is it necessary to discard faith and hope utterly if one is an atheist?
Faith, I'd say yes, there must be no faith because faith is prejudice. No one would accept a scientific study in which someone declared "I'm going to prove this drug does this"--it's biased.
Hope, on the other hand, can be said to involve the unknown. I can say I *don't* know the true nature of the mind, and that I *hope* brain death doesn't involve what we know as the mind simply vanishing, and though I may prefer a certain answer to my question, I'm not assuming it's true. If I had faith that consciousness existed independently of the brain, I would be prejudicially rejecting the equally likely possibility that it didn't.
My icon sort of illustrates this idea of hope with acknowledgment of preference.
no subject
Faith, I'd say yes, there must be no faith because faith is prejudice. No one would accept a scientific study in which someone declared "I'm going to prove this drug does this"--it's biased.
Hope, on the other hand, can be said to involve the unknown. I can say I *don't* know the true nature of the mind, and that I *hope* brain death doesn't involve what we know as the mind simply vanishing, and though I may prefer a certain answer to my question, I'm not assuming it's true. If I had faith that consciousness existed independently of the brain, I would be prejudicially rejecting the equally likely possibility that it didn't.
My icon sort of illustrates this idea of hope with acknowledgment of preference.