Obviously I can't speak for every atheist, but my views amount to this:

Based on what I've seen, experienced, and reasoned in this world, I have found no good reason to believe in any deity.  And, if I don't have a good reason to believe in something, I won't.

If you think that such a position means that I secretly have faith, I can only respectfully disagree.  Perhaps I see "faith" differently.

Its not actually an option. If you can't make a logical argument for a belief it has faith as its basis, even if there is a logical argument for it (because if you don't know the logical argument then your belief is still not based in logic). 

Having found no reason to believe in something is only partial logic to not believe it, from there it is faith that your logic and reasoning to that point had you headed in the right direction that you use to make a leap to the conclusion, it is a conclusion reached based on a leap of faith.  If not then what do you use to take you the rest of the way to a conclusion?

How do you see faith that might change this?

I'm not sure that I agree that the lack of belief in something (like god) is the same thing as a belief in something.  If I were to propose some completely made up fantasy creature--the Sperzitt, an eighteen-headed flying eggplant monster--and I ask if you believe in such a thing, and you say "no"... well, I'm not sure that I would describe you as "believing" something new.  Or that I would insist that your lack of belief is somehow "faith-based."

But, that aside, let me construct a small scenario, touching on how I see "logic," "belief" and "faith," and maybe that will serve as a quickish answer:

Let's say that I were to look in the TV Guide and see that there's going to be a marathon of Designing Women on tonight, starting at 8pm.  I would "believe" the TV Guide--I would believe that Designing Women would indeed be on at the specified time.

Now, I don't think that such a belief would require "faith" on my part.  After all, I've read TV Guide in the past, and it hasn't steered me wrong; every time it's said that a television show would be on... lo and behold, it was.  And based on everything I would have heard or known about TV Guide, I wouldn't suspect any duplicity on its part.

And so I would eagerly look foward to an evening with Delta Burke, Meshach Taylor, and the (underratedly scrumptious) Annie Potts.

But now, suppose that later on that same day, I overheard a radio commercial advertising a New Series... and--WTF--it's on the same time and station that Designing Women is supposed to be on!  Ack.  Crisis.  I believe x to be true (Designing Women), but now there is a claim that not-x (New Series) is true.

My mind explodes at supposing x and not-x, and so I feel compelled to seek out new information, because deep down I reject the idea that x and not-x coexist.  It isn't "logical."

I rush home to the TV Guide and re-examine it.  And, to my shock and chagrin, I make a telling discovery: the TV Guide is from 1989.  Oh yeah, I think, why in the world would anyone watch Designing Women in 2009 (Potts notwithstanding)?

The day is saved.  New information has allowed me to reorder my beliefs so that now, instead of x and not-x, I have x and y.

However, if I now continued to believe that Designing Women would be on tonight instead of the New Series... I hold that that belief would be grounded in faith.

I don't know if such a scenario helps anyone to understand where I'm coming from or not, but I think it's fairly accurate in demonstrating my "beliefs on belief" in action.  Now, I can go farther and really work on crafting the definitions that must gird these sorts of scenarios, but that would be a very taxing endeavor... and it's 3:30am where I am. :)

I think that "having found no reason to believe in something" is an excellent reason "to not believe it."  If I must sacrifice logic to get there, or accept "partial logic," then so be it.

But I really don't think that logic is at stake, here.  The way you seem to treat logic feels very foreign to me.  I see logic more as an ordering tool--a way to find and root out contradiction.  Whereas, it seems like you feel that every belief that a person takes on must be carefully pre-fitted into a syllogism.

Hmm... I really don't like this sentiment at all.

It seems to suggest that, not only must a person's beliefs be strictly "based on logic" somehow (which, imo, is a different sentiment than the one I like to endorse--that beliefs "be logical," i.e., non-contradictory)... but that having beliefs "based on logic" isn't enough, because then you'll find that faith is required to trust in the results of your logic and reasoning.

Yeah, anyways, I'm sure I could go on (and on), and probably will in the future when I see the replies, but for tonight I've got to get to bed! :)

Misunderstanding on our topic: Legitimate vs. Illegitimate

     I was under the impression we were discussing the means of obtaining a legitimate belief. What I meant by legitimate belief refers to gaining a belief through a method which grantees the belief is not false (aka knowledge or ‘absolute’ knowledge as you say). This is the subject of epistemology. That is why every time you brought up a belief that hadn’t dealt with its ‘legitimacy’ I found it irrelevant.

     So yes, of course your scenario is possible in the sense of illegitimate beliefs. I never meant to imply such illegitimate beliefs didn’t exist. In the same way a person could simply believe the moon was made of cheese: A person could believe the CD player in his car makes pancakes. In the same way you pose a person believing that sense data could only mean one thing to them: A person could believe that Y could only mean 4 in the equation Y x 0 = 0. I find them both “illegitimate” according to my issue of a method of truth. Again, apparently you’re not discussing a method of truth.

    (And I must add, a person who believes sensedataZ must mean Y… just may find himself recanting it by force at little moments in their life: e.g. “Oh it totally looked like a man from where I was standing.”) Butbutbut :P not the issue now…

The new root problem between us:

     So from what I gather you agree that what you call ‘absolute’ knowledge can’t be obtained through sense data. But you think there is some kind of other position amidst ‘absolutely’ knowing something and not knowing it (or however you say it, honestly I haven’t been able to mimic that kind of sophistry). You’re calling it mere belief or ‘regular knowledge’.

     I read your point “A and B” several times and I’m finding it difficult to follow, sorry. I have my suspicions but maybe you can make it clearer for me.

Bachelor Issue

    You haven’t understood what kind of a statement I was making. It was an analytical one which has nothing to do with the outer world. It has to do with what meaning is assigned to a word in one’s mind. Analytical statements, in that specific use, are not claiming that what’s being defined even exists in the world or not. It’s basically defining a word in your mind.

    I gave the analytical statement as an example of the kind of problem I was getting at with empiricism (in that the doctrines of the method could be examined in your mind and be realized false). Wherein, if I have assigned such a meaning to the word “bachelor”, it would be contradictory in my own mind to call it something opposing to what I defined it as. Thus it’s a statement I could examine and recognize its truth or falseness within the confines of my own mind.

Fine Line

    When I say that I don’t come to the belief of “Y key to computer screen” through sense data it may be difficult from me to explain clearly. As I understand sense data represents a million possibilities and tells me nothing further I can’t use it to come to the correct belief as to what it represents. Rather, I would need a something (method) that was able to legitimately tell me about the sense data staring me in the face (namely, what it represents). The difference is “using” sense data (empirical method) to come to the truth about what sense data represents versus relying on a different method to tell you about what sense data represents.

   According to the example, God can impute (drill a hole in my head and deliver via pixie dust) this information as to what the sense data I’m receiving represents. The sense data is certainly not telling me what it represents by my analysis.

Sqrl said: "If you can't make a logical argument for a belief it has faith as its basis"

donathos said: "I'm not sure that I agree that the lack of belief in something (like god) is the same thing as a belief in something.  If I were to propose some completely made up fantasy creature--the Sperzitt, an eighteen-headed flying eggplant monster--and I ask if you believe in such a thing, and you say "no"... well, I'm not sure that I would describe you as "believing" something new.  Or that I would insist that your lack of belief is somehow "faith-based.""

A lack of belief does not constitute a belief.  But a lack of belief based on something constitutes a belief in your basis to disbelieve. So if you have a reason to disbelieve then you have a new belief, namely the thing that made you rule out the belief.

donathos said: "But, that aside, let me construct a small scenario, touching on how I see "logic," "belief" and "faith," and maybe that will serve as a quickish answer:

Let's say that I were to look in the TV Guide and see that there's going to be a marathon of Designing Women on tonight, starting at 8pm.  I would "believe" the TV Guide--I would believe that Designing Women would indeed be on at the specified time.

Now, I don't think that such a belief would require "faith" on my part.  After all, I've read TV Guide in the past, and it hasn't steered me wrong; every time it's said that a television show would be on... lo and behold, it was.  And based on everything I would have heard or known about TV Guide, I wouldn't suspect any duplicity on its part.

And so I would eagerly look foward to an evening with Delta Burke, Meshach Taylor, and the (underratedly scrumptious) Annie Potts."

First let me say this example is fundamentally different from what you are trying to make it analogous to.  Specifically this example used the TV Guide which has a long track record of delivering an accurate TV schedule in the vast majority of cases.

With that said you do still use faith here in two ways.  You have faith that no errors were made by the TV Guide staff, and you have faith that you read it correctly. Both of which are real possibilities even if in this example specifically they are minor possibilities.

The example attempts to highlight absurdity in the reasoning I'm using by showing that it produces an untenable standard when applied to an everyday example.  It falls short of this because the example, unlike the case I applied it to, has observable evidence and sound logic that supports the conclusion that what you saw in the TV Guide is correct.

With that said there are still cases where TV guide has gotten the information wrong, or like you show later, people can misread/misremember the information.  Either way you must trust (ie have faith) that this is not one of those times.  If you accept that you are trusting that this time they are correct then you are accepting my argument that you use faith to make the final leap to the conclusion of what time your show is on. 

But this is a very technical use of the argument and I'm not advocating its use where there is observable evidence supporting a position.  With that said the use of these standards holds up in all cases, although it may produce a result that clashes with the daily usage of the words faith and belief when used in cases where observable evidence exists and as a result a need for rigorous scrutiny of positions does not exist.

donathos said: "But now, suppose that later on that same day, I overheard a radio commercial advertising a New Series... and--WTF--it's on the same time and station that Designing Women is supposed to be on!  Ack.  Crisis.  I believe x to be true (Designing Women), but now there is a claim that not-x (New Series) is true.

My mind explodes at supposing x and not-x, and so I feel compelled to seek out new information, because deep down I reject the idea that x and not-x coexist.  It isn't "logical."

I rush home to the TV Guide and re-examine it.  And, to my shock and chagrin, I make a telling discovery: the TV Guide is from 1989.  Oh yeah, I think, why in the world would anyone watch Designing Women in 2009 (Potts notwithstanding)?

The day is saved.  New information has allowed me to reorder my beliefs so that now, instead of x and not-x, I have x and y.

However, if I now continued to believe that Designing Women would be on tonight instead of the New Series... I hold that that belief would be grounded in faith."

Again here you are trusting (ie having faith) that the information was passed to the radio personality correctly, that he read it correctly, and that you heard it correctly.  Faith plays a role in the exchange of information in many aspects of every day life.  This is why scientific studies use large samples, confidence intervals, etc...  Everyday life does not require rigorous proof, so people don't wait for it, they use probability of correctness instead, and they assess that probability from past experiences with direct observations.  

I do want to note that where it concerns your perception this is not questioning one's senses in the larger sense but the smaller sense. Questioning whether you've made a mistake in a specific instance (smaller sense) as opposed to questioning whether any input can be trusted at all (larger sense).

Sqrl said: "Having found no reason to believe in something is only partial logic to not believe it."

donathos said: "I think that "having found no reason to believe in something" is an excellent reason "to not believe it."  If I must sacrifice logic to get there, or accept "partial logic," then so be it.

But I really don't think that logic is at stake, here.  The way you seem to treat logic feels very foreign to me.  I see logic more as an ordering tool--a way to find and root out contradiction.  Whereas, it seems like you feel that every belief that a person takes on must be carefully pre-fitted into a syllogism."

You're moving away from the argument I'm making here. I'm not trying to confine people's beliefs at all.  I have no objection in someone's choice to believe something...I just take issue if they assert it as a fully logical conclusion if it isn't.  To be clear on your last point I'll reiterate that I'm not advocating a constant classification of every professed belief. 

Sqrl said: "from there it is faith that your logic and reasoning to that point had you headed in the right direction that you use to make a leap to the conclusion"

donathos said:  "Hmm... I really don't like this sentiment at all.

It seems to suggest that, not only must a person's beliefs be strictly "based on logic" somehow (which, imo, is a different sentiment than the one I like to endorse--that beliefs "be logical," i.e., non-contradictory)... but that having beliefs "based on logic" isn't enough, because then you'll find that faith is required to trust in the results of your logic and reasoning.

Yeah, anyways, I'm sure I could go on (and on), and probably will in the future when I see the replies, but for tonight I've got to get to bed! :)"

I'm not making any demands on the way people reach a belief...only taking issue with how they characterize them to others...or specifically mischaracterize them to others.  To reiterate what I said above in perhaps a new way, I'm not requiring rigorous standards to be used as a test for holding a belief. I'm saying that if you want to say "my belief is logical" then you should be able to show how others can use logic to arrive at that belief and no other.

What I'm personally advocating is that where it concerns cases of very little or no evidence such standards must be used because it is precisely in this cases where mistakes in logic run rampant in the absence of facts to bind and catch the errors. 

To give you an example of why I bring this up I would point to the many many debates I have about global warming.  One of the constant factors in these debates is the insistence for supporting evidence of factual and logical claims.  We debate ideas back and forth but often ideas are based on data and people ask for proof of that data from a source.  This is an example of where casually someone's word is considered "taking it on faith" and a scientific paper is "evidence".  We could show that even this "evidence" probably contains a bit of faith at some level but the point is that by moving it away from a single person expressing a belief to something everyone can look at and check and assess for themselves it submits itself to the agreement of multiple senses rather than relying on the fallable senses of a single individual.

The reason I draw the line at this evidence issue can be explained quite clearly and actually goes back to the larger sense of being able to trust human senses.  In that case it is the overwhelming agreement of people on what we perceive that makes trusting our senses legitimate...after all if we all disagreed on what we perceived I doubt we would find our senses so useful. In cases where evidence exists for a position people can examine it and decide for themselves, but in cases like the "god" question there is no evidence and the only thing people can examine for themselves is the logic of others to see if they follow and agree with it.

PS - "Intellectually dishonest" might not be the right word/phrase for it tbh. I'm not trying to say there is necessarily an intent to deceive (although in some cases that is probably the case), only that there was at minimum a lack of effort to vet their own views.

A. 
Okay.  The discussion had at one point been about whether we could know anything absolutely about the accuracy of sense data, but this was a side discussion about an assertion you made.  Leaving aside the question of how a person would come to believe that his CD player produced pancakes, such a person, presuming he trusted his input data, would have to reevaluate either the input data or his breakfast plans upon being corrected. 

Your math example is nice.  Looking at it from another angle, such a person would have to reevaluate his position if he followed the same math rules.  The only difference is instead of being corrected by sense data, he was corrected by math data. 

I think we now agree "Belief sets exist that can be contradicted by sense data". 

B.
For math, the math data is absolute, so it can produce absolute knowledge.  But sense data only produces relative knowledge.  To illustrate this, let me give some examples from non-self-contradicting belief sets:  within empiricism the moon is definitely rock.  The sense data proves this (under the assumption that sense data is more or less accurate).  Within the Matrix theory the moon we "see" is definitely programmed to be rock.  The sense data proves this (under the assumption that sense data is more or less accurate about telling us about things in the Matrix).  And sense data can produce this relative knowledge.  This is how it is possible for it to disprove a belief set. 

"Sophistry"?  Are you saying what I think you are?  If you want to spell out your accusation then please do.  If not, recant.  Also, didn't I explicitly give a difference between the definitions of belief and knowledge?  It's stupid to say I equated the two.  Perhaps you didn't understand the concept of "belief within belief" versus "knowledge within belief".

C. 
I disagree - I think I do (and did) understand; I was just grabbing that and mutating it into another example to talk about (A).  Sorry. 

D.
1.  What I'm saying is that your sense data, taken all together, indicate one general picture of the world.  It may not be a correct picture, but the picture exists.  Your output affects this picture in generally reliable ways, which is to say the input you receive back reacts in generally reliable ways to your output.  Are you with me so far?  That is, do you agree with what I have said so far in (D)?  If not, what do you disagree with? 

2.  As for God's input (I know you said impute but am not sure how it's supposed to differ in this case), either you detect it (i.e. sense it) or you don't, in which case you unknowingly have a new belief no less arbitrary than the last.  In that case, it's not really a "method" of anything, unless that phrase is synonymous with "belief".

Well it is quite obvious that you can't prove or disprove any deity.

Personally I consider myself an atheist because it is my personal opinion / belief that there is no god. I know you can't prove it so I'd probably be considered an agnostic but I'm leaning towards the atheist side.

The reason why I'm so heavily in favour of atheism in these discussions is that knowing your faith is based on believing and not evidence is important to me. When someone says "I know I can't prove it. It's just my personal believe I know it could be different" then I have no problem accepting it. It's completely fine so why should I try to disprove a person who obviously gains something from it? It only cracks me up when people try to explain their believe with amazingly complicated theories and - as a side effect - throw everything else we know so far out of the window. I wouldn't call that faith anymore, it just stops you from accepting anything that contradicts your personal belief.

So to me it's not the question do you believe in god that counts, it's the way you believe in him (or her )

I couldn't agree with this more.  Including the fact that I consider myself agnostic but recognize that I lean atheist based on the limited and incomplete information available to me.

The key is that the skeptic's "default" position is not atheism, it is agnosticism.  Agonsticism is "a person who claims that they cannot have true knowledge about the existence of God (but does not deny that God might exist)", while atheism is "the doctrine or belief that there is no God".   Skepticism has to do with questioning and doubt not certainty, so it is agnostics who are the skeptics, not atheists.

I actually think the majority of people who call themselves athiest are actually agnostic, but it's impossible to know for sure.

This is not a criticism of you, in particular--I'm as guilty as anyone--but sometimes in these kinds of discussions, I fear that things get a little bit lost in the verbiage.

You say that "a lack of belief based on something constitutes a belief in your basis to disbelieve."  Hmm... well, with the phrase "a lack of belief based on something," I wonder.  In regards to my view on atheism, I would say, rather, that I have a lack of belief based on... nothing.  Nothing, here, standing in for the lack of "evidence" or "sound reason," things I normally insist on for those things I believe in.

So, I think that my "lack of belief" in god is similar to your "lack of belief" in a million possible entities that no one has ever yet proposed, but that someone could propose and then insist could theoretically exist.  For instance, the Sperzitt I created in my last reply.

Now, the phrase "a belief in your basis to disbelieve"... maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but I ask myself, what is my basis to disbelieve?  And I guess what it is, is that I believe in my own ability to assess evidence, to reason, to make observations, etc.  (Incidentally, what choice is there in that?  Even someone who theoretically disbelieves in his own ability to reason will... be trusting in his ability to make that determination.)

So... it sounds to me that maybe you're suggesting that I have "faith" in my ability to do things like think critically.  At which point, I start having a hard time 1) connecting your "faith" with the way the term is used in nearly all practical settings, and 2) seeing a true separation in your worldview between belief based on faith, and belief based on, well, anything else; it all starts sounding like faith.

Rather, I believe that there are different categories for belief, and that a belief based on faith is a particular category, distinct from other types.  There is belief based on the evidence of your senses and your ability to reason, and, however I would ultimately wind up defining it, "faith" is something that is not that.  (It could be a call on mystical forms of knowing--"the evidence of things not seen"; or, as I suggested in my TV Guide example, a belief in something that seems to be directly contradicted by the evidence of your senses; etc.)

Now, all of this will depend upon and demand certain things that come beforehand, such as that there is "sense data," that people can interpret it, and base judgements on it.  And I contend that faith doesn't play any part here, because faith is a concept that has meaning once we have these necessary preconditions.

Just want to touch briefly on these two comments.  I wasn't consciously trying to construct a direct analogy to anything, but rather provide an accessible example to (hopefully) demonstrate the sense I have for some of the terms that we've been using.

I believe that language has its basis in our interactions with the world, and so all of these terms will ultimately have real-world applicability, whether we're talking about our position on god or television schedules.

Also, I wasn't trying to "highlight absurdity" in your reasoning; I wouldn't describe your reasoning as absurd, really.  But I do think if we're going to come to philosophical conclusions, they should ultimately have something to do with life as it is actually lived.  When debating skepticism with appolose, I made the point a few times that he couldn't actually live his life according to his stated beliefs (i.e. he must trust his senses all the time), and that just doesn't work for me.  I want to eventually fashion a belief system that can actually, successfully be lived by.

Really, the point to my scenario was to demonstrate how I think all of these different aspects of belief/knowledge/whatever actually function.

Again, this doesn't track with what I feel to be true of "faith."  When you say that TV Guide has a track record, I find that track record to be a good justification of my belief that their current issue will be accurate.  I don't think it's "faith" that leads me to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

You may say, "it's conceivable that the sun will not rise tomorrow morning," and I would agree with you (though, if it did not, I suspect that the responsible catastrophe would ensure that I'd never know it).  Yet, I don't think that faith is involved.

For now, at least, I would use the word "trust."  I'm sure that some would argue that this is a kind of semantic dodge, but I really don't think that it is.  My trust, whether about the sun rising or TV Guide being accurate, is ultimately based on experience that I, myself, have had, and it's logical in the sense that it doesn't seem to contradict anything else that I believe to be true about the universe.  I find "faith" at the root of beliefs that aren't based on people's own experiences, or that do seem to contradict that which is known.

Beyond that, in my example an error was made--by me, in thinking that the issue of TV Guide I was looking at was current.  I'm not looking for a system of belief that is immune to error; I think that error is very well established, with a long and vibrant history in human affairs, and not leaving us anytime soon.  My trust in the TV Guide incorporates the possibility of the things that you've suggested--that maybe I read too quickly, and misinterpreted something, or that TV Guide made a rare mistake--but until I have a reason to suspect that one of those things has occurred (the radio spot for the New Series), it's not something I'm going to bother investigating.

When I do have reason to suspect that my trust may be in error, for whatever reason, my response is to investigate it.  And I ultimately solve the conflict in my example by acquiring new information, which allows me to readjust my various beliefs in a non-contradictory manner.

And obviously, the bolded is where we must disagree.  I submit that trust and faith are not identical, either in normal usage, or according to my earlier explanation.  Or, if trust and faith are identical--if it's "all faith"--then I think we need to come up with a new term to describe the basis for a belief in things like that the sun will rise, versus the faith that some people have in abstract, ineffable beings that neither they, nor anyone else they know, have ever directly sensed in any manner.  That would seem to me to be a useful distinction; one that, say, scientists would find handy when trying to cure disease or transport people to Mars.

Again, my worldview isn't one that insists that no mistakes or misjudgements can ever be made; rather, I accept such mistakes as possibilities, and work to minimize them--through finding more evidence and the continued application of reason.  I don't find this process to have anything to do with "faith" as it is seemingly understood by those who advocate it.

Well... I don't see that "large samples" would, according to my understanding of what you're saying, mean that these scientific studies are free from the "leaps of faith" that you insist are a part of "the exchange of information."  Or, even if they were, that any one of us (say you or me) would be able to assess the results of such a scientific study without a similar leap of faith.

I think there's something to what you say about "probability of correctness," and for sure my TV Guide example wouldn't require rigorous proof... but there are things in everyday life that people take very seriously, such as attending to their professions or their healthcare (or that of loved ones), etc.  And in such instances, I think that the general processes are roughly the same as in a lab, or how I approached the TV Guide conflict: people gather evidence and form certain beliefs on its basis; they trust that things will happen tomorrow as they happened yesterday, which I find neither to be "faith" nor unjustified.

When, however, they encounter evidence that seemingly conflicts with what they think they know, or what they expected to happen, they seek out means to resolve the conflict; by re-examining evidence, finding new evidence, re-assessing their reasoning, etc.

Mistakes continue to happen on every level--this isn't about being free from error.  Me trying to decide what to watch; the person who mistakenly takes too much medication; scientists in the lab; we all make mistakes, and take actions in our capacity to correct for them.  While there may be more or less rigour in any given setting (lab scientists being the most rigorous, having their procedures strictly defined, etc.) I find that the processes involved to be analogous.  And, at minimum, I find faith to be related to deviations from that process.

Oh, but I think that it's impossible to question a mistake in a specific instance, in the manner that you're doing, without implicating the "larger sense."

For instance, if I were to say to you: "Hey, Sqrl--Designing Women is on tonight, wanna come over and watch with me?"

And you say: "Are you sure you got that right?  Wasn't that cancelled, like... almost two decades ago?"

In that case, you're questioning whether I've made a mistake in a specific instance.  Your observation regarding Designing Women is relevant to the specific claim I've made; it's applicability is severely limited.

But when you say: "Are you sure you got that right?  After all, mistakes can be made in the 'exchange of information.'"  Well, that's a critique that could be made about anything.  It attacks judgement at its root.

"Hey, Sqrl--the sun will rise tomorrow!"

"Are you sure you got that right?  You're just 'assess[ing] that probability from past experiences with direct observations.'"

True, but imo, it doesn't mean that "faith" is required.

But what makes something "fully logical"?  According to how I understand "logic," I find my atheistic views to be logical in this sense:

The idea that god does not exist does not seem to me to contradict anything else that I believe.

I do not believe that logic is a system that inexorably leads people to truth from scratch... I think it's a tool that we use to assess certain statements and beliefs that have their basis in sensory data, in relating them with other such statements and beliefs.  Or, at least, deductive logic, where the truth of the conclusion is predicated on the truth of the premises.

Inductive reasoning--the initial development of those premises (which appolose discarded as being irrelevant)--is another ball of wax altogether... but I suspect that to try to suss induction out, a task that most professional philosophers seem to take a pass on, would take many more posts than either one of us is willing to commit to. :)

I've written a lot in this thread.  I don't remember saying that I felt that atheism was "logical," and it doesn't sound to me like something I would say, though I suppose it's possible.

I do believe that it is proper for people to fit their beliefs to the evidence.  And where a person feels he has no evidence for god (like me), that atheism is the right way to go.  If we were to suppose someone who was confronted by god, like say Moses, well, I can understand his believing in god.  (Though I might not, myself, believe Moses when he told me about it.)

Goodness.  All these words, and probably none of it worth posting.  No matter--they're written, so I might as well.

I suspect, at the minimum, that we have some fundamental disagreements as to the meaning of certain terms like "faith," "logic," "belief," "trust," etc., which makes subsequent discussion relying on those terms difficult.

The irony is that, at the same time, I get the sense that we might disagree very little on most practical applications; I expect you probably would've handled my TV Guide quandry in much the same manner as I did, and that you believe, just as I do, that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

Incidentally, these kinds of discussions kill me.

I love having them--I love discussing the nature of the universe and all that's in it with intelligent people--but the effort of formulating my thoughts and then trying to express them clearly takes so much time... and I'm such a freaking verbose guy.

God, it's a miracle I made it through school.