Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre  How are you (and they) defining faith? If faith is the feeling of certainty in a specific belief, then the belief must come first, of course.
But if faith is a general tendency to believe in things for which there is no evidence (not including personal experience or authoritative assurance), belief follows faith. |
pretty close. By definition, faith is the belief in something which cannot be proven. Well, let me clarify that. Faith, in the religious context, is the belief in that which cannot be proven. We have no proof that any of the big hitters in the bible (Jesus, Noah, Moses, Mary, et al) ever walked the planet; no archaelogical evidence whatsoever, and yet we have plenty of archaelogical evidence of people predating them by hundreds of thousands of years.
In regards to faith in the religious context, you either have it, or you don't. My sister has it very strongly in the Roman Catholic sense. I have faith as well, but it doesn't really fit well with any specific religion; more of a free-form type of thing that I find extremely personal with my higher power, and that works very well for me indeed.
So in my opinion, as far as religion is concerned, belief in the religion is virtually synonymous with faith in the religion. They both serve to bolster the belief structure of the person involved, and any attempt to proof it with science would only serve to undermine the entire house of cards and get one second guessing one's self.
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