Unbeknown to them, the all end up at the same craps table later that night.
Bob is a priest and is viewed as an important person in his church. He has a fear of flying, yet had faith in the lord that he would arrive safely as he is on a "mission from 'god'". He had a dream that he should go to 'Vegas and win the money he needs to finance a new orphanage, and he has faith in the lord that he will in fact win the money he needs to do so.
Stan is an atheist and a freethinker/bright, ergo he puts no stock in superstitious claims about alleged 'gods' or good luck or bad luck etc. To Stan, commercial flying and playing craps is simply a matter of accepted risk and a form of gambling. He has no agenda, other than having fun for the weekend and maybe "getting lucky".
Joy doesn't concern herself too much about "spiritual" matters. To her, its a no-brainer to simply be a decent person to other people and try to surround herself with decent people also. She brought along her lucky rabbits foot (which wasn't too lucky for the rabbit who once had four of them).
Question: How many of these three people are exhibiting signs of faith?
Well, Bob the priest is, obviously. Even when he's down over a few grand, he never loses faith in the lord to help him win the funds necessary to do the lord's work.
Stan has no faith at all, and he's happy with that.
But didn't he have faith that he would arrive safely in 'Vegas and that his plane would not crash?
No.
He knows that commercial jet aircraft have mechanics that are scheduled to do routine maintenance. Their supervisors are supposed to come by and inspect their work and "sign off the red 'x'" when the job is completed. Safety inspectors and QA inspectors are supposed to come by and do routine safety spot-checks.
He knows that the chance that the mechanic, his supervisor, the safety inspector and the QA inspector all didn't do their jobs, it didn't show up as not done in the maintenance tracking computer program and that this will result in his plane crashing is all possible, but generally remote.
When he steps onto a commercial jet aircraft, he doesn't have "faith" that everyone did their jobs.
He knows it's a gamble. He assumes the reasonable degree of risk involved, and no one need to remind him to remain "faithful" to the idea that people are generally
good and responsible and wouldn't cheat or fudge, or "pencil whip" their inspections, because people *ARE* capable of doing such things.
There is a difference in him accepting a calculated reasonable degree of risk and that of remaining "faithful" to a bogus 'happy-happy; joy-joy' idea.
But isn't this a "Humian problem of induction"?
No.
If Stan said "the safety record of this airline is good, therefore I'm convinced that this plane is safe", then this would be a Humian Induction problem, *AND* it would be a secular version of faith, but Stan knows that the airline safety record of this airline is good, so he's willing to take a gamble on the airline since people are creatures of habit, and the form of that gamble is Duck Airlines 101. He is not convinced that he'll arrive safely ON THIS PLANE. He's simply gambling. That's why it's not faith or an unjustified inductive presumption.
But Stan hopes to "get lucky", so doesn't this smack of superstitious belief?
No.
He hopes that when all is said and done, he comes out having reaped some financial (and perhaps sexually) gain. One shouldn't read too much into people using such colloquial phrases, as they are often used in communication for communication's sake. (Atheists also often use "BC" instead of "BCE" when speaking to non-scientific "lay" people simply because the latter terminology is generally less well understood).
Does Joy exhibiting signs of faith? 'Hard to say. If Sally gave Joy the rabbits foot, and if she "loses her shirt" so to speak, and she ends up trash-canning the foot as she feels its been 'refuted', then no, Joy didn't remain faithful to the idea that the foot will come through for her. If she clutches it, strokes it and swears by it, even if she loses, then yes, she's maintaining faith in her "lucky" rabbits foot.
What if one gambles on a long shot and it comes through? Doesn't this justify ones actions?
No.
A poor choice that happens to come through is till a poor choice after one has "won". A "happy ending" event doesn't qualify as justification.
Playing craps in a single evening typically doesn't give statistically significant results, so one can't really say that 'x' has been "refuted" by playing a few games. However we can come up with a few rules of thumb regarding faith.
1. If 'faith' is already independently and significantly justified by external means, then maintaining faith has been a pointless exercise, as maintaining such faith when the evidence is 'right there' is completely superfluous and therefore a product of poor thinking.
2. If 'faith' is unjustified and/or seemingly unjustifiable and there is no cogent understanding of the process that goes from cause to effect, then remaining faithful to such an unjustified idea is a bad idea by definition. Again, a product of poor thinking.
Therefore "faith" is a product of poor thinking.
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