Faith is irrational

Okay, in order, your four points. 1) Faith is rational to the believer ^This is my point, it being rational to the believer has no weight whatsoever. Christians regularly tell me that they need no evidence, just faith. The problem with that is that you can have faith that anything is true. Can you IMAGINE someone saying "it is my belief that doing this and this will rid this person of cancer." Then the other doctor does it and ends up killing the patient. It being rational to ONE PERSON means nothing. This was my point in the beginning, faith is opposite to science. How do we know that dinos died millions of years ago? Cause one guy can test the bones, write down how he did it, send the bones to another country to be tested, and they get the same results. Now ask a geologist what transpired around the same date and you'll hear of a cataclysmic event. Now go ask the chemist, and you see the beauty of science; independent results all match. So when you say its rational to the believer, I can see already you should have taken more time to reflect on this idea. 2) Evidence can be provided in either qualitative of quantitative forms Let's say this is true for the sake of the debate. I agree with you on point 3 And for 4, I would direct you to the scientific method. As in Fact -> Hypothesis -> Test -> Theory Do not call the hypothesis part faith. They test and discard this based on evidence. And do not render the word faith as a hopeful future. Faith in this debate, is the religious faith Now, you're santa analogy is really far off, again, showing a lack of understand in the scientific method. Let us see then, if the child can describe santa's arrival, and then mail it off to people everywhere of all ages and sex, and see if we all confirm this. We don't, you say? Hypothesis discarded. But wait, he still believes because it has happened for him? Ah, delusion it is, persistence of a belief despite the current evidence, much like faith. Perception is as you say, personal, but not the way you think it is. This is about what's now been coined as "Middle World". Why do we think our keyboards are solid? Because our hands cannot go through them, it is therefore useful, evolutionary-wise, for our brains to create a notion of solidity. If we would live in an atom-sized reality, we would not call these things solid. If we would have a universe where we regularly go close to C, as in the speed of light, we would all understand Relativity a little better. So you see how you should be thinking now? When someone gives the analogy of finding a watch on the beach, you see where it comes from? The human perception that all needs a first cause, that complex things are always designed, that keyboards are solid, all the same, same with belief in god. Now, you're comparison to the shaman is where I noticed that you're one of those people who would call a science a faith. Again, failing to realize the scientific method, you say that the tribesman won't have faith that you pill works. Well this is the point! Demonstrate it, and if it works, over and over again, it will be accepted! But don't you go and tell him that he needs to BELIEVE IT ON faith. No, you do not have 'faith' in your tylenol, you are, over and over again, missing the point. When the pill has repeatedly worked, for thousands of people, it's not faith that you have when you say, try this, it will work. When the theory of gravity is thought of, do not be one of those people who tell me that I have faith that the theory of gravity will work once I throw the apple up in the air again. You repeatedly use faith as a word to replace hypothesis. I won't address your claims about the atom, anyone can look up the history of atomic theory and see that it wasn't needed that human eyes see through a lens what we thought was there. Either way, you're not showing how faith is rational. It was not rational for the scientist to assume fairies were holding to world together. They theorized something called ATOMS, so it wasn't FAITH that brought them there, faith would have been a whole world of things, what they realized was what the evidence was beginning to point at, and THAT isn't faith. ON TO MY OWN ARGUMENT FOR THIS ROUND Well, seeing as how all that proved far less challenging then what I had expected after my first debate, I'll move on to my own point now, and my final one. If I tell you that we are now in an alien time flow that is undetectable to us. If you are rational, you'd think this is nuts, as well you should. Because if I say here is X, but you cannot prove X that is what is classically known as "Unfalsifiability". And contrary to intuition, it is the sign of an extreme weakness in an argument. Another word for it is untestability, or something that cannot be tested. Now this is exactly what for example, god is, and faith is. The cleverest theologian, and there have been some, has never been able to demonstrated the existence of a DEISTIC god. Let alone the theistic one. Now the deistic god requires faith, but the theistic god requires in fact so much faith, not only to say I know a god did the beginning, but to say I know what he wants you to do, but I cannot show you how I know, or how you can test him too. That is faith. To be a fundamentalist you must assert that something can be forwarded by faith alone. That is irrational. The fact is, rationalism demands evidence-based reasoning. Faith is evidence-stripped reasoning. Going on and rambling without any data. I'll give you just one example. When the catholic church debated the existence of limbo, can you imagine this debate? Is there ANY chance that anybody in the room would bring in hard evidence, something testable? No, but they ruled on it, limbo was gone. How did they know? Let's just say it wasn't by applying the scientific method. Faith is irrational.