I put this discussion on the DC boards.
Semantics, not apologetics.
I'm going try one more time to explain my beef. There is a difference between describing something and defining it. Let's go back to when all swans we had ever seen were white. Whiteness was a property that every swan that we had ever seen had, nevertheless, it was not a defining property of swans. At least, when we found black birds that were structurally similar to swans, we called them black swans, as opposed to inventing a new word for swans.
If, on the other hand, whiteness had been part of the definition of swans, then being white would be one of things that would have to be there if we were going to call something a swan. We would have said "yep, that bird looks like a swan, but it's not white, so it's not as swan. Before we found black ones, we thought of whiteness as a universal but not a DEFINING property of swans, and that is why we were able to accept the idea that those silly black birds were swans, as opposed to something else.
Further, a definition has the job of allowing everyone in the linguistic community to determine whether someone the thing defined is present or not. So, for example, if you define atheism as the belief that the proposition "God does not exist" is true, then we know who is an atheist based on whether or not someone holds that belief.
Now it seems to me a requirement to take the OTF that the person has faith. That means we need some way of deciding who has faith and who does not have faith, and this way has to be available to people of all persuasions. That is what a definition does.
For example, you believe that God does not exist. However, you can't make nonexistence part of the definition of God, and this would be so even if the case for atheism were overwhelming. Similarly, if you define faith as an irrational leap over the probabilities, then you are going to get people like me saying "By that definition , I have no faith." This is not a result that the OTF advocate wants. Even if you think faith is always irrational, and that the OTF shows this, defining faith as irrational is a bad idea which undermines the OTF.
This has very limited apologetic significance, since you can still maintain that all faith is irrational while at the same time absorbing my point.
Semantics, not apologetics.
I'm going try one more time to explain my beef. There is a difference between describing something and defining it. Let's go back to when all swans we had ever seen were white. Whiteness was a property that every swan that we had ever seen had, nevertheless, it was not a defining property of swans. At least, when we found black birds that were structurally similar to swans, we called them black swans, as opposed to inventing a new word for swans.
If, on the other hand, whiteness had been part of the definition of swans, then being white would be one of things that would have to be there if we were going to call something a swan. We would have said "yep, that bird looks like a swan, but it's not white, so it's not as swan. Before we found black ones, we thought of whiteness as a universal but not a DEFINING property of swans, and that is why we were able to accept the idea that those silly black birds were swans, as opposed to something else.
Further, a definition has the job of allowing everyone in the linguistic community to determine whether someone the thing defined is present or not. So, for example, if you define atheism as the belief that the proposition "God does not exist" is true, then we know who is an atheist based on whether or not someone holds that belief.
Now it seems to me a requirement to take the OTF that the person has faith. That means we need some way of deciding who has faith and who does not have faith, and this way has to be available to people of all persuasions. That is what a definition does.
For example, you believe that God does not exist. However, you can't make nonexistence part of the definition of God, and this would be so even if the case for atheism were overwhelming. Similarly, if you define faith as an irrational leap over the probabilities, then you are going to get people like me saying "By that definition , I have no faith." This is not a result that the OTF advocate wants. Even if you think faith is always irrational, and that the OTF shows this, defining faith as irrational is a bad idea which undermines the OTF.
This has very limited apologetic significance, since you can still maintain that all faith is irrational while at the same time absorbing my point.
