Is evidence relevant to people of faith?

[Linusthe2nd]

I fully understand. Astronomy is not Theology, and Theology is not superstition as is Astrology. Theology is revealed truth that is reasonable, tells us truths about ourselves and God, and is part of our history in which God has acted in and through and around man. Superstitions are not based on revelation or science or reason, but on wishful thinking and a desire for power/control.

Theology is not Revealed truth. Theology is the study of the truths of faith and the Scriptures, morality and trying to make them more accuratey understood and to help make them applicable to our times. Revealed Truth is God’s own Revelation about Himself and His Son and His plan of salvation for all men.

 

[In_Spiration]

Are there standards by which a factual proposition is worthy of belief?

Yes.

And, if the answer to that is “yes”, then how can people of faith justify belief in several of your doctrines?

By meeting those standards.

What are your standards for belief?

I’ll provide a range for possible definition of doxastic justification. For now we can simply use the characterization most agreeable to you.

• S is subjectively justified in believing p if and only if S’s believing p is epistemically responsible. (Greco)
• S is subjectively justified in believing p if and only if S’s believing p results from the dispositions that S manifests when S is motivated to believe the truth. (Greco)
• A justified belief is what a person who is motivated by intellectual virtue, and who has the understanding of his cognitive situation a virtuous person would have, might believe in like circumstances. (Zagzebski)
• An act of intellectual virtue A is an act that arises from the motivational component of A, is something a person with virtue A would (probably) do in the circumstances, is successful in achieving the end of the A motivation, and is such that the agent acquires a true belief (cognitive contact with reality) through these features of the act. (Zagzebski)

Do any of your standards disregard evidence or render evidence irrelevant?

No.

 

[In_Spiration]

Rational men and women form beliefs based upon consistent and plausable logic and facts corresponding to evidence and experience.

As opposed to facts which do not correspond to evidence and experience? Or fictions that do? Whether such things could even exist is likely dependent upon the definition of a fact. I take a fact to be simply that which is the case, an objective state of extra-mental, or mind-independent, worldly affairs.

(Plus, all men, by nature, are rational, by the way. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus every individual man is essentially rational whether or not he can or does act accordingly at any given time. But that’s merely a side note.)

Irrational beliefs are formed out of a deficit in knowledge or explanation, and, with resort to superstition, fable, or, legend to offset the deficit.

Yes, almost all belief-systems, and basically our entire body of natural science, are formed as a response to some perceived deficit in knowledge. Properly speaking, I can only want what I do not have. So the first part of your definition is rather unproblematic. But the second part seems to be misguided. Superstition, fable, and legend may indeed qualify as irrational beliefs, but not all irrational beliefs are one of those three things. However, I somehow suspect you’d use irrationality to describe the distinctive nature of them all, which would of course make your attempted definition quite tautological. I suppose I’ll wait for you to clarify your own terms. You’re mostly trying to tout some variety of evidentialism, right? (Justification per Evidentialism: Person S is justified in believing proposition p at time t if and only if S’s evidence for p at t supports believing p.)

What is curious to me is how human nature so consistently and readily invented gods and ritual across cultures and across the eons of time before approximately 16th century when European science began to provide testable explanations. Before that we were entirely at the mercy of mythology to explain life’s mysteries. Even now, centuries after Francis Bacon, the great minds of the Rennaisance, after Europe crawled out of the dark ages following the collaspe of Roman, what life’s meaning is, and, what is a proper ethos still remain in the grip of rampart superstition or firmly in the grasp of materialistic decadence. The challenge for the 21st century will be developing a rational ethos free of medieval trappings and ambiance and free of the decadent cosumeristic culture in which we find ourselves.

That’s certainly an interesting narrative you’ve relayed to us, but I’m afraid I have yet to see any hard evidence for accepting it as true.

 

[ApologiaSophia]

Are there standards by which a factual proposition is worthy of belief? And, if the answer to that is “yes”, then how can people of faith justify belief in several of your doctrines? What are your standards for belief? Do any of your standards disregard evidence or render evidence irrelevant?

Let’s say I have no obvious reason to believe C. If B than C, and if A than B.

B seems possible, but I do not know for sure.

I than come to A which is subject to scrutiny.

If I find evidence or logical proofs for A convincing, I will believe A. After believing A, B becomes clear. Because I believe in B, than I have reasons to believe in C, although I do not have reasons for C the way I have reason’s for A.

I believe in God because it logical to me. I believe in Christ resurrection because it is highly supported by the historical evidence, especially granting God’s existence. If Christ’s resurrection is true it provides explanatory power and gives his teachings and his followers a sort of credit. This means I can believe what his followers said about what he said. Based on what Jesus said, the Trinity makes sense. If you simply asked me for evidence of the Trinity, I have none outright. I can tell you I have evidence for the resurrection which is further supported by the existence of God for which there is evidence to believe reasonably. Trinity is certainly a doctrine of faith, but I have reasons for believing it. There are certain suppositions that come from certain acknowledgements. That’s how just about everything works.

 

[WmJackP]

I fully understand. Astronomy is not Theology, and Theology is not superstition as is Astrology. Theology is revealed truth that is reasonable, tells us truths about ourselves and God, and is part of our history in which God has acted in and through and around man. Superstitions are not based on revelation or science or reason, but on wishful thinking and a desire for power/control.

I am certain that we can never agree.

It seems to me that, while you claim to operate from a premise of critical thinking, you too readfily accept propositions on the basis of unreliable and unverifiable authority. Gaps in the evidence you may have been taught may be justifiably filled in by what you call faith. And, while, in the abstract, I agree that I also accept certain things on faith (for example, I have faith in Websters dictionary if I question my spelling, or, faith in a certain text if I want to determine the distance between the eath and the moon----But, any proposition, even one accepted on faith must first meet a threshold allowing it to be worthy of belief. Worthliness of belief arises , in my opinion, from the propsition’s consistency in logic, its correspondence to experience, and, is ALWAYS subject to modification based upon better or more accurate informational sources.

Conversely, I suppose you see me as operating from a sort of blindness toward reasonable conclusions.

Hence, I don’t see that we will ever come to a meeting of minds.

 

[WmJackP]

Can the universe create itself? Or, is that just something you say?

The cosmos, the universe, all that comprises reality is far more than we understand. There are scientists that posit the conditions from which matter might arise from “nothing”. I recently read something by Lawrence Krauss that discusses this.

I say this not necessarily because I find Krauss’ discussion to be compelling, but, rather to indicate that there are people who can make a case for a universe arising from “nothing”.

I don’t know that Krauss or if anyone has the answer or theory which will lead to an answer, but, I do find it difficult to accept that the ultimate “rationale of being” is itself a personality (indeed, under your theology, a triune personality). Regardless, how there can be all of what we see in the universe is an amazing puzzle.

If there is a rational universe, it may be that it is just a rational universe and there is no person behind the mask. Mathematics and physics are rational—but they are not persons (although, historically the greeks did personify some of the arts and what they had of science).

My own personal view, however, is that “rationality” may be the ultimate state of the cosmos and it may exist ndependently of any personality. And that isn’t something I just say–it is, as a matter of fact, something I have thought about a great deal.

 

[WmJackP]

Does one HAVE to “see it to believe it”?
Evidence exists when you allow yourself to open your eyes and see it.

The point I had hoped to make is that for a proposition to be worthy of belief, it must meet certain standards. My standards for belief, and, I think surely your standards for almost everything outside of some of your religious beliefs are: consistency in logic, and, correspondence with experience and honest observation.

If one claims, for example, that all Incas before the arrival of the Europeans had red hair, I suspect that you would doubt that claim based upon experiece, knowlege of genetics and the consistency in repeated reporting.

If a case for such a proposition could be made, I suspect that you would agree that the quantum of proof would have to be sufficient to outweigh the abundant body of genetic theory and historical data available at the present time.And I suspect that you would demand solid and consistent explanations for how this proposition could be true given what we know by experience, observation, and, consistent reporting to be the case of red headed incas in the precolumbian era. You would likely question also whether any of the claimant’s purported proofs were infected with misinterpretation, bias or other influences which migh skew the basis or the conclusions. That is exactly the way I feel when someone tells me that someone rises from the dead or that unleavened bread mutates into a divine substance when some arcane phrases are uttered.

So, it seems to me that when it comes to something as counter intuitive as some religious doctrines, those claims are given a pass and accepted without critical analysis.

 

[Al_Moritz]

The cosmos, the universe, all that comprises reality is far more than we understand. There are scientists that posit the conditions from which matter might arise from “nothing”. I recently read something by Lawrence Krauss that discusses this.

I say this not necessarily because I find Krauss’ discussion to be compelling, but, rather to indicate that there are people who can make a case for a universe arising from “nothing”.

Krauss is confused. He does not understand the difference between philosophical nothing (the real nothing that has no properties whatsoever) and the physical ‘nothing’ of the quantum vacuum. Cosmologist Luke Barnes explains this very well here:

letterstonature.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/of-nothing/

He also debunks the tired argument from ‘zero energy’:

letterstonature.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/more-sweet-nothings/

From what I’ve heard, recently Krauss also appears to have complained that philosophers and theologians have ‘shifted their goal posts’ in response to the ‘physical nothing’ idea by now claiming that the philosophical nothing is really something else. If Krauss indeed said that then he is either disingenuous or plain ignorant. Philosophers have made the same claims about real nothing not just for centuries but for millennia.

 

[WmJackP]

WmJackP;10010270:

I do, but I’d like you to state them.

What proposition would you like for me to discuss? I’ll do my best to critique your reasoning on anything you propose.