Being faith is on a personal level/personal experience,, How can a person without faith tell others they are wrong, argue, or debate about something they don't have or experience?
We have discussions like this one on RF fairly frequently, and they are seldom productive, because, in my opinion, most people doing the discussing don't have a clear idea of what they mean by a word like faith. People begin posting with a vague notion of something praiseworthy, but ask them exactly what they are praising, and you get poetry. I'm thinking now of the Christian scripture that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." What does that mean? Nothing, really. Do things hoped for have a substance? No. Is faith evidence of anything? No. It's the substitute for evidence. Our beliefs about what is true either come from evidence such as experience, or we just believe them without that. Faith is the latter.
Why do we have such a concept? I imagine that long ago, there were discussions in which elders were teaching about gods such as the Hebrew God Yahweh, saying he did this and that, and others asking how one knows these things, and eventually, one is asked to simply believe, and the act is glorified. "Oh, you have been faithful. God will love you. God loves those who believe by faith."
But what is actually being extoled here? Belief without sufficient evidence. That's what faith is, pure and simple. Believers don't like those words, because it sounds like a foolish thing to do when reduced to just that, so they bristle and begin embellishing with the poetry: "Faith is a deep and rich experience, the skeptic lives an empty life for his dogged determination that things should have a sufficient support before being believed, he is a fool, our wisdom is foolishness to him," etc., but none of that substance referred to in scripture.
A meaningful discussion of faith, like so many other concepts discussed here (atheist, God), must begin with a clear, simple definition of what is being discussed if there is to be any hope of progress. I use the definition that faith is unjustified belief, which is all belief not sufficiently supported empirically. As I alluded, believers chafe at this definition, because when laid bare, it looks like this is a bad idea, something to avoid - not something praise or embrace (no argument here). So, the meaningless, flowery words come flowing in an attempt to glorify this practice, which is essentially nothing more than the willingness to believe what you heard for no better reason that you were told it and didn't question the claim.
One common error is to equate justified belief based on experience with unjustified belief, and call both faith. I've already seen that in this thread. For example, we are told that we have faith in science. Well, only if by faith you mean the very justified belief that science delivers - nothing remotely like religious faith (unjustified belief). This error is called an equivocation fallacy, and occurs when two different meanings of a word are used interchangeably, as when one is told that banks are a good place to keep money, and that rivers have banks.
Incidentally, who tells faith-based thinkers that they are wrong? What I see is people like me explaining that they consider believing by faith a mistake. They mean for themselves, but it's apparent that they probably believe that it's a mistake for anybody. That's my position. If another person wants to believe by faith, I think he's making a mistake, but I'm have no interest in talking him out of it even if I could. If my neighbor wants to dance around a tree at midnight baying at the full moon while shaking a stick with a chicken claw nailed to it in order to center himself and give his like meaning, that's fine, as long as he keeps the noise down. I might ask him how he came to his beliefs, but I'm not going to argue with him about them. He'll likely sense that I don't agree, which he is free to understand as me telling him he's wrong or stupid, and I probably do think that, but I don't have any reason to say so and don't.
And it's the same here on RF. I never try to talk others out of their beliefs. I simply explain mine, why I believe them, and why I don't believe what they do. I've commented several times on these threads that I don't think most people in the last third of their lives are capable of a major shift in their worldview. I did it at 20 when I became a Christian, which was easy, and again at 30 when I returned to atheism, which was much more difficult and disorienting, but I still had the time and the resources to reshape my mental landscape. I believe that if I could pull that rug out from somebody in his 60s or above, that it would likely be harmful, since it's really too late to benefit from a religion-free life. I think his choice to believe by faith was a mistake, as was mine, but at this point, trying to correct it is also a mistake. Faith is right for him now.
If someone were a carpenter and someone else who knew nothing about carpentry tried to tell them what is what about carpentry, why would they even listen to them?
Faith is not a skill in which one can develop expertise. The closest thing to an expert on faith is one who understands what it is and what it does, and can express it clearly and without obfuscating language that means nothing, like that scripture. Believing without sufficient cause is not a talent, nor a virtue. Any child can do it.
Let's put this to the test. Any faith-based thinkers reading who think that faith is more than unjustified belief would likely be people who consider themselves more expert on the topic that those like me who eschew it, and ought to be able to show where faith is more than that in concrete terms. I know from experience that it's not going to happen. Any response to this is expected to be more flowery talk about nothing, praise for a practice without giving reasons that it deserves that praise, saying that it is more than just the will to believe without producing more than that.
