Faith and Reason.

[Rockstaru]

What this thread has done to me:

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/352...dhasdoneto.jpg

[Kuya]

Faith is the confident belief in the truth of or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.[1] It is also used for a belief, characteristically without proof.[2] Informal usage of the word "faith" can be quite broad, and may be used standardly in place of "trust", "belief", or "hope". For example, the word "faith" can refer to a religion itself or to religion in general. As with "trust", faith involves a concept of future events or outcomes.

The English word faith is dated from 1200–50, from the Latin fidem, or fidēs, meaning trust, akin to fīdere to trust.[3]

Faith is often used in a religious context, as in theology, where it almost universally refers to a trusting belief in a transcendent reality, or else in a Supreme Being and said being's role in the order of transcendent, spiritual things. In Christianity it derives from the Greek pistis or root word peitho, meaning to trust, to have confidence, faithfulness, reliable, to assure.[4] In the Jewish scriptures it refers to how God acts toward His people and how they are to respond to him:[5]

Does anyone want to persist with the obtuse arguments about what faith means?

[Melchiah]

My friends, are we all well aware in our magnanimous grandiosity that most people have faith in science and scientists, because they don't understand anything about science, but they take it in faith that we're right because we're professionals?

Are we now suggesting that we make everyone understand every single thing that every individual field of science studies so that they not accept what science and scientists say on pure faith? Have we gone that far into the field of absurdity?

For the sake of discussion, my thoughts on what Kuya brings up here:

It is not reasonable to expect every person to have intimate knowledge of all facets of science. Therefore, biologists generally take what the chemists and physicists produce as valid, without subjecting their work to examination and verification.

However, this is done for the sake of convenience and presumably because there is documentation of the verification process readily available, and were the biologist so inclined he could take the time to verify those results for himself.

This is the fundamental difference between religious faith and faith in another scientist's documented and verified work. The church holds itself above verification on it's own merit, and it's positions are unverified and or unverifiable.

Did that make sense to anyone else? I might have worded poorly.

[Kuya]

This is the fundamental difference between religious faith and faith in another scientist's documented and verified work. The church holds itself above verification on it's own merit, and it's positions are unverified and or unverifiable.

The church of course, meaning Christianity, Christianity being one among hundreds of religions, many of them without an autocratic structure.

The point isn't to devalue science itself, but to clarify that the argument that religion is wrong because it relies on faith and belief is absurd and not even worth such a long argument. If you people insist on criticizing religions, they least you could do is focus on more concrete issues instead of having to dive into a debate to see who can best redefine faith to suit their interests. All's i've seen in this thread is the most absurd philosophical arguments against religion, when there's a long list of things one can criticize within a generalized idea of religious structure, or the qualities of a specific religion.

It seems to me, that in an attempt to invalidate all religious belief, there's been an attempt in this thread to attack the core ideas in a vain attempt to strike them all out without actually having to do any rigorous discussion over the particularities of most religions. It has so far ended in failure.

edit: forgot to comment; most documented and verified work that the common person won't even bother searching because, as i've said before, they will hold it on faith that you're right, because you have a science degree. I wasn't just referring to scientists trying to understand the field of study of other scientists (if they even care to do so), but also, and mostly, everyone else. Why should they do something as absurd as research all scientific information in order to turn their faith into honest knowledge? They have no reason to, hence they won't.

[Melchiah]

Fair enough Kuya.

I don't have firsthand experience with Judaism or Islam, or any other organized religion except Christianity, so Christianity is the only I will comment on.

I take exception to the Christian Church on the following issues:

1) God is at once proclaimed omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent, and also to hold forgiveness paramount. However, this is the same God who either allowed or worse instructed Joshua to lead the Isrealites to capture city after city, and in the case of Jericho to slaughter every man, woman, child and animal in the city for the sole reason that they were not Jews and did not believe in Yahweh. We will never know for certain if Joshua bullshitted the Jews into that bloody zealotry or if the instructions really came from Yahweh, but either way it was a dick move that contradicts the nature ascribed to Yahweh.

Therefore, if God is benevolent he would have stopped the Jews from massacring a city of non-coms if he was able.

Thus, God cannot be at once benevolent and omnipotent, if the account of Jericho is true.

2) The Church has a history of ruthless oppression of the pursuit of knowledge, that goes all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve. This is done because ignorant people are easier to control, and the Church is a source of authority. I take exception to this doctrine of enforcing ignorance, especially for so corrupt a reason as to maintain power. Unacceptable to me.

[Kaylia]

Yay for literal interpration of the bible? Why does it always have to be at both extreme with atheists. Why not just start with the deism case instead?

[Linliel]

Therefore, if God is benevolent he would have stopped the Jews from massacring a city of non-coms if he was able.

Thus, God cannot be at once benevolent and omnipotent, if the account of Jericho is true.

And for many other accounts too. See my "God is a dick" post (my intro) a few pages back ^^


(*notes that Kaylia didn't respond to my previous post* did you find out yet Kaylia?)

[Neosutra]

Yay for literal interpration of the bible? Why does it always have to be at both extreme with atheists.

Because loose interpretations that make equally fantastic leaps and assumptions are better?

[Kuya]

This kind of argument is much better. We can actually rely on arguably empirical-historical evidence to refute one's claims about a religion or some such, but if we argue the same philosophical things that have been argued for the last two thousand years with no end in sight then we make this into a circus. I may be agnostic, but there are some religions i just outright wish would disappear, and i think myself capable of enough of arguing why they should be gone, however far be it for me to be so ahead of myself as to so poignantly avoid arguing the rigorous particularities of religion because i lack the knowledge to do so, and then hide it by trying to narrowly generalize every religion in the world into a handful of philosophical concepts so that i may easily believe that i can "kill two birds with one stone".

I think if some of the people in this thread really see themselves as people of science, they would go for a far more technical and rigorous avenue of addressing their case and not going on and on in some childish name calling travesty, because most here are clearly annoyed at the fact that they can't claim an outright victory.

[Kaylia]

And for many other accounts too. See my "God is a dick" post (my intro) a few pages back ^^


(*notes that Kaylia didn't respond to my previous post* did you find out yet Kaylia?)

I don't care enough to check in another thread. ^^/

[Kaylia]

Because loose interpretations that make equally fantastic leaps and assumptions are better?

Because science and mathematics taught you to start with the most complex case to build your model and argument?

[Neosutra]

I dont think anyone here is looking for an outright victory kuya, because even if you take away every foundation a theist has for believing in god, they still fall back to just taking it on "faith".

Doesnt hurt to get them to at least re-evaluate their foundations. Theism will never go away via direct logical assault, but rather the slow and gradual education of humanities populous.

[Cow_k]

I will chime in with my usual offering in posts like this and say this.....

If theists were actually concerned about furthering their viewpoint they would pick up a book by Kant and Hume and really search out the premises they make.

Likewise, if atheists were concerned about challenging their presuppositions it wouldn't take long to read through contemporary apologists such as Alvin Plantinga (I would suggest contemporary thinkers over scholars such as Anselm and Aquinas for ease of reading and a more thorough approach due to advances in science).

But instead of growing people will argue semantics back and forth picking apart each others quotes not for personal growth, but to prove they are right. Already page 3 (perhaps 4 by the time I type this) and no mention of any of the primary theological/metaphysical topics that are the true meeting points of classic believer/non-believer discussion.

--The problem of evil (Hume and Plantinga)
--The historical 'proofs' of God (cosmological/teleological etc)
--The question of 'why there is something rather than nothing'
--Ambiguity in Religious experience
--The principle of credulity
--What the anthropic principle means for a debate of creation
--Rationalism and its faults
--Free agency vs determinism and how this interplays with the problem of evil
--Science as a descriptive force vs a prescriptive force
--The massive difference in Hebrew vs Greek philosophy and how that affected the bible
--etc etc etc


I'm not trying to sound condescending, but if you are looking for truth then go to your nearest university and ask their philosophy of religion professor to give you some reading material instead of chirping back and forth in a debate with someone who may very well be 12 years old.

Best thing that's been said in this entire thread, yet almost entirely ignored.

[Kuya]

Fair enough Kuya.

I don't have firsthand experience with Judaism or Islam, or any other organized religion except Christianity, so Christianity is the only I will comment on.

I take exception to the Christian Church on the following issues:

1) God is at once proclaimed omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent, and also to hold forgiveness paramount. However, this is the same God who either allowed or worse instructed Joshua to lead the Isrealites to capture city after city, and in the case of Jericho to slaughter every man, woman, child and animal in the city for the sole reason that they were not Jews and did not believe in Yahweh. We will never know for certain if Joshua bullshitted the Jews into that bloody zealotry or if the instructions really came from Yahweh, but either way it was a dick move that contradicts the nature ascribed to Yahweh.

Therefore, if God is benevolent he would have stopped the Jews from massacring a city of non-coms if he was able.

Thus, God cannot be at once benevolent and omnipotent, if the account of Jericho is true.

2) The Church has a history of ruthless oppression of the pursuit of knowledge, that goes all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve. This is done because ignorant people are easier to control, and the Church is a source of authority. I take exception to this doctrine of enforcing ignorance, especially for so corrupt a reason as to maintain power. Unacceptable to me.

I have honestly never heard a decent explanation for why Old Testament god and New Testament god would be so different. One would surely assume that the Christian god would be infallible yet, it seemingly changed its mind. Though my problems with this specific religion, as you've said, are its clear anti-agonistic tendencies, and by that i mean that it promotes political apathy and privatization of human affairs; i will go deeper into that later.

[Neosutra]

Best thing that's been said in this entire thread, yet almost entirely ignored.

I actually addressed it in detail, and showed the apologist he was quoting were pretty much full of crap.

[0ni0n]

Yes. Because by definition, faith is irrational. It's what I got from this thread after 15 pages.

irrational,
–adjective 1. without the faculty of reason; deprived of reason. 2. without or deprived of normal mental clarity or sound judgment.
Sounds applicable to religious faith. Why are you surprised at all?

[Eratosthenes]

1) God is at once proclaimed omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent, and also to hold forgiveness paramount. However, this is the same God who either allowed or worse instructed Joshua to lead the Isrealites to capture city after city, and in the case of Jericho to slaughter every man, woman, child and animal in the city for the sole reason that they were not Jews and did not believe in Yahweh. We will never know for certain if Joshua bullshitted the Jews into that bloody zealotry or if the instructions really came from Yahweh, but either way it was a dick move that contradicts the nature ascribed to Yahweh.

I think a better story for demonstrating this point is Noah's Ark.

6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them."

So the omniscient god admits he made a mistake, then the omnipotent and omnibenevolent side kicks in and he decides that the best course of action is to KILL EVERYTHING and start over. He ends up saving one guy and his family, which ends up making the whole thing completely opposite from the message of the gospel (God kills one guy to save everyone), yet there are many fundamentalists out there who have no problem believing the same being is responsible for both of these.

[Araelus]

EDIT: I started typing this right after post #818. It does not take into account any post after #818.


If I'm reading this all accurately, "faith" herein has been defined as (basically) "belief that is not justified by fact", so as the underpinnings of religion is "faith" then religion is "believing in something you shouldn't if you really thought about it" and never really thinking about it, and when someone tells you to stand up and examine your beliefs, the faithful won't admitting they're wrong.

Well of course we should heartily reject that if that is what religion is! If faith is holding a belief that either has been proven false or is not provable either false or true a posteriori then screw that!

William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience makes a similar point. G.K. Chesterton in Heretics (or somewhere, the guy wrote a ton) makes a similar point. The Depressed Dutchman Søren basically says that if religion is holding some objective falsehood to be true then it's totally worthless and needs to be expunged from society.

But if that is what faith is (and these three men disagree with the definition I outlined above for various reasons) then what are we to make of this:

My friends, are we all well aware in our magnanimous grandiosity that most people have faith in science and scientists, because they don't understand anything about science, but they take it in faith that we're right because we're professionals?

Are we now suggesting that we make everyone understand every single thing that every individual field of science studies so that they not accept what science and scientists say on pure faith? Have we gone that far into the field of absurdity?

I like this. I don't think it's what certain people meant to say but it is an interesting reductio if it pans out. For whom and in what way, hmm.

Aha! Why do I agree with what Kuya pointed out? If "faith" is "belief that is not justified by fact" then "faith in science" is "belief that is not justified by fact but would be if all the facts were known", right?

What if, instead of "faith in science" because I am sure that phrase is inducing cognitive dissonance in many here gathered, or is perhaps abhorrent to some of you, what if I said "trust in science"?

This is not a blind trust even for those who hold no scientific knowledge, is it? Because certainly even a person who is mentally incapable of understanding a single scientific fact will be open to those facts if presented them. So we avoid the pitfall of trust which is not open to refutation if the grounds for that trust is removed. Further, is this trust a rational trust or not?

Rationality seems to have been used in this thread as meaning "acting in accordance with the product of reason - that is, acting based not on what one wants to be true or what one would like to be true but what is actually true" and furthermore what is known to us as conveyed by the scientific method and the formation hypotheses. This manner of action has been presented, rightfully so, as a very reliable means of operating in the world. We all treat the world as real, this was danced around and done to death earlier, of course we treat the world as real.

As David Hume said, when you're playing billiards with your friends it's hard to imagine that the world might not actually exist or we are all brains in vats (The Matrix has got nothing Putnam or Fodor didn't already talk about). And Hume was really freaked out by inductive reasoning, so much so that he denied its logical admissibility! It took Charles Sanders Peirce, who was basically an outcast from the academic hierarchy to put into words the way we operate according to pragmatic reasoning, an "inference to the best explanation" which is what science has been doing even before it split from natural philosophy.

A person who is mentally incapable of possessing any scientific knowledge may yet hear about science and consider the following: there are many explanations for the world. The ideal explanation is a complete and absolutely true (and here we are talking about objective correspondance truth, that is something is true insofar as it corresponds to what actually is, not some odd Kantian notion) description of everything.

But as science is quick to point out, and again it is spot-on, we do not posses the ideal. Peirce especially stressed the idea that we may never possess the ideal and yet we still function!

Copernican theory was more true than Ptolemaic theory. Yet there were problems, compared to the ideal! Heliocentric theory was true, but it couldn't explain the orbit of Mercury. Did we discard heliocentrism because of that lack? (I understand the Catholic Church, especially Pope Urban VIII and parts of the Jesuit Collage, personally opposed Galileo. That is an interesting tale for somewhere else. If you want to bring that into the picture, note that when they attacked Galileo they did not attack him on the grounds that the orbit of Mercury was strange or that his theory of tides was wrong.) When science chooses Copernicus over Ptolemy, they do not compare the theories to the ideal theory! They cannot, or both theories would have to be discarded. Instead they infer to the best explanation out of the available explanations.

Take Newtonian physics as another example. Newton didn't know what gravity was. He said "here is this relationship, but I don't know how it works. I can explain it in metaphor and we'll call it gravity. I am sure someone else can come up with a better explanation." This lack shows Newton did not have the ideal theory, but we did not throw away Newtonian physics! Even now, with General and Special Relativity, people consider the everyday world (of macroscopic objects, QT points out, and that is another wrinkle) in a way that is consistent with Newton, not Einstein.

Indeed, in different scenarios, some people still use Ptolemaic theory. Naval navigation does not require a Copernical model to function within an acceptable level of error.

What is going on here?

It seems that since science provides multiple theories, and some are more complete than others (the ideal theory is the completely true one) we do not call Newtonian physics "false" for being less complete than Relativity, do we?

So what science is providing is not something that claims to be completely true. The aim of science is not to provide a complete (dogmatic some might say) map of the world right now but rather to work towards the ideal with the notion of fallibility firmly in hand.

Science is aware that it is incomplete. Science, true science (let us not sully the word science with the things pandering themselves as such, like Young Earthists.) *ahem*

True science says "what we treat as true are the best current explanations we have, but one day we will have better explanations and when they arrive we will treat those as true, until better ones are uncovered, and so on, ever reaching towards the ideal. (This is starting to have shades of Stevenson's Anathem, whoops.)

So why does that person who cannot grasp the reasons and facts and a posteriori evidence behind any scientific theory hold the theory to be true, and act in the world as if it were true, as if it were totally true (knowing in his heart it is fallible) until it is replaced by a better theory?

For him, our theoretical dunce, science is entirely a priori. He cannot perform an experiment. He cannot check the math. All he can do is listen to someone else, who can and has done those things, and he trusts the science that is presented to him.

Is this reason? Is this rationality? It is not faith because of the definition, recall, of "faith" is "belief that is not justified by fact". That poor dumb person's Quinean web of beliefs includes scientific theories. The person does not possess any of the facts that justify the theory.

If "knowledge" is "true, justified belief" then this person does not have a shred of scientific knowledge. Yet his trust is well placed, is it not! Someone, somewhere, has scientific knowledge and our metaphorical dunce does well to place his trust in that person.

What does trusting the scientist entail? Doesn't it mean someone who cannot justify his belief in scientific theory still holds that scientific theory to be true? And because he trusts [I]a priori/I] he will change his beliefs when the scientists say that inference to the best explanation has a new best explanation, when the theory changes the dunce's belief will change too.

From the perspective of the dunce he trusts in something his senses cannot prove and his mind cannot grasp. Nothing for him a posteriori can justify his belief in Special Relativity. His adherence to the wave/particle theory of light is entirely a priori. He will never understand that grass is green because it reflects photons with a wavelength of between 520–570 nm.

No one person can, in their lifetime, grasp all available scientific knowledge to a suitable level of proficiency.

In this debate the people who think "faith" is "bury your head in the sand and make ostrich noises while everyone screams that you're H. sapiens, not S. camelus" do not want to describe the dunce as having an attitude of "faith" towards science. In this they are absolutely correct.

Indeed, if this is what "faith" is, if it is "blind trust", a trusting that not only fails to look outward but fails to look inward, to consider what the individual actually thinks and feels, then it is abhorrent. If "faith" means internalizing without complaint or consideration what an authority figure tells you, simply because of who you think that authority figure is, then it is a wretched thing and we must hunt it down and destroy it wherever it lurks.

But the dunce does not have this attitude towards the science he agrees with and accepts. He thinks about what he is told. He finds it does not contradict the experiences he does have. He says to himself something along the lines of, "This is very interesting! What this scientist, who I cannot really understand, is telling me has certain consequences for my life. Let me try them out for a while." After finding that science explains the world around him better than anything else he hears, the dunce thinks something along the lines of, "Well, then, this science is true!" and he goes happily about on his way, giving it another thought only when some other theory appears to challenge it, and paying no nevermind to the theory's missing parts unless such consideration is prudent in terms of comparing the existing theory he holds as true to a competing theory.

It seems our dunce is a rather smart man, despite his a posteriori shortcomings. (We have after all rather unfairly placed these on him, but we all have some kind of limitations. The man in the example is not Harrison Bergeron by any means.)

Our pragmatic dunce, then. Is he not a rational agent? Is his trust blind? No, it is what we would call "well placed", if we wanted to make a normative claim about it.

To finish this part of my argument, given our starting definitions, we do not say the pragmatic dunce has "faith in science".

What if the definition of "faith" is not "belief that is not justified by fact"?

Those who think it is defined as such will not want to continue, but they are begging the question. Then again, we all take certain definitions to be a given, don't we, unless of course a better alternative comes along.

In a later post I may try to delve into what another definition of "faith" is but this just took an hour to write so I am going to let my brain and hands take a break.

Cheers, all, and have at it! I am sure I mixed up my modus tollens with my modus ponens in there somewhere, and I look forward to getting torn to ribbons.



tl;dr? NO. I typed this all out and if you want to hear what I said you have to slog through it.

[Neosutra]

I dont trust science. There is nothing there to trust. Nothing to take on faith. No logical leaps that require me to place a trust in.

Again, science isnt some existential force that encompases everything proved by the scientific method, but rather only the practice of applying standards to your hypothesis.

And you posting that book of a post to do nothing but attempt to redefine the words we just spent 10 pages clarifying doesnt really help either side. We arent all looking for the definition of these words, we know them, there are simply a few people here misusing them and being informed on their mistakes over and over as they intentionally do it to further their stance.

[0ni0n]

Personally I find people who equate religious faith and scientific beliefs (trust, confidence) intentionally obtuse and intellectually dishonest. But that's neither here nor there. Since no matter how meticulous the argument, it would seem that no one will change his or her viewpoint on this issue, why don't we talk about something else?

I will start by asking theists on this board as to why you believe in God or any other form of deity. What compels you into believing? and how religious you actually are? Do you follow all the rituals such as going church on sundays, etc. I am really curious.