Quote Originally Posted by stripedangel View Post
OK, Tom, i see your point about blind faith....i had it wrong.

So how 'bout responding to the REST of my post??
Ok then. This is thread derailing, but I'm blaming it on you I do connect to miracles in the end of this post.

You claim that this is what you feel is "true in your heart". You made the claim that the correctness of the theory of God rests on how true you feel it is in your heart, right?

This logic leads us to two possibilities.

1) Everyone has their own truth, (Solipsism, ie what can be true for you can be false for somebody else). Like as in the Matrix, of being inside the Matrix as if that was the true world.

2) Or that there exists one truth for everybody. ie, the same laws of physics applies to everybody. Basically that there exists an external reality somewhere. Which is basically the claim Christianity is doing. When Neo exits his virtual reality pod.

If you belong to the second category, as all people outside the walls of insane asylums do, you now have to come up with a way to compare truths and realities. Suddenly how true something in ones heart doesn't hold a lot of weight. Basically if you are right, others with other faiths must be wrong.

I'm a big fan of Karl Popper, and I bet, so is the entire body of scientists in the world. In his philosophy of scientific truth he claims that there are things science cannot measure, which it certainly sounds like a belief you share. But discounting science does not give any added credibility to what "your heart" tells you or what just feels the most comfortable.

The best we can do is leave it open. Which is the opposite of faith. Which is basically that you follow your heart, but don't make claims that your heart tells you things better than other peoples hearts tell them.

You can have your life guided by the Bible, trying to be a good Christian because you think it gives it meaning and interpreting the voices in your head as God and not have Christian faith. It's a question of how much you respect other peoples hearts, or to put it more bluntly, your arrogance.

I'm guessing that it's just sloppy use of terminology to talk of "faith" here. Kierkegaard didn't ignore scientific "facts". He had a look at what existed and worked with what he had. Understanding the entire body of scientific knowledge is not possible any more for anybody.

The kind of faith Kierkegaard had and was on about is dead today. All of us. Every single living person today, knows that what they talk about reality they are only communicating a simplified model. Chemistry is not the study of sticks and balls. This is equally true for Christians as for atomic physicists. I respect Kierkegaard deeply. He's one of my favourite philosophers and nobody can claim he wasn't a genius. But he lived in a different time.

I'll give an example. When Creationists have "faith" in that the world is 6000 years old, they are ignoring scientific evidence. They're ignoring evidence that is readily available if they only could be arsed to evaluate it. What they have isn't called "faith" by any stretch. Not according to the definition of Thomas Khun or Sören Kierkegaard. What they are doing is actively maintaining a delusion, anybody who's attended school knows is doubtful. Believing something in spite of evidence is not faith. We can't even call it "blind faith" because we know, that they know better.

I'll try to be even more clear. The issue isn't whether the earth might or might not be 6000 years old. The issue is whether or not it is beyond any doubt. We all know that the scientific theories in the Bible isn't beyond debate, no matter if we're Christians or not. We all know that even if we believe it very deeply, lot's of people have very well grounded reasons to reject it. And we cannot ignore them and still maintain faith. If we haven't studied palaeontology and geology we can't really say anything on the subject. Neither for nor against. We cannot have faith. It is not beyond doubt, because we don't have enough facts, and we never will.

I may be repeating myself now a lot, but I'm not sure I'm getting my point across. Faith is when something is beyond doubt. The stuff that makes you stop worrying about gravity not disappearing over night. Or the faith that when you stab yourself in the hand, it will hurt like a mother-fucker. Beyond doubt. When atheists say they have faith in that God doesn't exists... it isn't really faith.

To return to the original thread topic. When you see something you can't explain, is that evidence of a miracle, or just evidence that you can't explain it? I live in a magical world full of miracles all the time. But I don't pretend like I have the foggiest notion of the source of it. Hell, I can't even build a car engine. The fact that a car that I drive moves at all is to me a miracle.

I'm not saying God doesn't exist or that miracles don't take place. We're not in a place yet where those are relevant questions. First we need to narrow down what a miracle is and what God is. This thread first needs to define that before there is any point in this.