Sunday, April 24th, 2011
Daily Archive
Sunday 24 Apr 2011
Yaaay! Easter is here!
1: Welcome back, Chocolate. Mmmmm.
2: Welcome back, more than one small cup of coffee a day.
Goodbye, relentless headaches.
Sunday 24 Apr 2011
faith
No, not the George Michael song, but the real thing.
Tam suggests I’ve tortured logic to prove that faith and belief are different things. This is not my assertion, but the plain and simple fact, I’m just trying to find a clear way to express it- maybe Webster will have better luck at that than I.
From: Websters new Synonym Dictionary, 1973:
A DICTIONARY
OF
DISCRIMINATED SYNONYMS
WITH ANTONYMS AND
ANALOGOUS AND CONTRASTED WORDS
The technical difference between “Faith” and “Belief” is pretty clear- it’s not like, in 1973, people were that much more thoughtful than they are now, but at least by then, the slow campaign of dumbing down the language had not yet reached it’s current state.
(Click to embiggenate)
Now, reading the definition, as it stands, it’s easy to make the assumption that faith and belief are similar enough to be indistinguishable. “Someone told you about Jesus/Mahomet/the Flying Spaghetti monster, and you believed it, and that’s your faith”.
Erm, no. This is the anti-theists explanation for just about everything.
To people with no faith, faith and belief are the same thing. To people with Faith, there is clearly a difference.
Belief is widespread, and therefore common- common not in the “Widespread” use of the word, but common in this use oif the word:
6: hackneyed; trite.
7: of mediocre or inferior quality; mean; low: a rough-textured suit of the most common fabric.
8: coarse; vulgar: common manners.
Faith is rare, and therefore not common, in those same senses of the word.
On Easter Sunday, I pray for all that come here to read that Faith comes to you, as it has come to me.Faith does not exist in the world for you to become holier-than-thou, if so it certainly has not worked on me. Faith just does an excellent job of making the rest of creation make a lot more sense.
Much thanks to old friend Pascal for finding this and scanning it for me from his personal collection.
