What Does Faith Mean? Same as in St. Thomas' Day!

Tyrone

status

why do you apply logic and evidence to literally everything in life—health, money, decisions—but abandon it when it comes to the bible?

you don’t run your life on faith when it comes to doctors, mechanics, or finances. you demand evidence. so why lower the standard here?

what’s the justification for using a completely different set of rules for one belief?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

When I stopped drinking a pint of beer every evening on the day of St. Lucy, I was exercising FAITH on three items:

• that I did not have a fractured bone in the left toe
• that I did have very probably gout
• and that alcohol is one factor that makes gout occur.

Now, it's only one, and some have been pushing other risk factors, but these three things were NOT things I could have checked for myself, I had to have FAITH in what the doctors said, because of their expertise.

Faith isn't absence of logic, it's confidence in someone who knows better trumping what the own logic would have one believe (I had gone to the hospital believing I had a fracture).

Tyrone

Hans-Georg Lundahl You dont know what the word 'faith' means. You're trying to redefine it to make your religious beliefs sound as reasonable as trusting a doctor, and it's a pathetic and dishonest comparison.

You didn't have 'faith' in your doctor. You had trust based on EVIDENCE. You trusted them because doctors have years of medical training, they use diagnostic tools like x-rays, they understand biochemistry, and there is a massive, publicly verifiable track record of them successfully diagnosing and treating things like gout. Their expertise is built on a mountain of EVIDENCE. If your doctor told you to treat your gout by sacrificing a goat, you'd get a new doctor.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Yes, I do know.

"You're trying to redefine it to make your religious beliefs sound as reasonable as trusting a doctor"

Well, that's the meaning.

I answer that, Sacred doctrine is a science. We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like. There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic. So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed. Hence, just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God.

Summa Theologiae, I Pars, Q 1, A 2, Corpus of the article.

Tyrone

Hans-Georg Lundahl You think quoting a 13th-century monk proves what 'faith' means today? You're just hiding behind Thomas Aquinas because you got caught dishonestly comparing religious faith to trusting a doctor.

You can call your 'sacred doctrine' a 'science' all you want, but it's not. Real science is based on testable evidence. Yours is based on 'principles revealed by God', which is just a fancy way of saying you have to believe it with no evidence.

Your analogy of a musician and a mathematician is stupid. A musician can test the principles of harmony for themselves. You cannot test your 'revealed' principles. You just have to believe.

You didnt answer the point. You just tried to hide behind a quote from a guy who lived before the scientific method was even invented. You're trying to redefine faith to make it sound reasonable, and when you got called out, you ran away to a medieval philosopher.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"what 'faith' means today?"

Faith is about the Catholic religion, which is the exact same one today and in his day.

"A musician can test the principles of harmony for themselves."

Yes, but a beginner can't.

"before the scientific method was even invented"

What the H...l do you mean by "the scientific method"? Denial of God as explanation?

Because, if it means anything else, St. Thomas as well as his more natural sciences oriented mentor St. Albert were great exponents of "scientific method" if it means doing science with a rational method.

And by the way, as there are different sciences and different questions in each science, there is no "one" scientific method.