This creates the mistaken implication that there is some need for an affirmative belief to sum up to 100%, and I think it improperly relabels “uncertainty” as “faith.”
My agreement with this statement goes beyond simply voting you up. While I can see people having “faith” in placeholder evidence for something not yet found, I do not think this is a useful description when talking with people of faith.
In terms of easing the discussion between people of “faith” and people of “evidence” I do encourage finding a way to translate “evidence” into the language of faith. I just think the OP was a little off. My first attempt would be something such as, “My faith comes from induction and past experience.” When they say, “Me too!” you now have a foot in the door to talk about evidence without using the word.
If they say, “My faith comes from fuzzy feelings and what my elders taught me,” they are being rather honest about their faith and could probably have an intelligent conversation with you about the subject. Namely, you can contrast and compare how accurate fuzzy feelings and elders were in your life and see how they respond. Again, you can talk about evidence without using the word.
If they say, “Faith is believing in the face of uncertainty” the conversation can drift into “completing the job of evidence,” which is what I think the OP was talking about. If evidence gets you 90% of the way there, but you are acting as if it were true, than there is some amount of “faith” involved. But, in my opinion, there should be a 90% faith in the evidence you found, not 10% faith in the evidence you didn’t. They may have 10% faith in the non-evidence, but I would argue that this is where the rationalist line should be drawn. This is more obvious when there is 99% that is missing.
My agreement with this statement goes beyond simply voting you up. While I can see people having “faith” in placeholder evidence for something not yet found, I do not think this is a useful description when talking with people of faith.
In terms of easing the discussion between people of “faith” and people of “evidence” I do encourage finding a way to translate “evidence” into the language of faith. I just think the OP was a little off. My first attempt would be something such as, “My faith comes from induction and past experience.” When they say, “Me too!” you now have a foot in the door to talk about evidence without using the word.
If they say, “My faith comes from fuzzy feelings and what my elders taught me,” they are being rather honest about their faith and could probably have an intelligent conversation with you about the subject. Namely, you can contrast and compare how accurate fuzzy feelings and elders were in your life and see how they respond. Again, you can talk about evidence without using the word.
If they say, “Faith is believing in the face of uncertainty” the conversation can drift into “completing the job of evidence,” which is what I think the OP was talking about. If evidence gets you 90% of the way there, but you are acting as if it were true, than there is some amount of “faith” involved. But, in my opinion, there should be a 90% faith in the evidence you found, not 10% faith in the evidence you didn’t. They may have 10% faith in the non-evidence, but I would argue that this is where the rationalist line should be drawn. This is more obvious when there is 99% that is missing.