Sorry,
If you want to assume euclidean geometry as the default fine, but it may be ambiguous if someone assumes you're talking about real geometry. For practical purposes in a global scale, non-euclidian geometry is used:
If a plane flies from the NY to LA to FL, back to NY, if the pilot tried to use a total of 180 degrees as the sum of his bearings, he would not return to NY.

@President Eden - they are not equal in faith at all. Both require the exact same faith in our senses, but the faith in the soul and what you will receive in the afterlife is in addition to the faith required in your sense being accurate.

"@President Eden - they are not equal in faith at all. Both require the exact same faith in our senses, but the faith in the soul and what you will receive in the afterlife is in addition to the faith required in your sense being accurate"

No, it doesn't. You can believe in an afterlife without believing in your senses or memory. You need senses/memory to discern anything as being "factual" -- the existence/nonexistence of an afterlife is indiscernible by the senses.

Pres Eden,
I can't very well what?
Its not varying degrees of faith, it is two separate faith premises. You can keep going with it and say:
"Given that my senses and memory are functioning properly, I have faith that I will be granted 72 virgins in the afterlife, and on an unrelated note, having faith that my senses and memory are functioning properly, and since I have faith that I am here typing, and that you are here reading this, and since I have faith that my keyboard is functioning properly and the text on my screen is not an illusion, etc.. etc..."
It is impractical to take that whole lump thing together, you may share some of my faiths and disagree with others. We won't have a discussion on the ones we agree (or disagree on) but we may with the others.

No, it doesn't. You can believe in an afterlife without believing in your senses or memory. You need senses/memory to discern anything as being "factual" -- the existence/nonexistence of an afterlife is indiscernible by the senses.

I argue that you can't:
If you have faith in your senses and
If your senses tell you that you are already dead and you can see all your dead relatives, and a big guy in a white beard and 72 virgins, you no longer have faith in the afterlife, you know the afterlife is.
If you can remember dying, then you know the afterlife is.

*very well ignore that part, sorry for confusion.

If this were a practical discussion... we'd be in some trouble. =P Of course it's impractical... the whole notion of not REALLY knowing if your senses work or not is impractical, because regardless of whether they do or not you're forced to use them. The point remains that one cannot verify whether or not his/her senses and memory work... and that, by extension, one cannot verify the truth of any objective statement, and so no objective "knowledge" is attainable.

"If you have faith in your senses and
If your senses tell you that you are already dead and you can see all your dead relatives, and a big guy in a white beard and 72 virgins, you no longer have faith in the afterlife, you know the afterlife is.
If you can remember dying, then you know the afterlife is."

I think I see what you're going at here, but once you're dead, you're not using your senses, presumably. Your sensory organs are, well, dead. Not functioning. Gone. Destroyed. etc. So is memory, as a function of the rotting brain. I have no clue what one would use to 'sense' or 'observe' being in the afterlife... if someone did, the whole question of an afterlife would be unraveled already.

But the senses we use -- the senses and memory I've been citing -- they're physical. Natural. Organic. They don't survive bodily death.

That's why people try to remove the "objective" part of "knowledge"
and you may try to go further and say:
"scientific knowledge is systematic knowledge of the nature of existing things as we perceive them, rather than as they are in themselves" - wiki: knowledge

but it is still practical scientific knowledge.

@LordVipor, pilots don't sum their bearings any how. They have to land and then take off on a different runway so their entry and exit are at different points. Same with ships coming and going from ports, although theirs is a little more accurate. however, as one who has done surveying to pay for college, I do know what you are getting about that the curvature of the earth, even over a few square miles, can result in what we called closing being off by a few seconds or even minutes with large jobs and more than just a few angles to shoot.

But the senses we use -- the senses and memory I've been citing -- they're physical. Natural. Organic. They don't survive bodily death.

so then maybe if you see all those things, and remember all those things, maybe your senses are tricking you and youre just crazy and not dead, and you may lose faith in your senses.
If everything we know is through our senses, and everything we believe is not then there is another clear distinction between "I believe" and "I know".

@Draug, I was just using it as an example (after take off and before landing, the general bearing they get to after landing and takeoff maneuvers). But I think that you got my point anyways.

(ps. sorry if I exploded/hijacked the topic... I was just kinda bored and this looked like fun.)

Wow, I missed a lot...

OK, here's a challenge I give to you all--as concisely as you can, catch me up, even looking over those briefly, I love these discussions, but don't want to read 60 or so messages to get back into this.

And if anyone asked me a question, now that I'm back from my final, I'll happily answer if you ask again, sorry.

Not trying to be a jerk, but you post 1000+ responses that you expect us to read, but can't be bothered to read a handful of short replies without a summary?

*1000+ word

First, I don't EXPECT anyone to read what I say, it's up to you.

Second, I did read them, but reading 60+ responses is a huge task, and, as many do with my epic responses when there are a ton, I just skimmed them.

Third, I was just asking, politely, if anyone could give just a quick summary, ie, "Person X thinks basically this in so many words and Person Y that and we were going on about that until Person Z chimed to basically say such and such and finally TGM came along to post a quick poem.) ;)

I'd take the time to read through it. The last two pages are kinda interesting (if I may so so myself)

Now I will have to read it all again lol...

OK, reading through and trying to catch up, reading all responses so hang on.

@Maniac:
To clarify on how I would or could “know” the bridge was stable, I would examine the bridge; now, for everyday life, obviously we cannot, or, to be more to the point, will not take the time to thoroughly examine every single bit of matter, that’s rather impractical. However, if I see ahead of me 20 cars or so drive across the bridge with no sign whatsoever of it buckling, it has been that way every day I have driven over it for years, and as I approach there appears to be no sign of the bridge to be anything but stable, I should say then that there is no substantial reason to call the bridge’s stability into doubt, and thus we may affirm our knowledge of the bridge’s stability; I will grant that that is somewhat of a mere inference based upon facts and does not completely prove the stability of the bridge, but, again, as we have such a breadth of previous experience to draw on, we have no reason, or at least no good reason, to consider our proof insufficient for the point it attempts to make, even if it is admittedly incomplete. And incomplete proof, however, is still a proof; to adapt that example to God, as seems to be the trend here, if God revealed his existence yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on for every day of my life, and did so in a manner that left me, like the bridge that never gives over 20 years, no substantial reason to doubt of his existence as it has been so consistently proven, and was proven DIRECTLY (ie, God everyday said in a loud booming voice, “HIYA, OBIWANOBIWAN! THOU SHATL GO FORTH AND PROMOTE THE UBERMENSCH TODAY!” or performed an “Act of God” that could be discerned to be ONLY an “Act of God” and is directly revealed to be so by the Big Man Upstairs Himself) then that should be a proof of his existence, however incomplete, and, to be sure, better than NO proof. An incomplete proof does NOT extend to the Bible and those arguments, as they are so far past that they cannot be trusted ad valid (especially where passages contradict.) Also, as seems so aching apparent I’m sure, I must concede the issue of induction, that no matter how much knowledge I have that this is how the bridge/God WAS, or how stable it WAS, that tomorrow, the laws of physics just might up and change and all is different, I cannot disprove that, as I cannot tell the future or relate the constancy of that kind. However, I believe that this can be met and at least put to rest for practical uses by applying the notion that induction may be an ever-present issue, but is only practical insofar as it relates to the constancy of the conditions it might theoretically alter; to put it another way, the Poles are frigid in their temperatures, and so, though I cannot totally prove it will not be 100 degrees at the North Pole tomorrow, such is the constancy of the pole’s condition, ie, it’s been frigid for as long as I’ve known it to exist in the manner it does and there is no immediate reason (ie, the sun is falling directly on top of it) to EXPECT it to be 100 degrees tomorrow, this incomplete proof may stave off induction’s issues for practical purposes, and allow us to incorporate the knowledge, based upon incomplete proofs though it may be, of the North Pole’s frigid climate into our minds and thought processes.

@Pete U:
That’s not what I mean by more elaborate…perhaps a better word for it is “creative” or, to be more direct to the point I’m trying to make, “fanciful?” Knowledge roots us in proving points and having things rooted in a logic that is coherent and discernable and, most importantly, rational; faith-based thought allows you to do away with that in favor of more fanciful, “elaborate” ideas, elaborate in the sense that clearly the idea of all the animals of the world being paired by a 600 year old man onto a boat two by two with none eating each other and the boat not being overloaded with feces over those forty days while the world is flooded takes…well, it takes non-rational thinking, it allows for a more elaborate, fanciful story than the logic of knowledge-based thought and the Sciences can provide, as once you through logic out the window and allow anything to happen for any reason, or make up logic that suits your story and have that logic predicated on thought…well, it does sound more fanciful and a more elaborately colored story. After all, which sounds the more elaborate story—a meteorological and other physical elements combined to flood a small area or God, the Almighty and powerful, seeing the land become desiccated and “wicked,” finds a man, a man of 600 years or more, and tells him to build this massive boat by himself and somehow herd all the animals of the world onto it two by two while not having them eat or destroy each other so it can rain forty days and forty nights and there’ll be a better world for it, this reset button? I know one story was more elaborate in its plot and spectacle…and no surprise, it’s also the one that’s more elaborate in its explanation for how things happened…

@Thucy:

I agree with Draug's, that's mine as well, Cogito Ergo Sum...

And in general:

Looking over the last two pages (which WERE interesting, obiwanobiwan apologizes for not wanting to read them, he was feeling rather lazy after finally finishing his college Bio101 Final Exam lol) it seems as though we're (or rather, you all are) asking questions more along the lines of what qualifies as knowledge and faith, and if those are universal in their strengths or have different degrees of validity, and then Thucy attempted to use an almost Cartesian or Hume-like skepticism to try and test the limits of knowledge and question what can be known.

And actually, this is probably a bad and totally hole-ridden thought, but it just popped in my head just now so I'll toss it out...

Regarding Thucy's questioning what can be known...

Suppose you can disprove existence--wouldn't that, in turn, prove NON-existence, as if you deny the fact that things can exist then they must not exist, lest there be some other form between the two, but as this would ahve to involve some sort of existence to have it pulled away from non-existence, that doesn't seem plausible, so...

Can you disprove the knowlede, Thucy, I have that there is non-existence, or that non-existence is necessary, as either things do exist in which case we must have non-existence to tell that they do in the same way that we cannot truly differentiate "good" from evil (forgetting for the moment I don't believe in either) without both to constrast against each other, or, if nothing really does exist..then right there is non-existence, or at least a sort of argument/state of existence that is not existence itself and so if it is not non-existence per se than at least mirrors it in the sense of not existing and thus contrasting that state?

OK, caught up :P

I don't pretend to know if there is something besides simply existing or not existing, what those words truly mean, and what things do and don't exist.

Knowledge is justified true belief.

Knowledge is a species of belief. It's belief that is true (matches what actually is) and justified (includes sufficient grounds for the knower to determine whether it matches what actually is).

Happy to help.

How did this thread go on so long, anyway?

That wasn't the question Acomist, I'm not asking for you to define belief and knowledge, but rather which of the two is more valuable to what we might call the human spirit for lack of a better term...in other words, is it better for us as beings to take that "leap of faith" and to "bee-leeeeve," or else to know, stone cold, what the answer is, with no room for speculation.

Is faith stronger than knowledge because you have to committ to the unknown and make that leap of faith, or is knowledge stronger as you must prove discern a rational explanation and guiding way?

Yes, it is acosmist.

The problem is you can never know what's true and what's not, so though you may know some things, it is also possible that you know nothing.

If you believe that the sky is blue and your justification is that you see that it is blue, it is only knowledge if it is really is blue. If it is not, you do not know it, though you think you do know it.

In addition, your method for justifying can be called into question in almost every case.

Obiwan - Disagree. Any detailed scientific knowledge based explanation is bound to be more complex and elaborate than 'God did it'. From the formation of the weather system, to precipitation, the flow patterns of the water, explanations of why it didn't drain away - stunningly complex. The spectacle is the same, as nature is spectacular. The plot - well, if you consider the plot for the Biblical version, it's so full of holes it's amazing.

That's still not what I meant; I didn't want to put it this way, as I really don't wish to irk the religious here (too much) but what I mean by elaborate:

What would make the better movie, "elaborate" meaning here "spectacle" or " story-like.)

So what works better as a story, the Bible or a Biology textbook.

Now what's more CORRECT--just what's more exciting or workable as a story...so all plotholes aside, unless you want to say that the David Cloud of Cumulus had a mighty struggle and slew the Goliath Cloud... ;)