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Post by Vegas on Feb 25, 2017 15:34:17 GMT
This is an extension of a discussion that I was having with Archie... over the existence of faith based on reason and that all faith isn't just blind faith based on nothing. I'm not arguing that God is real or that dumb blind faith doesn't exist... Just that you can have faith in something that isn't a known fact based on reason and experience.. not just because you have a stupid desire to do so. How this can be applied to religion?.. That's up to the individual to decide.. I don't really care about that.  |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2017 15:42:54 GMT
This is an extension of a discussion that I was having with Archie... over the existence of faith based on reason and that all faith isn't just blind faith based on nothing. I'm not arguing that God is real or that dumb blind faith doesn't exist... Just that you can have faith in something that isn't a known fact based on reason and experience.. not just because you have a stupid desire to do so. How this can be applied to religion?.. That's up to the individual to decide.. I don't really care about that. Neither of those examples are analogous to a belief in religion. In both cases you are using evidence and reasoning. In the first example, the trapeze artist would only have been hired to perform that job based on his aptitude. So although you may not have seen the feat performed by that artist personally, you place some trust (perhaps you could call it faith) in the company which hired the guy in the belief that they would not just have picked a random stranger off the street. In the second case, I don't believe that is faith it is simply expectation based on past evidence. Faith in an unseen God is always unreasonable, because it is founded on a faulty premise, is emotionally biased and ignores evidence which does not conform to the hypothesis in which the believer is emotionally invested |
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Post by thefleetsin on Feb 25, 2017 15:53:04 GMT
understand fully that faith is only faith if you allow its mind-numbing essence to run slip shod all over your life.
AND there's no megalomaniac quite like the megalomaniac who thinks a god is peering into their lives.
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Post by Froggy on Feb 25, 2017 16:09:00 GMT
The two examples are predictions about the future, which are not 100% certain unless they involve logical truths. (I'm absolutely sure that tomorrow the angles of a triangle will still total 180 degrees.) As has already been pointed out, this isn't a good analogy to belief in God.
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Post by Vegas on Feb 25, 2017 16:40:28 GMT
This is an extension of a discussion that I was having with Archie... over the existence of faith based on reason and that all faith isn't just blind faith based on nothing. I'm not arguing that God is real or that dumb blind faith doesn't exist... Just that you can have faith in something that isn't a known fact based on reason and experience.. not just because you have a stupid desire to do so. How this can be applied to religion?.. That's up to the individual to decide.. I don't really care about that. Neither of those examples are analogous to a belief in religion. In both cases you are using evidence and reasoning. In the first example, the trapeze artist would only have been hired to perform that job based on his aptitude. So although you may not have seen the feat performed by that artist personally, you place some trust (perhaps you could call it faith) in the company which hired the guy in the belief that they would not just have picked a random stranger off the street. In the second case, I don't believe that is faith it is simply expectation based on past evidence. Faith in an unseen God is always unreasonable, because it is founded on a faulty premise, is emotionally biased and ignores evidence which does not conform to the hypothesis in which the believer is emotionally invested I already addressed that this isn't really about religion or God... Just about the mere existence of faith based on reason. How applicable it is to religion is a different discussion. |
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Post by Vegas on Feb 25, 2017 16:44:51 GMT
The two examples are predictions about the future, which are not 100% certain unless they involve logical truths. (I'm absolutely sure that tomorrow the angles of a triangle will still total 180 degrees.) As has already been pointed out, this isn't a good analogy to belief in God.I never said it was. This is just a discussion about the nature of faith... and it's sometimes existence because of reason. That's why it's faith... and not considered believing a fact.
So... You have faith that there will actually be a tomorrow?
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Feb 25, 2017 17:03:59 GMT
What you're describing in your OP is just inferential reasoning based on past evidence and both of them have a predictive component involved. In neither can you be absolutely certain of your prediction, and you may even put a probability on your confidence level: "I'm 95% sure the trapeze artist won't fall; I'm 90% Johnny will successfully juggle the chainsaws again," etc. To me, "faith" is when you try to "leap" over your doubt/uncertainty to push your belief to 100%, or at least to a much higher level than it should be given the evidence. So in the above cases, if you convinced yourself you were 100% certain that the trapeze artist/Johnny would succeed, THIS I'd call faith; otherwise it's just perfectly rational inferential reasoning.
When it comes to religion, this "leap of faith" is much larger than the above examples, and "faith" is typically only invoked once it's pointed out to believers how thin their evidence actually is, or even that it's not evidence at all. I've had this exact experience talking to believers online and off more times than I can count, where they'll describe something they consider evidence for their faith, I'll point out exactly why that's not evidence, and I can tell my argument registers with them because they have to pause for a second before coming back with the "faith" argument. In those cases it seems to be away of maintaining the belief even when the evidence that initially made you believe, or strengthened your belief, has been shown to be invalid. Further, religious faith doesn't have a predictive component, or if it does it's of the Nostradamus variety (vague enough to happen to anybody by chance). When religious faith DOES make predictive claims that turn out be wrong, then again they fall back on "faith." It's a curious example of what cognitive scientists call belief perseverance, or the ability of beliefs to persist in the face of disconfirming evidence.
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Post by Vegas on Feb 25, 2017 17:20:33 GMT
And how you choose to act on that reasoning is based on how much faith that have in that reasoning.
I guess it's futile to try to leave religion out of this this discussion. 
Sure it does. The righteous have faith that God, IN THE FUTURE, will make His existence known and do a bunch of sht that will prove that their faith was justified.
Sometimes... They can use a semblance of reason to have that faith.... Whether or not you agree that their reason is valid... or their experience or study counts as evidence... is also a different discussion.  |
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Post by ArArArchStanton on Feb 25, 2017 17:30:21 GMT
This is an extension of a discussion that I was having with Archie... over the existence of faith based on reason and that all faith isn't just blind faith based on nothing. The problem comes back to the same thing it always, there is no basis to claim a god is true, or even to claim that it's possible. |
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Feb 25, 2017 17:34:33 GMT
That's not really how I'd put it. There will always be situations in life where we're uncertain, and in those situations the best we can do is to try to assign a confidence level to our feelings. So if you feel 95% certain the trapeze artist won't fall, I don't think this is "faith," this just putting a rough number to your reasoning on the matter. I don't think it requires "faith" in any meaningful sense to do this: yes, you're relying on your reasoning, but I don't think you'd describe it as putting "faith" in your reasoning, since "faith" is typically what we call our belief past the point where reason leaves off. Well... we ARE on Religion, Faith, and Spirituality talking about faith and reasoning... That's what I meant by "predictions in the Nostradamus sense." This isn't exactly the same as predicting whether or not the trapeze artist will fall or Johnny will juggle the chainsaws. My point was more that faith seems to be mostly something that's invoked when reason and evidence fails as a justification for their belief. I'm not saying this is always the case, or that it's even unique to religion (I think it happens with many types of different beliefs; hell, I see it in the world of audio), but merely that I think that's one of the key components in the reasoning/faith relationship. |
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Post by Froggy on Feb 25, 2017 17:42:58 GMT
What do you mean by "faith"? If an event has a 90% chance of happening, and I wager accordingly (accepting a bet that it will occur where I give 2-1 odds, and rejecting a bet where I would have to give 20-1 odds) I don't see that I'm employing faith at all. I'm merely dealing with an uncertainty in an entirely rational manner.
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Post by Vegas on Feb 25, 2017 17:50:31 GMT
What do you mean by "faith"? If an event has a 90% chance of happening, and I wager accordingly (accepting a bet that it will occur where I give 2-1 odds, and rejecting a bet where I would have to give 20-1 odds) I don't see that I'm employing faith at all. I'm merely dealing with an uncertainty in an entirely rational manner. Knowing the odds.. and acting on them... Are two separate things. I'm not saying that faith is defined by reason... Just that sometimes it can play into its existence. |
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Post by Vegas on Feb 25, 2017 17:58:55 GMT
This is an extension of a discussion that I was having with Archie... over the existence of faith based on reason and that all faith isn't just blind faith based on nothing. The problem comes back to the same thing it always, there is no basis to claim a god is true, or even to claim that it's possible.(And to me, too) You haven't done their study.. You haven't had their experiences. You don't get to make that call for them... nor do you get to say that they don't have a reason for their belief.. or to say that they don't use reason. |
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Post by Froggy on Feb 25, 2017 18:01:53 GMT
What do you mean by "faith"? [Snip] Knowing the odds.. and acting on them... Are two separate things. I'm not saying that faith is defined by reason... Just that sometimes it can play into its existence. So what do you mean by "faith"? Somebody once said that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," which seems to imply a certainty that extends beyond the facts. Under that approach having a degree of certainty that extends only as far as the facts (and predictions/best guesses from them) is not faith at all. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2017 18:20:22 GMT
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Post by Vegas on Feb 25, 2017 18:22:10 GMT
 Glad you're here. |
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Post by Vegas on Feb 25, 2017 18:24:52 GMT
Knowing the odds.. and acting on them... Are two separate things. I'm not saying that faith is defined by reason... Just that sometimes it can play into its existence. So what do you mean by "faith"? Somebody once said that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," which seems to imply a certainty that extends beyond the facts. Under that approach having a degree of certainty that extends only as far as the facts (and predictions/best guesses from them) is not faith at all.
Sure... But it's what you base that "assurance" on that it in question....
Sometimes it's just moronic blind faith...
Sometimes.. it's based on past experience, study, and reason.
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Feb 25, 2017 18:43:27 GMT
So what do you mean by "faith"? Somebody once said that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," which seems to imply a certainty that extends beyond the facts. Under that approach having a degree of certainty that extends only as far as the facts (and predictions/best guesses from them) is not faith at all.
Sometimes it's just moronic blind faith...
Sometimes.. it's based on past experience, study, and reason.
I think what Froggy and myself are saying is that it doesn't make sense to use "faith" to describe your confidence level in something based purely on evidence and reasoning. This seems to be a pretty obvious distortion of how the term "faith" is typically used in meaning belief or confidence past the point that reasoning/evidence leaves off. |
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Post by Vegas on Feb 25, 2017 19:05:24 GMT
Sure... But it's what you base that "assurance" on that it in question....
Sometimes it's just moronic blind faith...
Sometimes.. it's based on past experience, study, and reason.
I think what Froggy and myself are saying is that it doesn't make sense to use "faith" to describe your confidence level in something based purely on evidence and reasoning. This seems to be a pretty obvious distortion of how the term "faith" is typically used in meaning belief or confidence past the point that reasoning/evidence leaves off. Then.. You are kind of poisoning the well of discussion. If you only define faith as being based on the unreasonable/irrational.. Then, some... Arrrrrccchhhhieeee... will circularize that argument. "All faith is irrational"... Why?"Because that's how I define 'faith'". Why?
"Because all faith is irrational"  |
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Post by cupcakes on Feb 25, 2017 19:23:31 GMT
tpfkar It is the difference between "having faith" in meteorology vs. "having faith" in astrology. Only one has a substantiated basis. |
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