bsherwood said:

Faith is an absolute virtue. You have faith in what you believe. I have faith in what I believe. David Koresh (sp?) had faith in what he believed……Faith is a virtue…what you have faith in may not be virtuous (sp? again…)

I’m wondering what is so virtuous about faith. Let’s use an example. I do have “faith” in science because obviously I can’t personally recreate every experiment ever done. But my faith is based on the idea that I could if I wanted to. For example, in one of my physics labs we redid a lot of famous experiments. Here is my lab report on measuring the charge of the electron. I don’t need to have “faith” on the charge of the electron, I did it myself. Thus, my faith in science is faith in the process and the people and it is underwritten, if you will, with the knowledge that I could personally verify the experiments (even though doing so is impractical).

So what is faith? If we ask the dictionary it is “confidence or trust in a person or thing” or “belief that is not based on proof“.

My faith is science is based on the former: I trust scientists and the scientific process. Your faith in God is based on the latter: in spite of the lack of evidence, you believe it anyway.

I’m not necessarily convinced either of these is a “virtue” (moral excellence; goodness; righteousness).