RE: Faith: rational or irrational

["none of your business" <akosua_b@hotmail.com>]

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Dear Elaine,

just some initial thoughts:

1. i disagree with your claim that faith is not an intentional state. faith 
is an intentional state. although its grammer is different to belief. we say 
'i have faith" but not "i faith" as the latter is ungramattical. sure people 
say 'i have faith' but there is always something, or someone, or some 
situation that the have faith in or about. so 'faith' is always directed to 
something outside itself.

2. your argument is based on this distinction between 'thatness' and 
'howness' science deals with the latter, and that is the exclusive domain of 
science. that area of discorse religion cannot partake. religious foke are 
confined to the 'thatness' My first thoughts are that this distinction is 
just false. 'thatness' from what you have said seems to deal with ontology 
(correct me if i am wrong) the example you used was *that* the there is a 
universe is bad as it is taken for granted by both (sane) theist and the 
scientist. i think especially when you get to really high levels of 
scientific debate question *that* (which im taking to questions about 
ontology) are introduced. e.g. the debate about whether there is a wave or a 
partical is a debate that there is a wave rather than a partical. it is not 
a debate about how these different things operate, or how we are to find out 
about them. so too the debate about dark matter is (equally) a debate that 
there is dark matter . i mean, sciencist loves to posit the exitence of 
entities, evaluate the existential status of entities etc. equally, many 
religious stories deal with how human beings were created, how child birth 
came about, how the universe came into being etc.

3. i may have misinterpreted you. please give me a clearer account of these 
distinctions (thatness and thisness) and your argument for the seperation of 
scientific issues and religious issues along these lines.

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