Llanzlan Klazmon:
faith = accepting a proposition without evidence. Get it. Looking for
evidence of something implies that you do not have faith.

Davoud:
Your definition is faulty. You might as well get used to this:
/everyone/ has faith. A scientist looking for evidence of something has
faith that it /may/ be findable. She has /faith/ in her
instruments/technique/mental abilities. She even has faith in her
unproven theory; otherwise she wouldn't be seeking evidence to support
it.

Likewise, anyone who expects to live to see tomorrow has faith. There
is no evidence that any one of us will see tomorrow, though there may
be evidence to the contrary for certain individuals -- the very ill and
the very old, for example.

Llanzlan Klazmon:
Look up equivocation fallacy. You are using a different meaning of the word
faith. Stepping out to cross the road after looking and listening to check
that no vehicles are approaching can be called an act of faith. But it
based on past experience, observation and the expectation that the world
works in a consistant way. This has nothing to do with the term faith as
used in the religious sense.

This is a matter of opinion, not of fact. You can put as fine a point
on the definition as you wish, but it's all faith. I don't think that
religious faith -- believing in the unproven and possibly unprovable --
is in any way distinct from the examples I gave. And it certainly isn't
different from faith that there are other intelligences in the
universe, which is unproven and possibly unprovable.

Speaking of which, I have no problem with privately funded SETI, but
I'm with the majority on this one -- I don't want my tax dollars
funding SETI; there is much more important science to be funded. I have
very little /faith/ in the chance of success. As for the idea that
there /could/ be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, as far as
I know this is true. SETI is a perfect racket for the /SETI/ /faithful/
, because they can justly claim that there is hope until every place in
the universe that could support intelligent life has been inspected.

Davoud

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