Quote:
Originally Posted by tad10  As I said, if you _define_ that belief in faith is irrational you will come up with the result that it is irrational.
If you define that belief in atheist is rational you will come up with the result that it is rational.
You can not prove -- using any system of logic you would like -- that faith is irrational and atheism rational -- unless you cheat and insert those definitions at the beginning of your proof.
Dawkins proves his points by cheating. Of course persons on the other side making the rational argument for faith do the same thing.
Cheers |
There is no other way to define faith. It must be irrational. Your argument is akin to this.
Me: I have an apple.
You: You only have an apple because you chose to define it in that way. I say it's an orange.
You're essentially advocating a mutable system of symbology that would make communication impossible. To rephrase: I could say your post is wrong because you chose to define "define" in such a matter that convienient to your needs. In fact I could say this about any word in your post. Dawkins defines faith as irrational because faith by definition is irrational. If you chose to define faith as rational then you are no longer accurately describing faith.
To further clarify: Faith is belief without logical proof or material evidence. Rationality is the employment of reason, which is inference and deduction through logic and empirical evidence. They are mutually exclusive by their very definitions. If you chose to define them differently then you aren't arguing against faith and reason at all, but some other new idea that you have defined and labeled as faith and reason.
Your argument is absurd.