thejeff wrote:
How does anyone win a race if they have never won a race before? How did they stick to a training plan, knowing full well they had zero tangible evidence to support that they could one day win at the elite level? Because of faith: faith in their plan, faith in their coach, faith in the process. That requires incredible mental strength.
It is the weak minded who tell themselves that only proven winners can win. [It] is the weak minded who tell themselves that anything without physical evidence cannot be true.
Faith is for the strong.
Hooooboy. Here we go again. All right, let's take a couple minutes and parse this out. There is an enormous difference between true faith and an earned (and conditional) trust. The fact that people often apply the same word "faith" to each is part of the confusion.
I have "faith" in the training process because I have seen, earlier in my life, that when I train for something I improve. I have "faith" in my coach because other coaches have helped me improve, and because I know that my current coach has a record of success. I have "faith" in my current training plan because it's one that that coach and I have developed, because it's similar to successful plans s/he's concocted in the past, and because it doesn't seem to contradict training principles that I've found important. That "faith" is really an earned trust, and it is conditional. For instance, if additional experience/information shows me that the coach's athletes tend to do really well for about one year, then get hurt or just leave the sport, then my trust will be weakened: s/he may not be the coach for me, after all.
Similarly: I have "faith" in my spouse because s/he has earned my trust, and has done nothing that would seem to contradict that trust. But s/he could change (or at least I could get information about my spouse that I didn't have before), and that could weaken my trust.
Similarly: I have "faith" that the airplane I travel in won't crash, because I've had considerable personal experience in flying, and because I know the statistics about plane travel's being considerably safer (per person-mile) than traveling by car. But if there were a sudden rash of plane crashes, the trust that air travel had earned from me would likely diminish.
Compare that with true faith, which is indeed defined as belief without evidence. It doesn't always have to be in a religious context: some people have that kind of faith in the Yankees or Red Sox, and it is impervious to facts or logic. In fact, research has shown that that kind of "faith" is strengthened by contradictory evidence.
Similarly (and not to turn this into a political thread, but it's a good current example): over the past few months President Trump has shown on numerous occasions that he is not doing what he promised to do--in fact, that in some things he's doing the direct opposite of what he said he'd do. Yet a recent poll found that 98% of the people who voted for him do not regret it. In fact, a large number of those believe *more* strongly in him after each presidential misstep. That is true faith.
And the same is true of actual religious faith. It's why atheists' attempts to "convert" believers are largely doomed to fail: True believers will cling more strongly to their faith with each piece of contradictory evidence or reasoning that the atheists produce. Again, this phenomenon has been demonstrated repeatedly in well-designed research.
So, to correct thejeff (with whom I agree on some other things): Faith is for those who believe (and want to believe) in the *absence* of evidence and even *in spite of* contradictory evidence. I personally do not consider that kind of belief to be evidence of a strong mind--the opposite, actually--but I can see how others might.