Faith is a pathway to knowledge

==================Definitions==================="Faith: the belief that a proposition is true without any kind of information, a brain, or language.I suggest that faith is impossible, under these conditions. Yet Con adds, in Round 1, "just know that there are many people who DO believe that definition is an accurate representation of their faith". This statement doesn't make sense in the context of the definitions above. Since the definition of faith cannot be negotiated in this debate, we clearly need a tighter understanding ofevidence."I agree that the above definition is nonsensical, and agree with the overall idea that different claims require different amounts/kinds of evidence. The following definition that you provided for evidence is acceptable to me in this discussion:"the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid"I would add one caveat, that I would hope you could agree with. This definition uses the phrase "the available body of facts" and I would like to say that evidence as we will be using it can and always is a subset of the entire available body of evidence. When I claim I have evidence for a proposition, I'm claiming that I have some amount of evidence indicating that then proposition is true, rather than fact and every piece of information that can or could indicate its true. I think that's a straightforward distinction, but needs to be made.===============================================================Contention #1================="Presumably, knowledge is a belief for which there is sufficient evidence for it to be accepted as true. Again, what is considered evidence, and sufficient evidence, for a belief to be knowledge will depend on the context... ...Since context is all, let us examine my example from the previous round in a scientific context. We will only consider scientific facts and scientific evidence."I agreed it would be helpful to adopt a more specific definition of evidence, but not so string a definition as to require that every single piece of valid evidence therefore need be scientific. To now say that we can only consider "scientific" facts and evidence as valid forms of evidence in the greater context, namely when we are children listening to what our parents say" is moving the goal post as well as a red herring. (1)(2)Using the above definition whereby evidence is a piece of the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief is true or valid, having some authority provide you with information, such as your parents telling you some fact IS EVIDENCE. There are many things that vary the strength of this particular kind of evidence - for example - if your parent happens to be a world renowned physician, the evidence is definitely stronger, all other things being equal, than if your parent has some serious mental condition whereby they have delusions and otherwise tend to be delusional. These are clearly opposites on some spectrum, but the fact of the matter is that in most cases it is at least a fairly reasonable initial piece of evidence from which to start.The fact that the evidence, information from a parent, on its own isn't particularly reliable and or sufficient to concretely justify the belief, is irrelevant to the underlying fact that it is a form of evidence that is a starting point from which to begin building from the body of facts and information as a whole. When our parents tell us that piece of information, this evidence is not intended to prove or provide strong justification for the belief, but rather as I said a first step.The important part is that this IS STILL EVIDENCE, and not every single piece of evidence MUST BE scientific evidence when talking about all types of claims.===============================================================Contention #2================="Information from parents is not scientific evidence. They could be wrong, insane or lying for their own reasons."As I said, this moving the goalpost. The fact that its not "scientific evidence" is irrelevant. Whether they are wrong, insane, lying, or simply don't know what they are talking about is completely irrelevant to the point that it is evidence. When examining propositions to determine their truth, every single piece of information/evidence has the potential of being WRONG, just because you can imagine situations in which this piece of evidence could be unreliable, doesn't discount it as evidence to begin with. Just like in a courtroom, which you mentioned, eye-witness testimony is a valid form of evidence in many cases, but it is not some form of rigorous empirical science, which you are unfairly requiring. It does not, on its own, necessarily prove some claim, and is not immune to doubt or disproof, but once again it is evidence that needs to be accepted into the greater body of evidence for examination.===============================================================Contention #3================="This is not scientific evidence as observational studies do not measure cause and effect. The sick person might have recovered equally quickly without medicine, but we'll never know."As demonstrated, this is again moving the goalpost, and it is rapidly approaching an equivocation fallacy. Consider the following, in light of the requirements you are claiming for evidence:When you come in to the doctor's office with a sore throat, a cough, and some other symptoms, and the doctor listens to all your symptoms and looks at your long history of strep throat, he might conclude based on this preliminary evidence that you have strep throat. He has not done any actual tests on you to determine if this is true, and he hasn't claimed it is true or claims to have proven it is true, but he nonetheless accepts your testimony of your symptoms and your health history as EVIDENCE that leads him to believe you do have strep, and then decides because of this to conduct a strep test on you.What you are ultimately doing is saying that he conducts that test because he has faith that you have strep, which is absurd. People can be wrong, insane, or lying about their symptoms, so using your logic means that patients reported symptoms are in no way evidence ultimately supporting any of their medical decisions.NOTE: Don't fall into the trap of saying that because he is a doctor in this type of setting that somehow it changes the evidence to "scientific", because ultimately it comes down to evidence reported by one person to another to be examined in just the same way that a parent tells a child a piece of information and that is a form of evidence that can be examined.================================================================Contention #3================="So looking at this story within a scientific context we can see that the early faith about medicine was a pathway to knowledge."I have demonstrated that no faith was required, and the entire process involved at least SOME form of evidence.================================================================Contention #4================="My friend is in love with a man, and she thinks he must love her too. There has been no evidence of this, but she wants him to so badly that she starts to believe that he does. She has faith in his love, according to Con's definition. This faith motivates her to go up to him at a party in the corridor and start kissing him. And he responds by pushing her away and shouting, "get off me! What's wrong with you, creepy?" Her faith has been a pathway to knowledge - in this case, rather sad knowledge."This metaphor is nonsensical and I once again point you to my aforementioned example involving the radio advertisement. To claim that faith is a pathway to knowledge, in this sense, is to also accept that waking up or my desire for a McDonalds breakfast is a pathway to knowledge. If you accept this concept of a pathway to knowledge, I contend that it is fatuous one, and would leave it up to the safe keeping of the audience be the judge of this in voting.Improving on your metaphor a bit, if the woman in this story was told by a very trusted friend, one that has shown to be reliable in the past and one that has no evidence motivation to lie, that she was told directly by that man that he is in fact in love with her too, THAT WOULD BE EVIDENCE and therefore NO FAITH WAS REQUIRED.What she did was essentially a test of a hypothesis. In both cases, the actual pathway to knowledge was the action and subsequent experience of rejection, the test and result, that leads the woman to obtain the knowledge that the object of her love does not reciprocate. Just as I do not contend the evidence she had was the actual pathway to this knowledge in my example, its absurd for you to claim her lack of evidence was the pathway in your example.==================================================================Definitions==================(1) http://en.wikipedia.org... (2) http://en.wikipedia.org... =============================================