Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad
I thought that was induction?
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Yep. I think that's the crux of my point. Faith adds action to conclusions arrived at by induction. It is acting as something is true, on the basis of incomplete (but reasonable) evidence for it being true.
On that definition, I think two things emerge:
1) We all engage in mundane acts of faith with regularity (sitting in a chair without checking the strength of the legs), and
2) Religious faith is not a different kind of faith than that which is engaged in by people at large, every day.
I think there are two aspects to religious faith that differentiate it from mundane acts of faith. First, religious people accept as evidence a wider range of data than religious skeptics. A religious person may accept their own internal state of spiritual awareness as confirming evidence, which is not a kind of evidence that a religious skeptic has access to, or has any good reason to allow into the conversation.
Second, the actions undertaken by religious people (acting as if their conclusions are true) are generally more sweeping, more radical, and more controversial than the mundane actions of faith undertaken by everyone. If I believe my chair can support my weight, and I sit down in my chair, my action is a very mundane act of faith, and nobody takes much notice of it. If I believe that God is real and that he/she hates materialism, and I sell everything I own to live a life of simplicity and service, that's a conspicuous act of faith.
It's completely irrational if I believe that my present life, and the pleasures I enjoy in it, are the sum total of my existence. It only becomes rational if I am acting in faith (based on a chain of inductively supported conclusions) that there is a greater purpose to life, and that my present state of pleasure is less meaningful than that greater purpose.
Long answer to a short statement, but yes, UT, I would say that faith and induction are very similar in how they process evidence and conclusions, with the difference being that faith is acting upon those conclusions as if they were true, rather than simply holding them in escrow until better evidence comes along.