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Faith, mysticism, and rationalism

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On 11/26/2016 at 9:41 PM, happiness said:

Faith: the acceptance of a claim without evidence

Mysticism: the doctrine one has to accept without evidence

Rationalism: the method of cognition used to conceive the mysticism

Faith: a belief held confidently despite evidence to the contrary.

Mysticism: the belief that valid knowledge is acquired through non-rational means.

Rationalism: the belief that valid knowledge is acquired through deduction from concepts.

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The word "faith" originally just meant "belief". The Hebrew word for faith, "aman", means "believe, trust in, rely upon". The Greek word "pistis" means "to be persuaded". So belief without evidence is not intrinsic in the concept of faith, which simply refers to belief as such (and thereby normally implies a true belief that you've been convinced of for good reason, not a baseless belief that is believed for bad reason).

This is how religious people use this concept as well, they believe in their religion, they are convinced it's true - if they thought it was not true, that it was baseless or without evidence, then they would drop their religion on the spot.

The definition of mysticism is the belief in the supernatural.

The essence of rationalism is having concepts detached from reality.

So these three things can go together, when someone believes in certain mystical concepts that are detached from reality. In particular mysticism seems to imply a certain degree of rationalism, as concepts of the supernatural are inherently going to be detached from reality. But there isn't any necessary connection between faith and mysticism or rationalism, and someone can be rationalistic without being a mystic.

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