What's so bad about faith in Atheism?

[lrkun]

I guess people have a hard time understanding this. Since there is no proof to support it's existence or unexistence. Faith is needed >.<

 

[TheFlyingBastard]

Faith is not a binary thing.
Theism, especially the likes of Christianity, requires a huge amount of irrational faith which can make you say or do things that may be harmful to yourself and others around you.
Not so in atheism. The faith that no god exists is more an assumption than a faith in the true sense of the word. This assumption doesn't drive you and you don't build your life around it.

One could even go as far as to call it an equivocation fallacy or something related. (When a white horse is not a horse?)

 

[DeathofSpeech]

a common theist statement is that science and/or atheism needs as much faith as religion. To which the discussion partner will go on to explenation that thats not the case. Why not just answer "so what?"

Yeah.

I have faith in that which demonstrates utility.
I don't know the mechanism that makes gravity or gives matter Mass. I observe that it works and works in a consistent and quantifiable way.

That is not unreasonable faith.
It is the confidence that despite having a gap in knowledge that until the explanation for how gravity works is found, that the explanation will not require setting a goat on fire.
In the meantime, I can't actually prove that burning goats isn't exactly what keeps the planets in orbit... but I find no utility in believing that, rather than that we just have a small but important gap in knowledge.

I have faith in something I can't prove... so what? Even the gap in my knowledge has utility because I can reproducibly quantify the effect it has.

 

[lrkun]

Faith is not a binary thing.
Theism, especially the likes of Christianity, requires a huge amount of irrational faith which can make you say or do things that may be harmful to yourself and others around you.
Not so in atheism. The faith that no god exists is more an assumption than a faith in the true sense of the word. This assumption doesn't drive you and you don't build your life around it.

One could even go as far as to call it an equivocation fallacy or something related. (When a white horse is not a horse?)

I'm having a hard time understand what you mean by assumption, because generally it is defined by a number of different definitions. What do you mean by the word assumption and how does it differ from faith?

The reason why I'm having a problem is because assumption requires no proof.

Nevertheless, I'm persuaded to agree with you. However, I'd like to understand more about your understanding with respect to assumption and faith.

 

[Yfelsung]

When you're speaking of the negative aspects of faith, I think a good definition would be "Belief in that without proof or even in the face of proof to the contrary".

I think that's what separates an atheist's "faith" in God's non existence and the faith of religious people.

If you show an atheist God, they will believe. If you produce the necessary evidence, a don't know one atheist who wouldn't change their stance. This isn't to say they wouldn't first test your evidence to the very limit, of course.

When you show many theists proof that a belief they have is false, such as young earth creationism, they still hold onto the belief.

There's nothing wrong with faith based on repeatable results (faith the sun will come up tomorrow) or faith derived from lack of evidence (there's no evidence for God, hence believing God doesn't exist).

There is a lot wrong with faith that causes you to ignore facts. Theists happen to have the negative form of faith in more abundance, especially members of fundamentalist sects of the Abrahamic faiths.

Therefore I would say that faith isn't the problem, it's how you use it; and that describes most things in this reality.

It is important that we never allow theists to compare their faith in God to our faith in, say, the sun coming up. They are false analogies used to either elevate our faith to their level or bring their faith down to ours. We must be sure to differentiate between reasonable faith and blind faith.

 

[TheFlyingBastard]

Faith is not a binary thing.
Theism, especially the likes of Christianity, requires a huge amount of irrational faith which can make you say or do things that may be harmful to yourself and others around you.
Not so in atheism. The faith that no god exists is more an assumption than a faith in the true sense of the word. This assumption doesn't drive you and you don't build your life around it.

One could even go as far as to call it an equivocation fallacy or something related. (When a white horse is not a horse?)

I'm having a hard time understand what you mean by assumption, because generally it is defined by a number of different definitions. What do you mean by the word assumption and how does it differ from faith?

The reason why I'm having a problem is because assumption requires no proof.

Nevertheless, I'm persuaded to agree with you. However, I'd like to understand more about your understanding with respect to assumption and faith.

Faith is a very active thing to have. It changes the way you look at all the things involved and makes it thus all the more difficult to get rid of if you turn out to be wrong.
Assumptions aren't. It's something that's just in the back of your mind and really doesn't influence the way you behave and is thus easier to shed should the opposite turn out to be true..

 

[lrkun]

Faith is a very active thing to have. It changes the way you look at all the things involved and makes it thus all the more difficult to get rid of if you turn out to be wrong.
Assumptions aren't. It's something that's just in the back of your mind and really doesn't influence the way you behave and is thus easier to shed should the opposite turn out to be true..

I see, I'll ponder on your definition.

Do you mean to say that before a person does an act, his or her faith influences his or her actions?

Assumptions on the other hand work like first principles?

 

[TheFlyingBastard]

I think that their faith would not necessarily directly affect their actions per se. Faith is something you build your life on. It's an ever-present factor that indirectly has you make decisions, since it mostly influences morality and such.

I don't know what "first principles" are, but I'd say assumptions are things that you hold true without evidence that do not really matter 99% of the time one way or another.

The store being open or closed tomorrow is not exactly a life-changing belief, something which governs your morality.
The non-existence of a god similarly is nothing to build your life on, nothing that influences your inherent human morality.
These can be considered assumptions.

However, believing that your spouse will stay with you in the morning is something you base your life on; that's having faith in them. It will make you consider your steps because now you think for two people.
Believing in a god that will reward you with heaven or hell for (not) upholding his laws is something one also bases their life on; it makes you follow that god's morality and it could push a certain agenda because that god's laws need to be uphold for everyone.

Of course, as stated earlier, it's not a binary thing. There are gray areas.