@David Killens: He's gotta be a drive by. No one logs in with that much stupidity and hangs around trying to argue it.

He's gotta be a drive by. No one logs in with that much stupidity and hangs around trying to argue it.

Yeah, usually when someone has a prewritten post they copy and paste, they are a drive by.

Hopefully this one will be a bit more honest than that, and stick around for discussion. But I'm not holding out too much hope.

Oh, and by the way, those of us who had a proper science education, conducted experiments to verify that the postulates we were being taught were something other than the product of someone's rectal passage.

Indeed, with respect to, for example, the radioactive decay law, I conducted experiments to gather the relevant data, followed by analysis of said data, in my physics classes at 15 years of age, and my teacher handed me a plutonium sample for the task. Yes, I was given the opportunity to handle real plutonium at the age of 15.

I suspect others here can recall appropriate experimental work from their own classes covering a range of other scientific postulates.

Intruder, it appears you consider the words ‘believe’ and ‘think’ as interchangeable. If so, you are incorrect. Belief requires no evidence. However, I THINK I can eat mom’s cooking without getting food poisoning because all the data (e.g. past history) support that conclusion.

@Intruder:

Faith is me believing that Williams Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet without actually witnessing it.

LOL! Shakespeare was actually an Italian immigrant called Crollalanza. Shakespeare is just the English translation of that name. Why do you think so many of his plays are set in Italy?

But your example is silly in any case. It's like the tired old canard trotted out by creationists to "prove" that evolution never happened because nobody was there to see it. We can know about the past without faith simply by studying and interpreting the evidence.

Faith is earned. We gain faith in people when they keep their promises, help us in times of need, and never betray our trust. By that criterion, your imaginary friend is completely unworthy of faith. Every prayer has gone unanswered. Good people and innocent children have been abandoned to die of disease and disasters. All the money donated to god's churches goes straight into the pockets of priests and preachers.

I hope you don't mind me adding my two cents worth.

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@The Intruder
. . . do you believe in this statement of human rights:
We hold this truth to be self evident, that all humans are created equal.

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This statement is part of the U.S.A.'s Declaration of Independence, thus it need not be accepted elsewhere, (perhaps in India where they have a caste system, for instance).

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This is quoted by many liberals today. But tell me what data did they rely on to come to this conclusion?

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It was the opinion, judgement and desire of the founders of the USA, and was not based on evidence. It was a way of thinking which they preferred, and which is not adhered to in all places in the world. "That all humans are created equal", is in fact ambiguous, and there is evidence that not all humans are actually created equal. For instance, I am definitely not the equal of the man who was Albert Einstein. He was a genius in some ways, and I'm a more ordinary person, of lower intellect than Einstein.
Furthermore, the statement of belief in the Declaration of Independence is followed in that document, by: "endowed by their creator". However, if there is no creator, then that cannot be, and it would underline the idea that the statement in the document is just the opinion, judgement and desire of the founders.

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Do you believe society could be better? why do you believe this?

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I am not sure that society could be better, but I hope so. A simple reason for saying this is that if I concluded that society could NOT be better, then there would be no point in trying to make it better.

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We can have faith in some things, but if we do so, we ought to admit that we have no conclusive evidence or reason to believe their truth. If there was conclusive evidence or reason, it would make more sense to give that conclusive evidence or reason. For some Christian believers when trying to convert non-believers to their religion, when they cannot convince the other person by using evidence or reasoning, (because that evidence or reasoning was not convincing), the Christian might often say: "Well . . . you've just got to have FAITH!"
You know . . . "The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"; [Hebrews 11/1]. In those cases, then when evidence and reasoning fail, have faith.

And surely other people believe contradictory things to those to which Christians principally adhere, but which are in conflict with those core Christain beliefs. Yet those other people can claim to go with THEIR faith. So this faith, is not a reliable route to truth.
Because we non-believers have decried faith as an unreliable way to truth, I think that believers have tried to re-define faith to mean something more like 'TRUST in your interpretation of what you see as evidence or reason'. But if that's what faith means, then the Christian will need a new word to tell the unbeliever, and say: "Well . . . you've just got to have flibbertygibbette", where flibbertygibbette is the word meaning :-

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@Cognostic
. . . what you use when you have no evidence to back your claims.

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So all we need is a shift in language, that still has a word that means what faith has meant traditionally, and is a substitute word for faith, (maybe flibbertygibbette). Thus 'Flibbertygibbette is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen'.

Mutorc

"Orville and Wilbur Wright believe their own special metal can fly even when it seems impossible for metals to fly. But When all necessary skills and tools were put into work their metal actually flew.

So you see faith is believing in the qualities of that metal until the metal prove itself".

The 'metal' did not prove itself. It was the physical application of "the necessary skills and tools" that made 'metal' fly. Their aircraft was not made of metal alone but wood and canvas constructed in such a way that satisfied the aerodynamic requisites required to get a heavier than air machine to fly as according to the detailed research and mathematics of such pioneers such as Lilienthal and Hargraves.
It was not faith in the quality of the metal that got the thing off the ground, it was the quality of the science behind the aircraft's construction.