A Quote by Victor J. Stenger
The problem is that people think faith is something to be admired. In fact, faith means you believe in something for which you have no evidence.
Related Quotes
But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something - it doesn't matter what - in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that 'evolution itself is a matter of faith' so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence.
What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.
We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions.
Here's something that intrigues me: If you have faith, you believe regardless of the evidence, yet if there's ever evidence to support faith, everyone goes to it and points to it.
Faith, to be faith, must center around something that is not known. Faith, to be faith, must go beyond that for which there is confirming evidence. Faith, to be faith, must go into the unknown. Faith, to be faith, must walk to the edge of the light, and then a few steps into the darkness. If everything has to be known, if everything has to be explained, if everything has to be certified, then there is no need for faith. Indeed, there is no room for it.
I do believe that nice religious people make the world safe for extremists by teaching us [...] that faith is a virtue, teaching us that there's something good about holding beliefs without any substantiating evidence. Once you buy into that, [...] then the door is opened to extremists who defend their extremism by saying, 'Oh well, it's my faith, you can't touch it, you can't criticise my faith, I don't even need to defend it because faith is faith.'
The doing of something productive regardless of the outcome is an act of faith. The doing of a small something when a large something is too much for us is perhaps especially an act of faith. Faith means going forward by whatever means we can.
I think God is something that people use to avoid reality. I think faith allows people to reject what is right in front of our eyes, which is that thing, this life, this existence, this consciousness, or whatever word you want to use for it, is all we have, and all we'll ever have. I think people have faith because they want and need to believe in something, whatever that something is, because life can be hard and depressing and brutal if you don't.
People think of faith as being something that you don't really believe, a device in helping you believe simply it. Of course that is quite wrong. As Pascal says, faith is a gift of God. It is different from the proof of it. It is the kind of faith God himself places in the heart, of which the proof is often the instrument... He says of it, too, that it is the heart which is aware of God, and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not be reason.
Faith is not a means to something further. It is not something we do in order to get to heaven. Faith is its own end. To have faith is already to have come alive.
Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence; faith is daring to do something regardless of the consequences.
Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence. Faith is daring to do something regardless of the consequences.
To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.
Faith is the lack of evidence, and it shouldn't be that difficult to convince people that the right reason to believe something is that there is evidence for it. People do not innately go for this view, but nevertheless it is not that difficult to teach.
Most people think that faith means believing something; oftener it means trying something, giving it a chance to prove itself
Faith is the first step to understanding. Either it's the Word of an infallible God, the fallible words of men, or faith in what you personally believe. You've got to have faith in something. Believe me.
Related Authors
Alan Lightman Quotes
American
Physicist
Albert Einstein Quotes
German
Physicist
Brian Greene Quotes
American
Physicist
Freeman Dyson Quotes
American
Physicist
Gregory Benford Quotes
American
Physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes
American
Physicist
Lawrence M. Krauss Quotes
American
Physicist
Leonard Mlodinow Quotes
American
Physicist
Lisa Randall Quotes
American
Physicist
Michio Kaku Quotes
American
Physicist
Murray Gell-Mann Quotes
American
Physicist
Niels Bohr Quotes
Danish
Physicist
Richard P. Feynman Quotes
American
Physicist
Roger Penrose Quotes
English
Physicist
Stephen Hawking Quotes
English
Physicist
Werner Heisenberg Quotes
German
Physicist