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IWantGod
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Are you implying that faith by definition is faith in the absurd?
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Russell_SA
Guest
I’m directly stating it if you need that clarification. Faith by definition is the belief in the unjustified. It is not a pathway to understanding reality or reacting to reality as it has presented itself since you can use faith to hold exact contradictory positions and can not demonstrate who is actually correctly keeping their faith in-line with reality.
Person A has faith that their supernatural claim is true. Person B has faith that their supernatural claim is true that is in direct contradiction with Person A. Neither one can be demonstrated to be actually correct based on what reality has presented. So who is actually modeling their faith on reality correctly? Don’t know, we can not tell if they are both wrong or if Person A is or if Person B is. So you can hold a faith based position on literally anything you want to hold. That is why believing something based on “faith” is not something to be valued. Faith is the excuse people use to hold a belief when it is currently unjustified to hold. If you have a justified, verifiable reason for your belief, you just call it “belief” or “hope”.
Person A has faith that their supernatural claim is true. Person B has faith that their supernatural claim is true that is in direct contradiction with Person A. Neither one can be demonstrated to be actually correct based on what reality has presented. So who is actually modeling their faith on reality correctly? Don’t know, we can not tell if they are both wrong or if Person A is or if Person B is. So you can hold a faith based position on literally anything you want to hold. That is why believing something based on “faith” is not something to be valued. Faith is the excuse people use to hold a belief when it is currently unjustified to hold. If you have a justified, verifiable reason for your belief, you just call it “belief” or “hope”.
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KindredSoul
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There’s a distinction between faith and arbitrary faith. The faith of many religious people is NOT the latter, but is based on several indications that they have indeed examined and found convincing to some significant degree, even though you clearly disagree with them. It’s a mix of faith and reason. Reason is the process that leads you to conclude the belief is possible, plausible, and/or probable. Faith is what leads you to embrace it, from there, despite that you acknowledge that reason alone doesn’t establish it as an irrefutable fact.
Whether you believe it or not, many religious people are doing what I just described. And it’s not just us. Consider, a great many mundane conclusions people come to are conclusions other people might differ with based on the same evidence/signals. This sets a precedent, that different people can often interpret the same evidence in different ways. Thus just because you look at the evidence and signs for religion, and find it not even highly suggestive, doesn’t mean that others don’t genuinely, sincerely, think otherwise. “Then they’re wrong/illogical” you may say, but whether they are or aren’t, they are convinced that the evidence/logic points toward a significant chance of their religion being true. And if they are convinced of that, then their belief and faith is not remotely so arbitrary as you state. One can be mistaken (as you clearly believe religious people are) without it being the result of the kind of arbitrary wishful thinking you describe.
I choose to believe that you genuinely think the evidence for religion doesn’t mean anything at all, nor even points to what we believe it does. You are intellectually justified to be honest with yourself if that’s where YOU believe the logic and evidence stand. I choose to believe you. You are NOT justified, however, to think that all religious people are secretly just as unconvinced as you are by the pro-religion evidence/logic, and only under that baseless presumption would we be guilty of the sort of arbitrary wishful thinking you imply we are.
Faith can be as blind as you say, but that’s because faith is more broad a term than you care to admit: Faith is simply: Going beyond what the individual himself believes the evidence establishes as an undeniable fact. Anytime you choose (for any reason) to go ahead and believe something that you think, if you were going by evidence alone, could be argued to have some chance of being wrong, that’s faith, whether you believe there’s a 0.001% chance you could be wrong or a 99.999% chance that you could be wrong. Faith is simply the act of going with the belief in spite of that “could be wrong” percentage, however large or small. And there is a huge difference between someone who is 99% convinced and is using faith to bridge only 1% of the gap between “likely” and “definite” and someone who is using faith to bridge a whopping 99%. You’ve painted ALL faith as the latter.
Whether you believe it or not, many religious people are doing what I just described. And it’s not just us. Consider, a great many mundane conclusions people come to are conclusions other people might differ with based on the same evidence/signals. This sets a precedent, that different people can often interpret the same evidence in different ways. Thus just because you look at the evidence and signs for religion, and find it not even highly suggestive, doesn’t mean that others don’t genuinely, sincerely, think otherwise. “Then they’re wrong/illogical” you may say, but whether they are or aren’t, they are convinced that the evidence/logic points toward a significant chance of their religion being true. And if they are convinced of that, then their belief and faith is not remotely so arbitrary as you state. One can be mistaken (as you clearly believe religious people are) without it being the result of the kind of arbitrary wishful thinking you describe.
I choose to believe that you genuinely think the evidence for religion doesn’t mean anything at all, nor even points to what we believe it does. You are intellectually justified to be honest with yourself if that’s where YOU believe the logic and evidence stand. I choose to believe you. You are NOT justified, however, to think that all religious people are secretly just as unconvinced as you are by the pro-religion evidence/logic, and only under that baseless presumption would we be guilty of the sort of arbitrary wishful thinking you imply we are.
Faith can be as blind as you say, but that’s because faith is more broad a term than you care to admit: Faith is simply: Going beyond what the individual himself believes the evidence establishes as an undeniable fact. Anytime you choose (for any reason) to go ahead and believe something that you think, if you were going by evidence alone, could be argued to have some chance of being wrong, that’s faith, whether you believe there’s a 0.001% chance you could be wrong or a 99.999% chance that you could be wrong. Faith is simply the act of going with the belief in spite of that “could be wrong” percentage, however large or small. And there is a huge difference between someone who is 99% convinced and is using faith to bridge only 1% of the gap between “likely” and “definite” and someone who is using faith to bridge a whopping 99%. You’ve painted ALL faith as the latter.
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KindredSoul
Guest
Also, I realize that maybe the arbitrary wishful thinking type of thing is only way YOU would call it “faith,” but Catholics simply don’t use the word as you do in that case. And yes, what you call “belief” (as we do too) falls under that umbrella term “faith” as I’ve describes here, and in fact “believe” is often used by us interchangeably, in religious contexts, with “I have faith that…” and we’ve used the words these ways for 2000 years. You can either fruitlessly argue the semantics, or just accept that we just don’t mean what you mean by “faith.”
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Russell_SA
Guest
I’m fine with people telling me that they are using faith as I would use hope. The point of explaining our terminology is so that we can understand the idea that someone is putting forth. Any desired result from an event that has a known possibility of happening, regardless of its large or small percentage of the outcome, is just called hope. You call it faith. So what do you call hope then? What is the difference between hope and faith to you? I have a distinction from how I see the religious use these terms. But it seems like the you are using this tern exactly as I would use Hope and also identifying yourself publicly as religious since you are using religious terminology. Is this an attempt to get people to use religious language as part of the normal lexicon so it normalizes religion to that society? I think probably so.
“The faith of many religious people is NOT the latter, but is based on several indications that they have indeed examined and found convincing to some significant degree, even though you clearly disagree with them.”
This is just describing Hope of a rare event vs an even more rare event. These events have still been justified to be part of reality as a possible result. Just that some are more rare than others.
“Faith is what leads you to embrace it, from there, despite that you acknowledge that reason alone doesn’t establish it as an irrefutable fact”
Reason is what leads you to embrace it the results as a possible result of that event. Ex: A + B = C. A and B is the data of the event you experience. + and = are your applied logic/reason about that experience. C is your belief/conclusion about that event. But your reason/logic should be based on the best repeatable model of reality. Otherwise you could reason that walking out the 3rd floor window in the morning is a good idea despite all your experienced evidence of reality to the contrary. The application of Faith as I see it is A + B = D, where D has never been demonstrated to be part of reality ever at all. That is why you can use faith to come to a conclusion about literally anything you want, even if it is in direct contradiction with someone else’s faith held belief. That by definition is not an accurate pathway to truth about our experienced reality. I want my internal model of reality to match reality as much as possible so that I can deal with reality as it actually is. Faith gets in the way of this. The faith conclusion allows people to hold a belief about a problem in reality so that they have an answer. But now that they have an answer, it is actually stopping them from finding the actual answer about that problem in reality.
“The faith of many religious people is NOT the latter, but is based on several indications that they have indeed examined and found convincing to some significant degree, even though you clearly disagree with them.”
This is just describing Hope of a rare event vs an even more rare event. These events have still been justified to be part of reality as a possible result. Just that some are more rare than others.
“Faith is what leads you to embrace it, from there, despite that you acknowledge that reason alone doesn’t establish it as an irrefutable fact”
Reason is what leads you to embrace it the results as a possible result of that event. Ex: A + B = C. A and B is the data of the event you experience. + and = are your applied logic/reason about that experience. C is your belief/conclusion about that event. But your reason/logic should be based on the best repeatable model of reality. Otherwise you could reason that walking out the 3rd floor window in the morning is a good idea despite all your experienced evidence of reality to the contrary. The application of Faith as I see it is A + B = D, where D has never been demonstrated to be part of reality ever at all. That is why you can use faith to come to a conclusion about literally anything you want, even if it is in direct contradiction with someone else’s faith held belief. That by definition is not an accurate pathway to truth about our experienced reality. I want my internal model of reality to match reality as much as possible so that I can deal with reality as it actually is. Faith gets in the way of this. The faith conclusion allows people to hold a belief about a problem in reality so that they have an answer. But now that they have an answer, it is actually stopping them from finding the actual answer about that problem in reality.
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KindredSoul
Guest
Well, hope, as a noun, is basically the degree to which the known facts either passively permit OR actively point to a desired possibility. The more the facts actually POINT to it (evidence, logic, etc) the more hope there is, but anything the facts don’t actually establish as outright false technically can be said that there’s “hope” of it, however slim.Any desired result from an event that has a known possibility of happening, regardless of its large or small percentage of the outcome, is just called hope. You call it faith. So what do you call hope then? What is the difference between hope and faith to you?
How does this differ from faith? Hope is simply the passive degree of possibility of the desired outcome. Faith is when one has embraced it and chosen to believe it. So if you hear a loved one was in a car accident where there was only one survivor, just the fact that you haven’t confirmed the loved one died is hope of their survival. Choosing to embrace that hope and believe they have survived is an act of faith. So hope is the passive possibility (however slim or likely) and faith is the actual choice to believe it’s true. As far as Faith relates to reason, the more hope there is, the more reasonable the faith. Going back to my analogy, if only 2 of 10 people died in the accident, you have quite a bit of hope, relatively speaking, so it’s quite rationally sound to embrace faith that your loved one is okay. If only one person survived, it’s not exactly irrational to embrace that, as it doesn’t contradict the facts and is certainly possible, but nor is there a very strong case for it. If it was that there was only one survivor out of 100, your faith is more arbitrary still.
Hope in itself is never rational or irrational. It just exists or it doesn’t. If something is possible, no matter how remotely, then (to one who desires that outcome) there is hope of its being true, in direct and equal measure to the degree of possibility. 0.0000000001% possibility equals 0.0000000001% hope, with the only real distinction being that “hope” is “desirable possibility.” As long as there’s the possibility, there is hope. But not every hope is significant enough for Faith to be rationally defensible. Even then, I don’t call the Faith positively irrational (that is, it doesn’t contradict reality) but rather it’s passively irrational: Reality doesn’t particularly suggest it. To some extent, though, determining the latter is effectively subjective, since what one person sees as viable evidence that DOES suggest hope of something, another may not, yet the latter person’s lack of being convinced doesn’t negate that the former person IS convinced and is internally justified in thus accepting that which convinces him.
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Paddy1989
Guest
Faith is jumping out of an airplane with a parachute and putting complete faith in the designers of the parachute, engineers of the airplane and mechanisms to work. One consciously weighs up the decision with reason but ultimately puts faith in others that they have not set out to murder them by sabotaging the design or it fail by sheer incompetence, it is an act of faith because you and me have not witnessed nor understand how a plane or parachute is designed but trust in the intelligence and moral intentions of the men and women who designed it. It is also an act of faith in the end because although through reason you can trust in the effectiveness of the designs you can’t know for 100% or even 99% that you will not die. Reason guides one to trust in what is about to happen but because one can’t know with certainty the outcome they must at some point take that leap of faith, so essentially reason used to the maximum of our ability and then faith based on that reason. We use faith everyday based on reason, it allows us to actually make decisions when there could actually be good reasons to counter this, so for example trusting in the moral intentions of strangers when we clearly see everyday that people wrong others and may do the same to us and even at some point will do the same to us. One could even with reason alone say we shouldn’t trust anyone because we can’t know with certainty how they will treat us and based on how people treat others at times, using reason alone it would be illogical to trust anyone, we must therefore use reasons based on the history of our interactions with them to eventually put faith in their intentions but we can never know for certainty and the world is filled with people who we perceive as Good people just snapping and doing crazy things. You an me would define Faith differently, what you describe faith as i would call ludicrous.No sir, here is the difference in terms of belief, hope, and faith.
Take the experiment of rolling a 1d6 dice.
Belief: I believe a value out of all known possible values of the dice will appear. So a value of 1 to 6 will be the result based on what we know about the dice and how it repeatedly works in our reality.
Hope: I hope the specific value I want to appear will be the result out of all the other known possible results. Such as betting on a 5 to be the result.
Faith: Wanting the result to be something that has not been demonstrated as a possible result. Such as wanting a 7 to appear.
You sir are using faith as everyone else uses belief of how their senses work. I can demonstrate that my senses match reality. Which is why I don’t get hit by cars. Faith is the unjustified belief that walking in front of a moving car will not hurt. There is no justification for that position based on the evidence of reality.
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Paddy1989
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Given the philosophical arguments for the existence of God from some of the Greatest minds in history most people feel they are justified in believing in an intelligent designer who caused life especially intelligent life to exist. Many of these people aswell as i would disagree with your definition of faith, i feel your doing this so as to write off faith completely without understanding it, atheists i feel do this quite a lot, atheists will ridicule theists because of their inability to understand what faith is while at the same time mocking them for believing in some man in the sky, the theist will stare back at them in confusion about how little the atheist understands what faith is and what they actually believe God is. Your argument for trusting in your senses because it is consistent with what happens in reality i agree with and i feel is exactly the same argument the Christian would give for trusting in their moral senses to explain objective morality. Dr William lane Craig explained this further in that we can trust our moral senses the same as we trust our physical senses to explain reality, any argument he states against moral senses a parallel argument could be put against our physical senses, such as us being a brain hooked with wires being controlled how to perceive reality
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IWantGod
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I think you will find that most people on this forum believe that their faith is justified insomuch as it is grounded in reason. The people here have a reasonable faith, at least most of the people i have spoken to…That is why believing something based on “faith” is not something to be valued.
However you will come across people who took a leap of faith purely for the sake of their psychological well-being because the alternative was unlivable for them. They chose to have faith for existential reasons. So it does make some sense at least, insofar as they value their mental health and their existence, that they put their faith in the words of Jesus. So who am i and who are you that we should say that their faith is not something they should value? It’s inconvenience to you is existentially irrelevant. Science is important when we want to know something about physical reality, but it is not the only thing that is important to people.
Faith without evidence is not necessarily faith in the absurd. Its simply faith without evidence. If somebody puts their faith in Christianity without considering the evidence, that may seem unreasonable to you, but there is no objective rule out there in the universe that says a person cannot have faith without evidence. A person can have a faith that is not scientifically justified but is still consistent with the scientific evidence if only that it doesn’t contradict the evidence…
When it comes to convincing you of their faith, then you can say to that person that there is no evidence and you only believe in things that you can prove with the scientific method (which would be a bit strange because i’m sure you have plenty of hopes and dreams and values that you have not justified with the scientific method.). That’s entirely your prerogative. I mean, at the end of the day, according to metaphysical naturalism, we are all going to cease to exist, so what does it matter that somebody believed in something without evidence and how are you better off just because you chose to live your life according to the scientific method? You are still going to cease to exist, and all this debating about what is justified or not was just all straw to begin with; in other-words, meaningless. Some people believe in God because it justifies their existence, and only the concept of God allows them to make sense of anything that we are doing in life. God answers the qeustion “Why are we doing this” .
If it makes you feel better you can say to your self, just before you wink out of existence, that your beliefs were consistent with the epistemological rules of the scientific.method. Just as-long as you know that it isn’t going to mean anything or hold any value once we are all gone forever…There is no applause waiting for you.
When faced with existential annihilation, only a strange person would be comforted by the idea that he was right about his atheism…It’s absurd. We are emotional beings, we are not just calculators.
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Russell_SA
Guest
“How does this differ from faith? Hope is simply the passive degree of possibility of the desired outcome. Faith is when one has embraced it and chosen to believe it. So if you hear a loved one was in a car accident where there was only one survivor, just the fact that you haven’t confirmed the loved one died is hope of their survival. Choosing to embrace that hope and believe they have survived is an act of faith. So hope is the passive possibility (however slim or likely) and faith is the actual choice to believe it’s true. As far as Faith relates to reason, the more hope there is, the more reasonable the faith. Going back to my analogy, if only 2 of 10 people died in the accident, you have quite a bit of hope, relatively speaking, so it’s quite rationally sound to embrace faith that your loved one is okay. If only one person survived, it’s not exactly irrational to embrace that, as it doesn’t contradict the facts and is certainly possible, but nor is there a very strong case for it. If it was that there was only one survivor out of 100, your faith is more arbitrary still.”
So you hope that they are alive because you know that it is actually possible that they may be the one that survived. But if you go around telling people that they survived and acting like they survived before you have verified this, then yes that is Faith. Just like buying a lottery ticket and going around spending 10’s of thousands of dollars before you actually know that you have won. That is what Faith results in apparently. Living life as you wish it to be instead of waiting to see what reality actually presents or to do the appropriate thing and with hold living your life based on the results you want by waiting until reality has verified the uncertainty for you. Here’s some snake oil to cure your cancer.
“So hope is the passive possibility (however slim or likely) and faith is the actual choice to believe it’s true.”
Exactly what I posted about the difference between Belief, Hope, and Faith. Belief is verifiable and demonstrable. Faith is the excuse you use when you can not verify and demonstrate this in reality.
“Hope in itself is never rational or irrational.” It is rational because your hope is based on all the known possible results of the event, even if the one you want is extremely rare; like winning the lottery.
“hope, with the only real distinction being that “hope” is “desirable possibility.””
I see we agree here. Hope is the desire for the possible outcome you want.
So you hope that they are alive because you know that it is actually possible that they may be the one that survived. But if you go around telling people that they survived and acting like they survived before you have verified this, then yes that is Faith. Just like buying a lottery ticket and going around spending 10’s of thousands of dollars before you actually know that you have won. That is what Faith results in apparently. Living life as you wish it to be instead of waiting to see what reality actually presents or to do the appropriate thing and with hold living your life based on the results you want by waiting until reality has verified the uncertainty for you. Here’s some snake oil to cure your cancer.
“So hope is the passive possibility (however slim or likely) and faith is the actual choice to believe it’s true.”
Exactly what I posted about the difference between Belief, Hope, and Faith. Belief is verifiable and demonstrable. Faith is the excuse you use when you can not verify and demonstrate this in reality.
“Hope in itself is never rational or irrational.” It is rational because your hope is based on all the known possible results of the event, even if the one you want is extremely rare; like winning the lottery.
“hope, with the only real distinction being that “hope” is “desirable possibility.””
I see we agree here. Hope is the desire for the possible outcome you want.
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Russell_SA
Guest
“I don’t call the Faith positively irrational (that is, it doesn’t contradict reality) but rather it’s passively irrational: Reality doesn’t particularly suggest it.” No reality does not suggest it at all that it is justified to act as if what you are hoping to be the result is the actual result since you have not verified that to be the case as you stated earlier, “Hope is simply the passive degree of possibility of the desired outcome. Faith is when one has embraced it and chosen to believe it.” But if you verified it to actually be the case, then it’s just Belief and you by pass Faith all together.
“To some extent, though, determining the latter is effectively subjective, since what one person sees as viable evidence that DOES suggest hope of something, another may not, yet the latter person’s lack of being convinced doesn’t negate that the former person IS convinced and is internally justified in thus accepting that which convinces him.”
Subjective - The only subjective part is what you hope for since all known results are possible. But one person’s hope may be more likely the result than someone else’s. Such as betting a 4,5 or 6 will appear on a 1d6 dice roll over just a 3.
“To some extent, though, determining the latter is effectively subjective, since what one person sees as viable evidence that DOES suggest hope of something, another may not, yet the latter person’s lack of being convinced doesn’t negate that the former person IS convinced and is internally justified in thus accepting that which convinces him.”
Subjective - The only subjective part is what you hope for since all known results are possible. But one person’s hope may be more likely the result than someone else’s. Such as betting a 4,5 or 6 will appear on a 1d6 dice roll over just a 3.
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Russell_SA
Guest
No sir, Hope is the desire that the best possible KNOWN outcome will occur. That is how I see the idea of Hope being used. We have evidence of parachutes working properly. Faith would be jumping off a barn during the religious rapture and believing that Jesus will save you before you hit the ground. Faith is the excuse you use for your belief when reality has not presented that as an option yet.
I “trust” the future results will match the constancy of the past results of running this test. I trust that reality has not changed. That the laws of physics will not be suspended for this next experience. I understand that the experience may have a bad result, but that too is based on reality as well. That is justified to be a concern.
You seem to use Faith as everyone else uses Hope. So just use Hope like everyone else does. We don’t need two words for the same concept to communicate ideas.
We use Trust in the idea that if planned events followed, then the most likely known possible event will result based on numerous previous tests that are verifiable. Such as following parachute folding instructions properly will result in the least amount of people dying.
Certainty - no one lives by absolute certainty, just by the most predictive model of reality. Reason is how you come to your beliefs about reality. Your beliefs about reality is what shapes your decisions and actions. A+B = C. A and B are your experienced reality. + and = is your reason/applied logic about those experiences. C is your belief/conclusion about those experiences that inform you on what to predict in the future about those events if you come across them again.
I “trust” the future results will match the constancy of the past results of running this test. I trust that reality has not changed. That the laws of physics will not be suspended for this next experience. I understand that the experience may have a bad result, but that too is based on reality as well. That is justified to be a concern.
You seem to use Faith as everyone else uses Hope. So just use Hope like everyone else does. We don’t need two words for the same concept to communicate ideas.
We use Trust in the idea that if planned events followed, then the most likely known possible event will result based on numerous previous tests that are verifiable. Such as following parachute folding instructions properly will result in the least amount of people dying.
Certainty - no one lives by absolute certainty, just by the most predictive model of reality. Reason is how you come to your beliefs about reality. Your beliefs about reality is what shapes your decisions and actions. A+B = C. A and B are your experienced reality. + and = is your reason/applied logic about those experiences. C is your belief/conclusion about those experiences that inform you on what to predict in the future about those events if you come across them again.
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Russell_SA
Guest
You can be a great mind and still be wrong about something that is unfalsifiable to verify if it is true or not. Example: Einstein mathematically/logically concluded that gravity waves should exist in our reality. But we did not teach them to be part of reality until we could falsify his claim. The tests kept coming back with no data either way. No data does not mean he was wrong, just we couldn’t verify is he was wrong or right. Same with religious claims. Not until we finally, actually, detected gravity waves in 2015 were we justified in teaching they are part of reality. Alternative Medicine people play on this with the desperate all the time. They can logically convince someone of their snake oil to cure their cancer, but they are still wrong because they are making logic claims about reality but it’s reality that tells us what is logical to conclude, not what we want reality to be. That is why every single test to verify supernatural claims have always come back as nothing at all. So adjust your internal model to reflect what reality has logically shown you after verification, not a moment before.
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IWantGod
Guest
How have you determined this to be objectively true? Sounds to me like a subjective preference, This is how you approach things. Which is entirely your prerogativeNo sir, Hope is the desire that the best possible KNOWN outcome will occur.
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Russell_SA
Guest
What is the difference between reasonable faith and hope? Unreasonable hope would be something like a person with just $10,000 in savings to bet it all on a low, but still statistically probable result for example. Reasonable hope would be to bet $50 on a 50/50 chance for example. But all these results are documented as a possible result. What is the documentation of the possible result when you need to use faith to describe your justification for that position?
If you need to believe in unjustified reasons to be a functional person, that’s fine for you. But it shouldn’t be fine for anyone else to agree with you as though that is actually describing reality and shouldn’t be allowed into the conversations about reality and what is logical about reality. Santa is important to children as well and it follows exactly what you are prescribing. I don’t believe that the masses of proclaimed religious are soo fragile that they need myths to function as an adult. We have it in ourselves to look at reality for what it is and still stand up to our full height as people and address that reality. I don’t see this weakness in us that you are describing here, but rather our strength for what we get through every day.
“Faith without evidence is not necessarily faith in the absurd.” Describing something as supernatural, is by definition to be without evidence that correlates to the supernatural and can be demonstrated to be linked to the supernatural or that the supernatural exists at all in the first place. This is because we can not investigate the supernatural at all, to see its markers it leaves behind so that we can demonstrate the difference between an unknown natural event and an event with supernatural involvement. Just like fire, for example, leaves markers of burnt material. We have no supernatural markers to reference.
“there is no objective rule out there in the universe that says a person cannot have faith without evidence.” I am not arguing that at all. But I am arguing that we should not take their “faith” response as reasonable for explaining reality or what actually happened for the event they are referencing.
" A person can have a faith that is not scientifically justified but is still consistent with the scientific evidence if only that it doesn’t contradict the evidence…"
This is exactly how writers create the back stories for their comic book heroes. They make a logical back story that appears to be consistent with the reality they write about. So we can have faith in superman right? Just he hasn’t revealed himself yet.
If you need to believe in unjustified reasons to be a functional person, that’s fine for you. But it shouldn’t be fine for anyone else to agree with you as though that is actually describing reality and shouldn’t be allowed into the conversations about reality and what is logical about reality. Santa is important to children as well and it follows exactly what you are prescribing. I don’t believe that the masses of proclaimed religious are soo fragile that they need myths to function as an adult. We have it in ourselves to look at reality for what it is and still stand up to our full height as people and address that reality. I don’t see this weakness in us that you are describing here, but rather our strength for what we get through every day.
“Faith without evidence is not necessarily faith in the absurd.” Describing something as supernatural, is by definition to be without evidence that correlates to the supernatural and can be demonstrated to be linked to the supernatural or that the supernatural exists at all in the first place. This is because we can not investigate the supernatural at all, to see its markers it leaves behind so that we can demonstrate the difference between an unknown natural event and an event with supernatural involvement. Just like fire, for example, leaves markers of burnt material. We have no supernatural markers to reference.
“there is no objective rule out there in the universe that says a person cannot have faith without evidence.” I am not arguing that at all. But I am arguing that we should not take their “faith” response as reasonable for explaining reality or what actually happened for the event they are referencing.
" A person can have a faith that is not scientifically justified but is still consistent with the scientific evidence if only that it doesn’t contradict the evidence…"
This is exactly how writers create the back stories for their comic book heroes. They make a logical back story that appears to be consistent with the reality they write about. So we can have faith in superman right? Just he hasn’t revealed himself yet.
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Russell_SA
Guest
“That’s entirely your prerogative. I mean, at the end of the day, according to metaphysical naturalism, we are all going to cease to exist”
Ultimate meaning in life is irrelevant to me and changing the subject. But on this point, why would ultimate meaning remove the limited meaning I can find in life now? My car will ultimately rust away but it has meaning in that it allows me to have a better job since I can drive to it, I can have a better relationship with my friends since we can go out to town in it. Meaning now is more important to me than the final end of my life. That is not so hard to wrap anyone’s head around. I don’t need my actions to last forever or be remembered forever. I’m happy just living my short life with my friends and turning back into elements for other life to use because that is what reality has actually presented and I am fine with that. I am not going to have “faith” in some cultural myths to solve a problem in reality to the religious that is not a problem to me.
Ultimate meaning in life is irrelevant to me and changing the subject. But on this point, why would ultimate meaning remove the limited meaning I can find in life now? My car will ultimately rust away but it has meaning in that it allows me to have a better job since I can drive to it, I can have a better relationship with my friends since we can go out to town in it. Meaning now is more important to me than the final end of my life. That is not so hard to wrap anyone’s head around. I don’t need my actions to last forever or be remembered forever. I’m happy just living my short life with my friends and turning back into elements for other life to use because that is what reality has actually presented and I am fine with that. I am not going to have “faith” in some cultural myths to solve a problem in reality to the religious that is not a problem to me.
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Russell_SA
Guest
I don’t know if objective truth has anything to do with this. All we are doing is creating words to describe our experienced reality, so if we say “aldjasdlfkj” means to “X Y Z” where X Y Z is an experience of reality we all can corroborate and have access to, like how we all can run for example. Then we need to define the word “run” to mean that experience of running. That’s all we are doing. Is that objectively true? I don’t know if that applies here.
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IWantGod
Guest
Because it’s an all or nothing bet. We have nothing to lose. What are the choices? Our lives either have no objective moral value, purpose, or meaning, or it does have objective moral value purpose and meaning. We are either going to cease to exist when we die or we are not going to cease to exist when we die. We know what we want and we know what is existentially required in order to have those things. We know that physical reality alone cannot provide those things. Thus (assuming there is no evidence in favor of God or immaterial realities) we are left with the unknown, but not an impossible unknown as far as we know. At that point, whether or not you choose to have faith in the unknown depends upon the things that you value. Perhaps you don’t value the idea of having objective moral value, purpose and meaning… Perhaps you have resigned to the idea of ceasing to exist. When faced with nihilism, choosing not to have hope in the unknown is absurd to me. There must be something in it for you. You would like us to think that its reason that’s stopping you, but i disagree. I think it’s preference…What is the difference between reasonable faith and hope? Unreasonable hope would be something like a person with just $10,000 in savings to bet it all on a low, but still statistically probable result for example. Reasonable hope would be to bet $50 on a 50/50 chance for example. But all these results are documented as a possible result. What is the documentation of the possible result when you need to use faith to describe your justification for that position?
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Russell_SA
Guest
Before we get side tracked with the objective truth conversation,
Belief in the unknown for what you want is not modeling your beliefs on what reality has presented to actually be the case. Reality has presented that we come from star dust and we will return to those elements. Sorry, but that is what reality has presented. What you wish reality to be like in the future is irrelevant to what reality has actually demonstrated to be the case now. I never came to terms with picking what reality has presented over some other culture’s myths and legends of future events. My acceptance of what my future will be is based on what reality has presented me. You seem to be indicating that it is bad that my understanding of my inevitable atomic decay is a preference over your culture or myths addressing the future. Since mine is referenced in what reality has actually presented, you are implying that it is just a preference to have an internal model of reality verse any other model of reality we want. The latter is not something to be taken seriously and I want to avoid doing that as much as possible.
Belief in the unknown for what you want is not modeling your beliefs on what reality has presented to actually be the case. Reality has presented that we come from star dust and we will return to those elements. Sorry, but that is what reality has presented. What you wish reality to be like in the future is irrelevant to what reality has actually demonstrated to be the case now. I never came to terms with picking what reality has presented over some other culture’s myths and legends of future events. My acceptance of what my future will be is based on what reality has presented me. You seem to be indicating that it is bad that my understanding of my inevitable atomic decay is a preference over your culture or myths addressing the future. Since mine is referenced in what reality has actually presented, you are implying that it is just a preference to have an internal model of reality verse any other model of reality we want. The latter is not something to be taken seriously and I want to avoid doing that as much as possible.
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Russell_SA
Guest
As to objective truth…
You can have objective truth when you define the problem you are trying to solve and a reference point of your goal to reach. Some questions may not have an objective good/truth but they may have an objective bad/truth or may not be moral questions at all or may not be something we can solve.
Such as trying to solve the problem of proper nutrition in reference to human well-being. Is objectively true or good to eat apples instead of pears? Not sure, either seems fine. But it is objectively bad to drink battery acid.
You can have objective truth when you define the problem you are trying to solve and a reference point of your goal to reach. Some questions may not have an objective good/truth but they may have an objective bad/truth or may not be moral questions at all or may not be something we can solve.
Such as trying to solve the problem of proper nutrition in reference to human well-being. Is objectively true or good to eat apples instead of pears? Not sure, either seems fine. But it is objectively bad to drink battery acid.
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