Clark, this is what appears to be SilverRain’s reasoning In logical form:

What we should have faith in ? facts
What we should have faith in = God
God = fact

This is a contradiction in terms. It is an illogical proposition.

What do you mean by the “object of a fact”? Facts don’t have objects, they just are. And we either understand them correctly, or we don’t. Sometimes we have the benefit of evidence to help us understand, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we misinterpret the evidence with bad logic and bad reasoning, too. What religions often assert as facts are quite often objectively unverifiable and are not based upon any evidence (at least not any that would be recognizable as evidence on any broad scale). And it is belief in these evidenceless objectively unverifiable claims about history and nature that is referred to as faith. This is what I’m hearing from religious authorities of all different religions about belief and faith.

Again I think this wrong. The object of a fact is simply a different kind of object from god. If I have faith that a tent peg will act as a peg that’s different from faith in a fact. Of course what we have faith in is that some word is a fact.

Though the existence of God is certainly a fact

OK, then you have faith in a fact, don’t you?
My aim is not to trap you in logic, it is help you refine your points. The idea that we should have faith in God and not faith in facts is a nonsensical and seemingly contradictory proposition, especially when you regard the existence of God to be a fact. I think what you really mean to say is that you shouldn’t require evidence in order to have faith. You confirm what I said earlier about faith being belief without evidence.

Though the existence of God is certainly a fact, belief in Him is not based on the fact of God’s existence, but on His character, which ought to be obvious to anyone who is interested in an actual conversation, given the contrast I was drawing.

That you ignored my actual point, even after I clarified, leads me to believe you are interested in a sparring match, not in a discussion. Since that doesn’t interest me, this is my last comment on it for now.

Also, bear in mind, I’m not saying that faith is belief without evidence as a means of downtalking faith but simply trying to describe it in the way that religious people mean it. When I hear, “I have faith,” what I hear is, “I believe, regardless of the apparent absence of evidence and counterevidence against the believe. I just believe.” To someone who has unshakable faith, there is nothing you can do or say to sway them from that belief or set of beliefs. Faith is largely belief without evidence. The true believer in a certain religion often feels no obligation to back his/her claims up with evidence. Things are just the way they are. It seems that even to you, Clark Goble, and other intellectuals that there are certain claims that you just believe, or have faith in, without evidence or the feeling of a need to provide any evidence. For instance, the idea that revelation exists. You don’t appear to try to describe what a revelation is or what evidence we have that it is an actual process that occurs. It just is and that’s that. Belief without evidence. If someone asks for evidence of revelation, the believer response is often something akin to, “you just have to believe.”

Besides, the fact that people must construct their own reality doesn’t mean that all constructed realities are equally valid, true, useful

On what grounds do you determine which explanations of reality are more valid, then? They are backed by compelling evidence? They are well-reasoned arguments? They conform to a traditional narrative? A perceived authority figure promotes them?

The fact that a belief strikes you as uncomfortable

Well, I would say nonsensical rather than uncomfortable.

Look, my main point is that Mormonism makes bold claims about nature and history. You can’t deny that. What exactly makes these claims true? You don’t make them true by attacking/distorting science and trying to change the definitions of other words as they have been conventionally understood in intellectual communities across and modern time. What you’re doing appears to be more of an obfuscation or a dodge rather than an attempt to actual understand and clarify.

Well, I did say, faith, in the way that religionists mean it. There is another sort of faith, which is optimism in the face of adversity, but that is quite different from the faith that pertains to religious belief.

You believe that your father can catch you because of past experience. Basing a belief on clear patterns of the past is not basing it on faith. If you grew up with electricity, you know darn well that a light switch triggers the lights to go on. You don’t have faith that they will go on. Plus, we as humans know exactly how light switches work. We built them after all.

There is a reliability aspect to religion, yes. But that is not what we’re talking about. Instead, we’re talking about the bold claims that Mormonism makes about what actually happened in the past and the nature of the cosmos.

The example I’ll often give is of a light switch. If you didn’t believe the light switch would work you’d never flip it. Yet until you flip it you don’t have knowledge. So to me faith is what leads to action where we don’t yet have confirmation.

I think this is also fairly caught up in how Hebrew conceives of truth. Truth is reliability of things (rather than correct representations of things) But reliability is always essentially a matter of what is to come. So to treat a thing as reliable as it has yet to show itself as reliable is faith.

Faith seems hard to put in a modernist conception simply because of the different way we think about belief and knowledge. The idea of reliable objects is a bit alien. I’d add that this notion of reliability is key to Alma 32. (See this post at my blog on truth that goes through all this in more detail)

I’m 100% with you on your initial point. I don’t understand the value in placing one’s faith in facts at all. But all the conversations I’ve had on the subject have led to people either refusing to engage at all or misunderstanding what I was saying. I’m glad you’re out there.

Not at all accurate to what I said. I said you have to place your faith in God and not in the facts. That has nothing to do with God’s relationship to fact.

I’m not sure why you jumped to that conclusion, so I’m uncertain how to address it.

Question:
What if, due to false/faulty information/logic/conclusions, the building is built in the wrong place, or the design is outdated by the time the building is finished, or capacity is over/under estimated?