<p>^ It is bad for people to blindly follow scripture. It is bad for people to blindly follow anything.</p>
<p>Isn’t that somewhat a requirement of any religion, though? I mean, you are suggesting that people only take “reasonable” interpretations of the Bible/clergy and then say those interpretations are Divinely Inspired.</p>
<p>^ There’s a big difference between blind faith and accepting uncertainty.</p>
<p>^ “Accepting uncertainty”? Like what, there might be fairy-tale magical invisible gnomes on top of your head, but you’re not sure?</p>
<p>If you are “accepting uncertainty” I don’t see why you would follow any religion.</p>
<p>MM, the problem with “following blindly” is that you do it regardless of what faith you are. Because “following blindly” is faith, in a sense. I understand the distinction you’re trying to make, but at some point you just believe it. Again, not a problem with institutional religion, according to you, but with any faith.</p>
<p>I only read the past couple pages of this thread, but I’m curious: Are the majority of CCers (at least on this thread) atheist or religious? If religious, I assume most are Christian. I’m a de facto atheist btw.</p>
<p>Difficult to say…there could be atheists on here defending religious views or religionists on here defending atheist views.</p>
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<p>At some point you just believe it =/= blind faith. Blind faith ignores reality, open eyed faith sees reality and decides what to believe, even though that decision may not be possible to prove correct.</p>
<p>^I’m not sure how tenable that position is.</p>
<p>Faith is faith. I’m sorry if you do not like my distinctions, but I’m not going to go into a discussion about what I meant and how I define “following,” “blindly,” and so forth.</p>
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<p>Those definitions are nonsensical to me.</p>
<p>It requires faith to believe something that cannot be proven. For example, the fact that if I drop a glass it will fall downward. However, in this case the faith is well-justified because past experience supports it.</p>
<p>It’s the same way with Christianity. It would take blind faith to believe that there is an invisible gnome on my head, because there is no reason to believe it.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are very many reasons for me to believe that faith in Christianity is justified. Not all of those are reasons that would carry weight in a debate, but that does not make them less valid for me.</p>
<p>Of course they are not less valid to you.</p>
<p>But there is also a distinction between “scientific” happenings and supernatural ones. The glass falling is a product of science, however we want to define it in terms of certainty (“theory” of gravity, blahblahblah). But to equate the sort of faith that one takes in science and the one one takes in religion is untenable.</p>
<p>^ Why? In both cases we have reason to believe something, either because of our experiences or (more often) because of the experiences of others that we have heard described to us. In both cases these experiences are insufficient to provide complete proof that the belief is true. When we choose to believe it anyway, that is called faith.</p>
<p>In some cases this faith is better justified than in others, but the concept is the same.</p>
<p>Because scientific happenings are observable in a way that religious ones are not.</p>
<p>I’m not talking about particle physics and string theory (which are religious in a sense), I’m talking about, say, photosynthesis.</p>
<p>What about history? can you “observe” history?</p>
<p>Christianity is centered around Jesus Christ and we as Christians have faith because of the four books about him that were left behind to us that we believe demonstrates that he was who he claimed to be.</p>
<p>^^ Are they? Not history, most of chemistry and physics, and a good chunk of biology…</p>
<p>Applied astronomy, maybe.</p>
<p>Most of science, like religion, is considered true merely because a large number of human experiences seem to support it.</p>
<p>^^and because things can be reproduced in science at will. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to reproduce a religious experience.</p>
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<p>Scientific principles don’t just describe. They predict.</p>
<p>When you put faith in a scientific theory, you expect future experiences to validate–or, more importantly, to invalidate–the theory. </p>
<p>When you put faith in religion, you don’t expect future experiences to provide any additional info about the validity of your faith. There is no accumulation of knowledge/data; all events are simply a manifestation of your religion. </p>
<p>This latter is a different kind of faith. You never expect it to be validated or invalidated. You follow it blindly for a short path (just like scientists follow their theories blindly for a short path), but you also have reason to believe (due to history) that all religious followers will follow this blindly.</p>
<p>You are not believing today so others know tomorrow. You simply believe and expect this belief to eternally hold.</p>
<p>^ Actually, we believe today because it is beneficial to do so today. And experiences in religion do accumulate over time. After having been a Christian for a number years, I have experienced many things relating to my beliefs, with the result that I have discarded some of them and refined others, and that I am all the more confident in those which remain.</p>