Weekendsolar

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= INTRO to using Dictionary Definition of Faith to help

The article on "faith" has avoided addressing the uncomfortable definition of "belief". But the dictionary is much more clear. Faith is "Belief without evidence." True, sometimes, the word faith is used to mean belief, but there's more going on.

In three short words, "characteristically without evidence", a very succient difference is captured and established.

It yields a much more comfortable and solid essescene of the sometimes cloudy distiction from "belief".

It is strongly supported by the dictionary.

Please take some time for the community to digest this revision.

Your confusing two different terms: Proof and evidence are not synonymous. Proof is absolute assurance in some idea or outcome; while evidence is something used to make a conclusion. Hardyplants (talk) 03:34, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Hardyplants for your observation. I'll research proof.

Chronic Ambiguity between "Faith" and "Belief" can and MUST be Solved

This article changes, but has been chronically weak in addressing the difference between our two different words of "Faith" and "Belief". The Webster dictionary has long had a solution that would greatly help this article. One of the definitions of "faith" is "2b1) firm belief in something for which there is no proof".http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith. Leaving this aspect of the definition of the english word out of this article creates much more reader confusion, where a lot less exists in the real world use of the language. Hence, we should start the article with "belief, characteristically without evidence." That is the character of the word that separates it from the character of the word "belief". Either way, the Chronic Ambiguity between "Faith" and "Belief" can and MUST be Solved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weekendsolar (talk • contribs) 03:43, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Faith has many different meanings and is dependent often on the person and context of use. Your 2B1 dictionary def is not one that people with faith would use, but seems to be the common perception that people that are antagonistic to religious faith use. You're right that faith and belief are not the same, you have to have some type of conviction to have faith in anything or person and it takes evidence or a basis to have that conviction. It does not take evidence to have belief, its just takes a mental agreement to an idea. If you want to improve the article lets use real sources instead of dictionary defs. Hardyplants (talk) 04:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

This is rooted in the difficulty of the fact that this one-word article must integrate both the simple English word (more of a dictionary entry) and the human historical idea (with is more geared to an encyclopedia entry). It is unfortunate Wikipedia doesn't link better with Wikidictionary. As a non-believer, I perceive the faithful as believing something largely in the absence of proof, and they generally do not deny it. They accept their beliefs on "faith", without evidence. This was lacking in the article, but not the real world. And I can't imagine why we wouldn't want to look to the very concise dictionary definitions for clues to the major human concepts around a word. This concept appears as one of two or three major concepts in the dictionary definition, because it's important to the human language as we use it. That is certainly worth referencing as it brings a large dose of clarity to the conflict with the word "belief". Thank you.

I would appreciate it if you would take a look at the current state of the article. Spotfixer (talk) 20:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)