[anon_for_this_1]

... says the "astronomy priest" to me :) I have to take your word for it. I know there is what appears to be a star that looks brighter than most others. I, personally, don't have a means at my disposal to know it's mars. I just have to believe you.

[gbog]

This is not faith. We agree on the name we give to that spot in the sky, which happen to be "Mars". Then we agree to name "planets" the spots that behave in a given manner, "stars" the other spots, etc. That's just how languages are built. "Believing" that the language work "well enough" is necessary for normal life and intellectual exchanges.

To dig deeper, the faith leap is more done when we agree that every night, the spot of light we see at roughly the same place in the sky is the emanation of a unique object, that deserves a unique name. This is related to the identity problem.

[anon_for_this_1]

It is faith for _me_ since I've never looked through a telescope and seen that it is indeed a nearer-mass/rock, and not a star as it appears in the sky. Unless you have seen it with your own eyes, you too are believing based on the words of others. My point isn't that we can't verify some of the things we think are true, but my point is that we usually don't. Instead, we believe what we're taught because everyeone else around us believes.

We're not so different from the people at the time of Columbus that were taught the world was flat. They didn't (most couldn't verify it), but everyone 'knew' it was true. That had been taught it, they had books describing it, and maps showing it. They had as much evidence as I do about mars.

Many people really have seen mars through telescopes, and a number of rocket scientists have built devices to go and look at it indirectly. THOSE people KNOW mars exists. The rest of us believe, blindly, what we are told about it. I don't doubt mars exists in the least, only because I _choose_ to believe it exists.

[WingForward]

Actually, people in the time of Columbus knew the the Earth was round. That's been in European cultural knowledge for about two thousand years. It was Columbus who was mistaken. He thought the earth was much smaller than everyone else did. That he could sail west to Asia in a few weeks. He was completely wrong. A fool who was funded by a fool.

But you're right, in that they had as much evidence as you have about Mars. As in, with a some hours of observation, you too could establish that the Earth is round and that Mars is a planet and know as much as a 15th century nobleman. All from first principles. You just need to view the evidence.

That's different than religion and "faith". Those don't require evidence. In fact, faith require the absence of evidence.

You can try to equate evidence-based beliefs and non evidence-based beliefs, but they are not the same.

[burgerbrain]

It doesn't matter that you don't know it's a planet in orbit around the sun. All you need to know is that little reddish point is named Mars.

People have been 'seeing Mars' since way before we actually knew what it was.

[anon_for_this_1]

I don't think you're following my line of reason. You and I believe that red point is a planet because someone else taught us that. We don't have any independent evidence -- we simply believe what others have told us. I'm not arguing about the definition of a planet, or what 'Mars' is -- I'm arguing about what you and I _KNOW_. We don't KNOW that red point is planet -- we've simply been taught, and believe it. For the record, I believe Mars is a planet, despite having no personal experience or evidence whatsoever.