out of the mundane and promise us that in our increasingly technocratic world, a form of romanticism and mystery can still be found.

It seems that humans are extremely, by default/nature, superstitious. That is to say that we possess thought patterns and behaviors that are meant to "make things go well or stay well". — schopenhauer1

Nice OP. I agree with your points.

Given humans are meaning making creatures, working hard to identify or make some order out of the chaos, we can't help ourselves but to anthropomorphise nature and machines and devise magical rituals to protect us, along with ways to please our gods or powers. Superstition seems to be a continuum - from the primitive to the sophisticated.

Perhaps religions are the most sophisticated forms of codefied superstition and are really just a way for us to connect with an imagined or hoped for explanatory higher power which will protect us now and/or in the next world. Often such protection is against the pervasive fear of nihilism. There Must Be Transcendent Meaning! People who follow religions will likely resent this and consider it a simplification. But if ignorance is the wellspring of superstition, couldn't we say that god (which is so often also a god of the gaps -Why something rather than nothing? Why evil? Why death? Why morality?) operates as a kind of fetish to help us manage our nescience?

Do you think there is good reason to hold that what counts as superstition needs to be unsophisticated pre-rational thinking and that if a 'magical' system is more scriptural and sophisticated it is no longer superstition?

The question for me, however, is whether or not 'claims about g/G (e.g. theism, deism) are demonstrably true'. AFAIK, such claims are not demonstrably true; therefore, I am an atheist. — 180 Proof

Yes, arguments and the lack of demonstration of gods has maintained and sharpened my atheism. But my initial impulse was not based on arguments as such. The intriguing thing about gods is that they have no explanatory power, so as a solution to any fundamental questions, it just seems to be kicking the can down the road.

Good question. I have in mind the platonic idea of god as an absolute substance, content, form, quality. A sun around which all objects revolve. An unfalsifiable, unchangeable criterion for the true, the real and the good. This idea is abhorrent to me because it is conformist, restrictive and violent in its sanction of blameful
moralisms. — Joshs

Got you. Thanks.

For me, the best argument against god isn't that there isn't enough evidence, but that regardless of whether or not there is evidence, the very idea of god is abhorrent. This is why I consider self-declared agnostics to be closet theists. — Joshs

One of the more intriguing responses I've read here in a while.

But is this an argument or more of reaction? Which very idea of god is abhorrent?

I might say the same of childhood leukaemia or herpes - but they still exist and aren't going away.

As philosopher we are free to take out position about anything. For me we cannot know about God or prove it. That doesn't mean there is no Possibility of god. So i choose to be an agnostic and i believe that is the most convenient position a philosopher could hold — Abhiram

For me atheism isn't about proof that there are no gods. It's whether I believe in gods or or not. I don't believe, so i am an atheist.

I can only talk about my actual experiences over 40 years, working in a range of roles. I don't recall any significantly unethical cultures. Sometimes a particular work culture is bad, but this may this be down to malicious colleagues having personality problems and being arseholes from time to time. More unpleasant than unethical.

For the most part, for workers here, conditions have improved over my time. I'm sure there are still primitive conditions in the casualised work force (waiters, cleaners, food delivery people), where workers don't get properly paid, any holidays or training or any benefits. But full-time workers here tend to be protected by robust legislation, are provided 4 weeks holiday a year and are paid for days taken sick. They also can't be sacked without a robust due process.

Isn't faith certainty?
— Tom Storm

I don't think this is right. — Hanover

Fair enough. I'm no expert on degrees of faith, since I've never had the experience in any form. Nevertheless, most of the Muslims and Christians I have explored this with describe it that way.

But I generally don't raise certainty as an aspect of faith and your response is useful. I usually define faith as the reason people give for believing when they don't have a good reason. And only then when faith is presented to me as the same thing as that the plane they will catch will not crash. And of course believers challenge the 'no good reasons' as you would expect.

Even if my view on faith is peculiar to just me, I still think it responsive to the OP, which was a question generally of what sorts of faith there are. I just reject the idea that faith is best described as what children in Sunday school believe as they just repeat back what they're told. — Hanover

Those with 'certainty' are not always naive fundamentalists - they may not be any kind of literalist and accept science and do not have a cartoon god in their sights. And I'm not sure it is fair to describe this type of faith an unthinking, child like Sunday school style faith (Islam aside) but I get what you mean.

I also suspect that some people's faith is performative and not deeply held. Having worked in palliative and end of life care, I have met many dying people (including priests) for whom the faith vanished as they discovered they were dying. God provided no comfort and heaven receded the moment mortality presented. The opposite of a deathbed conversion is also a thing.

That means faith is a meta concept, not just a list of rules and regulations. It is the idea that belief in something bigger than one's self is what faith is, — Hanover

I think this is a useful point. Faith can be complicated and I wouldn't associate it with rules as such. Even if rules are justified by using appeals to faith. I would imagine that faith is more of a 'non-rational' foundation.

But 'bigger than one's self' seems super vague and rather pointless to me. I have no doubt that there are trillions of things bigger and more important than me (depending upon the perspective), but I've never been able to get from this to any varieties of theistic meaning, no matter how sophisticated.

Interesting. You may be right. Yes, populist leaders of a certain kind are autocratic because they are generally insincere and know what to do to get elected in a certain context. There's an inherent predatory cynicism built into this process, so it would seem natural for such a leader to detest democracy and detest the average person along with it. Has it not been documented via various sources close to Trump that he hates his own base, viewing them as a bunch of unattractive losers? For a populism like his, authoritarianism seems to be an obvious end.

The term "populist" is rather misleading as what easily comes to mind is "popular". Perhaps "anti-elitist" would be better. — ssu

Yes, that's the take home message for me. Or 'popular prejudice'. Like the old 'migrants are destroying our culture and taking our jobs' trope.

But I also tend to think that most politics is populism - the attempt to capture popular issues and use tribalism to divide and conquer voters. Some exponents of this are more cynical populists than others.

When it comes to elites, the real target for self-described populist like Gore Vidal (in the US back in the 1970's) were the corporate and property classes. Vidal defined the hot issues of populism as turbo charged funding for schools and infrastructure, free healthcare, raising taxes for corporations and the wealthy, isolationism and an end to military incursions overseas, slashing the military industrial complex.

It just seems that there's no antidote to populism, no way other than the disillusionment after the populists fail when in power. Then you just hope you have the means to get them out of power. — ssu

Voters seem to be activated most by fear and self-interest. The easiest way to harness these in politics is to lie, divide and conquer and promote tribalism. For me it is the political process I fear almost as much as the type of populism it can promote.

:up:

That said I wouldn't expect anyone would want to live in Canberra without a reason :-) — Wayfarer

Funny you should mention this. I love Canberra and am there now. Just for 3 days while on a road trip. I love the manageable scale of the city, it's quirky regions, the modernist architecture, it's amazing free galleries. I think I could easily live there.

Thanks for clarifying. :up:

Which is why, when I read the opening post, about "types of faith", I had no intuition at all. What's the concept we're supposed to subdivide here? Like you, I tend not to use faith outside of the context of religion. — Dawnstorm

Understand. I generally highlight faith in this way just to make a point. When it comes to Christian traditions, I do consider the various categories of believer and their faith, from the literalists to the sophisticated theologians - who inhabit totally different worlds.

I grew up in the Baptist tradition, so god stuff is not alien to me. But we were taught that the Bible is allegorical. The stories were understood as ways to teach people, they are not to be taken as (forgive the pun) gospel. I was soon aware of Paul Tillich's more mystical notion of God as ground of being and have read a fair bit of Christian thinking. Nevertheless, I still hold the idea of gods to be an unnecessary fiction and can't find any way to make use of the idea of a deity or the notion of faith as a pathway to truth.

Also super interesting you don’t relate to rock. — AmadeusD

After the age of 40 I started to enjoy small amounts of the Rolling Stones (earlier stuff) still dislike the Beatles. Enjoy later Leonard Cohen and some Bob Dylan. Tom Waits I have time for too. I also have had a soft spot for proper blues - John Lee Hooker, Little Walter, Muddy Waters. But I listen to very little music these days.

Ravel - Daphnis et Chloé, Pavane pour une infante défunte. I also really like his piano concerto for left hand - written for Wittgenstein's brother, Paul, who was a concert pianist and lost an arm.

This is simply confused. Horses are not humans, nor do they approximate humans. Sorry. — Leontiskos

Isn't this missing the point of the example? I think @joshs observation seems relevant. As humans develop our moral understanding and ethics, the sphere of concern widens. Which reflects the broader idea that moral agents should take into account the well-being and interests of all beings affected by their actions, not just humans. Which also underpins discussions on topics such as animal rights, environmental ethics, and bioethics - but that is moving on into new subjects.

But Buddhism, along with the other sapiential traditions, is about breaking through to a different form of awareness altogether. I don't think you'll find it in phenomenology or existentialism although there may be hints of it at various places. There's some references to it amongst the German idealists (Schopenhauer's 'better consciousness', Fichte's 'higher consciousness'). But it will usually be categorised with religion by many, to their detriment. This is where the insights of non-dualism are especially relevant. — Wayfarer

Interesting. So the idea is that the essential nature of being is beneficial towards all things?

I think Debussy is more well known, and he was the flashy flow state guy. He's easy to fall in love with right off the bat, but Ravel takes time to appreciate, and Ravel was the method man. As I get older I've shifted from preferring Debussy to now preferring Ravel. — Noble Dust

I found Ravel a lot more interesting when I was a kid. Debussy struck me as bland and equivocal. My favoured music as a kid - say 20 years old - were Wagner, Mahler, Shostakovich, R Strauss and Ravel. I disliked Chopin, Bach, Debussy, Mozart. Of course, now I often prefer this latter music and I think there is something about ageing which sets aside the 'heavy metal' classics in favour of more nuanced and sometimes mathematical composers. But everyone's different. I never listened to pop or rock - i found them impossible to relate to.

Brazillian Jiu jitsu;
- Drums, voice, guitar, bass, keys.. few others, including Irish Whistle!;
- Songwriting in light of the above - 23 albums and counting;
- Free Running/Parkour (mostly handstands and other power moves);
- Writing comedy for television and other stand-ups;
- Writing battle raps that will never see the light of day (though, there is footage of me doing several battles out there on the internet... )
- Collecting/enjoying Whisky/ey and fine Wine;
- Currently Learning Spanish and Arabic;
- Trying to solve the origins of the Voynich manuscript;
- Visiting puppy litters; and
- Writing science fiction (two pieces, thus far.. but one is a Trilogy for which i've only begun the first volume). — AmadeusD

Very industrious. I have no hobbies.

The closest thing to a hobby I had was 20 years drinking whisky and meeting strangers in bars. Loved almost every minute of that, but quit to save my liver.

Sounds like foundations of existentialism.

From a very young age, perhaps 7 or 8, I formed the view that human life was inherently meaningless. This has rarely depressed me. Mostly I found it amusing; that all our chasing after things, our ambitions and our self-importance is really for nothing. There's a freedom in this. We don't need to prove anything to anyone and we are always good enough. I also think that being happy or finding joy is perfectly compatible with meaninglessness. Joy isn't dependent upon inherent significance, it can come to anyone for any reason. I think our experience of this has less to do with what we believe about life and more about our disposition, personality and brain chemistry.

There was his notorious exclamation in a very late interview in the German media, 'only a God can save us now'. Courtesy of Google, I can now reproduce it, and it's oddly consonant with the remark above: — Wayfarer

Interesting. I've heard a number of atheists make the same point. Mainly that only magic can get us out of the shitstorm we seem to have created for ourselves.

Hard to know what he meant, the old enigmatic devil...

Philosophy strikes me as "fools gold" for both the theist and the atheist. And Heidegger's philosophy is no exception. — Arne

Say some more on this.

So up until now I've treated faith as trust in a person or person-like entity; but you can actually direct a similar energy towards your habits (like, say, rational thought). It's served you well until now. It's, I think, a variant of putting faith in yourself: when I do this I succeed, and if I don't it's not my problem. (I'm a rational atheist; those are irrational theists... and such.) Come to think of it, this is where "confidence" comes in after all. I have no trouble of thinking of that as some kind of "faith". The difference seems to me mostly... rhetorical? — Dawnstorm

I still can't see how you got there. Sorry.

My focus is primarily on the reality (or not) of the entity (gods), not upon the reasonable confidence.

From early on, you put your trust in God the way you put your trust in your parents. — Dawnstorm

I don't see how these relate since we can demonstrate the existence of parents and interact with them and easily assess whether they can be trusted or not. Lots of children don't trust their parents because experience has taught them not to. We can't gauge trust in the same way for any gods I am aware of. We can't even demonstrate if they are real. How are they the same?

When I cross the street I put my faith in the drivers; they will not run me over. When I get on a plane, I put my faith in lots of people: engineers and pilots come to mind. And so on. — Dawnstorm

I would focus less on the putting of faith and more on the reality of the physical experience. When I cross a street I am interacting with physical processes which I can demonstrate to be true and which is more or less identically shared with others. I only cross at lights (if at all possible) and I practice vigilance, looking to see if the road is clear. I believe I can have reasonable confidence that empiricism and the fact that I seem to inhabit a physical reality will allow for a safe crossing.

I don't see quite how putting faith in an invisible being, which is likely unknowable and about which there is not much agreement or good evidence can compare to the physical process of crossing a road or catching a plane.

What am I missing in your analysis?

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I have a copy of some Sean Kelly lectures on the subject which have been interesting. But it leaves me none the wiser.

I suspect his thinking is too lofty to incorporate a personal god.
— Tom Storm

I disagree. Nothing in his thinking precludes a personal God. — Arne

i didn't mean to argue that his ideas preclude a personal God, just that his thinking had been somewhat too lofty to focus on this narrow subject, given that Heidegger seems to regard the project of being as significant enough to be getting on with. If I had paid attention to philosophy 40 years ago, then perhaps I might have developed some useful understanding of H's critique of onto-theology and more fully apprehended how we are situated in the reality we experience and how being might take us beyond notions of god. Or something like that.

I've read something of his history and some essays on his thought and some work by Dreyfus (whose reading of H may not be seen as adequate these days) but this seems a hard matter to get perspective on. I suspect his thinking is too lofty to incorporate a personal god.

Similarly, I think a necessary part of belief in God is not knowing sufficiently if God may, say, answer my prayer, but nonetheless believe God has my best interests in mind, or that God exists at all, despite not having sufficient knowledge of His existence. — QuixoticAgnostic

But why do we require faith? Why aren't gods simply present in our lives and why this:

That feels like us testing God, rather than the other way around, and I think belief in God would be diminished if it could simply be proven or shown to be true as a fact. — QuixoticAgnostic

This seems crazy to me. Why would gods be invisible and why would testing gods not be ok?

Why is divine hiddenness a thing? Why would gods, who in scripture interact with humans - whether Islam, Judaism or Hindu scriptures - now only be available through faith or some old books or via a priestly caste?

But if I do find myself believing in some God, it will be through reason, not faith. — QuixoticAgnostic

I am an atheist by feel or intuition. The god hypothesis never helped me to make sense of anything and the idea of a deity felt absurd to me from the age of 7 or 8. Of course as a good atheist, I have had to deal with a range of apologists and many times had to run through the various well-worn and shop-soiled arguments, which for me come post hoc. As I've often said, I think belief in gods is often similar to a sexual preference - you are either attracted or not.

Though Heidegger is the philosopher I tend to read most, you may rest assured I have read far more Nietzsche than the average person. — Arne

I find both dull and unreadable, but that's on me. Can you say something about what Heidegger thinks about god or theism?

On the other hand, psychologist George Kelly makes some good points about the dangers of a realistic attitude being taken too far: — Joshs

Yes, everything can be taken too far. I don't consider myself a realist.

My chief interest here is in learning how to present it so it will be understood. That is still a work in progress. The responses here have been helpful. — Mark S

Who is your intended audience? If it's the average person, me, for instance, I struggle to see why it should matter to me.

My interest is how to make the science of morality culturally useful. — Mark S

What would that look like in practice?

My understanding of morality is that it's a code of conduct (an agglomeration of historical cultural mores) enforced through a legal system. Morality provides stability and predictability, which helps societies to thrive (within certain parameters, given that the powerful can manipulate most moral systems to suit their interests).

How different is your view to this?

Can you briefly show me an example of a cooperation strategy in action and how this sheds light on morality?

The inherent rightness or wrongness of certain actions (e.g., murder or stealing) is a separate matter, I take it?

Making life better (or more richly interesting) and survival is why we strive to understand the world. — BC

Yes, I'd go along with this - which fits with my idea that dissatisfaction is often the fillip for philosophy.

I think a generic 'curiosity' is a fairly inchoate or unsophisticated path to knowledge or philosophical acumen. The real skill is in questioning the assumptions the answers one encounters. This seems quite sophisticated and requires rigorous critical reflection. I’m not good at this past a certain point.

Yes, I find myself on this "love of wisdom" or "study of reality" site, and often think that many of the arcane posts I read have nothing to do with the price of potatoes--aka, reality. But, carry on, gentlemen. — BC

Bullshit certainly seems to get a run on this site. But I also think there are a range of arcane explorations of subjects here that are simply beyond my interest or capacity. But if I did understand, they might well be transformative and enlightening.

In the end, I fear that all of us, no matter how well educated in this subject, still need to piss and eat and still need to treat the world as though realism were true, which means avoiding the worst of the cold, trying to dodge cancer and scrounging enough money to live comfortably into old age.

I don't like the terms innocence and wisdom; they're way too loaded to mean much. And I don't think the boss of innocence leads to the gain of wisdom. Innocence is lost early on. Wisdom comes along a lot later and is the result of being 'refined' in the mills of experience. — BC

I think we agree.

I don’t think words like innocence or wisdom are particularly useful,

My point about dissatisfaction being the launching pad of much philosophy doesn’t imply that wisdom is achieved. I’m not sure that philosophy has a necessary connection to wisdom. In some cases, perhaps. And perhaps more so if you fetishise wisdom in some Platonic framework. For me wisdom is enhanced discernment or judgement generally based upon experience.

Sorry I can’t follow most of your response.

Is there such a thing as the Philosophy of Sport? Should there be? — Ciceronianus

Maybe you're asking the wrong guy. I don't watch or participate in any form of sport. And I'm not sure about the merit of philosophy more generally.

But more broadly, I'm fairly sure you can have a philosophy of anything. Does sport seek to convey ideas the way art does? Is technique and skill at games the same as technique and skill in literature, poetry, painting?

No doubt one can build a philosophy around what sport represents, the hierarchies and conservatism intrinsic to participation, rules and codification, etc.

Philosophers are nothing but curious children, and children are our purest philosophers. Do you agree? And if so, is this drive still a part of our collective will? — kudos

If you are asking about the impulse to philosophy, I would think it often seems to be connected to unhappiness or dissatisfaction. People who are content may not need to ask such questions.

Philosophy for me isn't just the asking of questions, more importantly, it involves the forensic examination of our presuppositions, along with an underlying suspicion that what we consider our foundations may be insubstantial and flawed.

Au contraire, metaphysics being onanistic is a central point of contention re misology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wasn't referring to metaphysics. I was referring to the human urge to anthropomorphise such things as nature, animals and objects. I think this tendency to project ourselves onto everything around us like this is not entirely healthy - but I thought this point was too trivial to debate in this thread.

Your position on this looks a lot like those odd people who turn up here sometimes, loudly calling for the end of belief. They seem to think belief only pertains to belief in God. — Jamal

Really? Perhaps you formed this view because I was discussing 'faith' in god (as per Hebrews 11) and not belief more generally. Say some more so I understand your critique.

I think it's completely reasonable for you to say "they aren't the same thing", I just don't think the argument about why they're not the same thing relies on defining faith in a super narrow way such that they're only tautologically not the same thing — flannel jesus

Ok. I'll mull over this.

Does anyone practice liberalism from some manual? Isn't liberalism like most belief systems, something one partly assimilates from culture and partly anticipates by selecively applying various bits of social policy and theory?

Liberalism as we now understand it is the idea that no conception of the good life is to be imposed, and everyone is to be allowed to pursue their own notion of the good life. — Leontiskos

I think this is pluralism and it sounds pretty decent to me. But I don't know any cultures that allow this where it might get in the way of capitalism or the dominant power and ideology of a country. The safety of others is also a consideration for the most part.

Do you think your narrow use of the word is the norm or are you trying to promote a new norm? — flannel jesus

For the purposes of this OP I'm trying to promote a more precise use of the word. Whether you or anyone else don't care to use it my preferred way doesn't matter - we're just having a conversation about using the word faith, right?

I don't think it's some sneaky rhetorical tool. — flannel jesus

I didn't say it was 'sneaky'. It's an obvious rhetorical tool. When apologists say things like - 'Don't knock faith, you use it all the time, like when you catch a plane.' I say this is an equivocation. You can't compare faith in god with a 'reasonable confidence' in a quotidian matter, for reasons spelt out ad nauseam earlier in this thread.