Is faith a rationalization?

[truthpizza]

Is faith what it seems to be?

“Faith” always bothered me as a concept. I don’t mean faith based on experience, as “I have faith that my car will start” or “I have faith the pilot will land the plane safely”, but faith given as a reason for a belief (normally religious) in the absence of some actual evidence that the belief is true. It bothered me because it was apparent that there was nothing about faith that favored a true belief over a false one. “Faith” seemed to be whatever you felt like believing, and typically what people would like to be true has no particular connection to what is actually true.

In particular, it seemed unlikely that this could be an actual brain mechanism. Like our other organs, our brains seem to be extrememly well adapted for survival. Why would the brain have a mechanism which could generate beliefs that were independent of reality? This would detrimental to survival instead of helping it.

Perhaps the problem is that faith is not really a mechanism or reason for having a belief. Instead it is a reason people give when the real reason for having the belief is unacceptable for the purposes of argument. It is a rationalization. Like other rationalizations, the people giving it usually think it is the actual reason.

So if faith is a rationalization, what is the real reason for the belief? Wishful thinking is no doubt a part of it, but more often it is merely that we believe what others have told us. Someone in authority (a parent or a preacher) wants us to believe some doctrine. If we ask why we should believe their doctrine, they wouldn’t be very successful telling us to believe it “just because I say so”, or even because “everybody says so”. Instead they tell us to believe it through “faith”. They aren’t being insincere, because of course this is why they think they believe it themselves.

They also tell us that having faith is a virtue. This is a key to why “faith” as a concept is so successful. Good people have faith. Bad people don’t have faith. So rather than questioning whether what we have been fed is accurate, we are distracted by feeling good about ourselves because we have faith. We don’t even want to question what we have been told.

Faith has the additional virtue of being a conversation stopper. If somebody asks me why I believe what I do, I can say it’s because I have faith. I don’t have to provide any actual evidence. My discussion opponent has nothing to refute.

It is pretty obvious that what people believe on “faith” is tied closely to beliefs popular in their culture. People from India tend to have faith in the precepts of Hinduism, people in Saudi Arabia believe Islam, people from Ireland believe in Catholicism, and those from ancient Rome tended to believe in the Roman pantheon. This fits very well with faith being belief in what we are told.

So, is there some validity to believing things on faith, or is it just a rationalization for believing what we are told with some wishful thinking sprinkled in?

[the_PC_apeman]

@truthpizza

Is faith what it seems to be?
…
So, is there some validity to believing things on faith, or is it just a rationalization for believing what we are told with some wishful thinking sprinkled in?

What, to you, is the difference between faith and belief? To me, faith is just a label for a set of beliefs that are held without evidence of their truth. Validity is irrelevant. Rationalization is an afterthought.

[truthpizza]

Originally Posted by the PC apeman

What, to you, is the difference between faith and belief? To me, faith is just a label for a set of beliefs that are held without evidence of their truth. Validity is irrelevant. Rationalization is an afterthought.

Faith is often invoked as if it is a reason for belief. I think of rationalizations as substitute reasons, like excuses, used when the real reason would sound bad. Normally they would be concocted after the fact, but if faith is a rationalization, it has been used for a long time.

[mswas]

A common rationalization in this debate is the assumption that because you have not experienced something, that someone else has not either. I have experienced things that other people would consider supernatural that I do not, that I of course cannot prove because they were an isolated incident and not repeatable by experimentation. This does not mean that I know the precises mechanisms for their occurence, but the explanation is beyond standard sets of information, at least ones that I have come across.

Ironically, my faith stirs my interest in science out of a desire to more adequately explain my experiences.

[Apos]

I don’t think most people make that rationalization mswas, and none so far here. Most of the critiques of faith are based on people laying out exactly why they have faith (and in some cases explaining that having faith WITHOUT reasons is precisely its virtue), not hidden experiences that no one is aware of or notified about.

If someone has reasons to believe, then they don’t really need faith (though of course their reasons might be mistakes), even if those reasons are claimed personal revelation. Oftentimes people think certain events totally explainable or improbable when in fact they are pretty well-understood or inevitable. Witness things like “ghost” pictures, Jesuses that “appear” in toast, night-paralysis, NDEs, and so on.

[gonzomax]

If you define faith as belief in something which is not substantiated by evidence, thgen it has not changed.

[the_PC_apeman]

@truthpizza

Faith is often invoked as if it is a reason for belief. I think of rationalizations as substitute reasons, like excuses, used when the real reason would sound bad. Normally they would be concocted after the fact, but if faith is a rationalization, it has been used for a long time.

I still cannot get away from the idea that faith is belief. So your first sentence reads to me as “belief is often invoked as if it is a reason for belief.” If faith isn’t belief what is it?

ETA: I think a better term for what seems to be concerning you is tradition.

[mswas]

@Apos

I don’t think most people make that rationalization mswas, and none so far here. Most of the critiques of faith are based on people laying out exactly why they have faith (and in some cases explaining that having faith WITHOUT reasons is precisely its virtue), not hidden experiences that no one is aware of or notified about.

If someone has reasons to believe, then they don’t really need faith (though of course their reasons might be mistakes), even if those reasons are claimed personal revelation. Oftentimes people think certain events totally explainable or improbable when in fact they are pretty well-understood or inevitable. Witness things like “ghost” pictures, Jesuses that “appear” in toast, night-paralysis, NDEs, and so on.

I agree with Aquinas on this issue:

Article 6. Whether God has the power to do anything outside the order inherent in creation

1. God seems unable to do anything outside the established order of things. Augustine says, God the founder and creator of all natures, does nothing contrary to nature . Now anything that is apart from the pattern inherent in nature seems to be contrary to nature. God cannot, then, do any such thing.

2. Further, as the order of justice originates with God, so does the order of nature. God has no power, however, to transgress the order of justice; by that fact he would be doing something unjust. Neither, then, does he have power to transgress the order of nature.

3. Further, God has fixed the order of nature. Should he do something outside it, then, he would appear to be changeable, and that is inadmissible.

The notion of what God ‘can’ and ‘cannot’ do seems to me to be a mistake of language. It’s not so much what God ‘can’ do, but what God ‘will’ do. Where faith comes in is in the idea that we can know what God ‘will’ do. God doesn’t violate nature, because nature is the way God intended for it to be. Should God ever decide to act outside of the bounds of the rules that God set down, then everything we know about nature will be mooted and it really won’t matter anymore anyway.

One of the arguments I see put forth is often that because something is explainable it is therefore not miraculous. This definition of miracle was put forward by Hume:

a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, an event which is not normal to most of mankind.

I do not share such a view. I believe that everything is perfectly explainable. It’s simply a matter of explainable by whom and to whom.

To me the way skepticism is portrayed by the more vulgar of skeptics at the expense of the more vulgar of the faithful is a bit higher form of the cruel games of children. It is putting someone on the spot and essentially berating them for being too stupid to properly explain the phenomena they experienced. The vulgar of the faithful, like a child will try to transduce the phenomena by using metaphors from within their phenomenalogical field, to the frustration of the skeptic who cannot make sense of what they are saying as it does not fit within the notion of common communication that they have come to accept as a baseline.

[truthpizza]

Originally Posted by mswas
A common rationalization in this debate is the assumption that because you have not experienced something, that someone else has not either. I have experienced things that other people would consider supernatural that I do not, that I of course cannot prove because they were an isolated incident and not repeatable by experimentation.

I’m pretty much in agreement with Apos. If your belief is based on personal experiences, I would consider that evidence rather than faith (although it would be common to call it faith since it involves religion). Scientists and other people might not consider it sufficient evidence to be convincing, but for you it would be evidence.

Originally posted by **gonzomax **

If you define faith as belief in something which is not substantiated by evidence, thgen it has not changed.

I don’t define it this way. I realize a lot of people do, but I think this is an oversimplification. I’m trying to figure out what is actually going on when people use the word. There has to be some actual reason people believe what they do. What is it?

[mswas]

@truthpizza

I’m pretty much in agreement with Apos. If your belief is based on personal experiences, I would consider that evidence rather than faith (although it would be common to call it faith since it involves religion). Scientists and other people might not consider it sufficient evidence to be convincing, but for you it would be evidence.

Then we are all three in agreement. At least with Christianity, Revelation is key. There is no expectation of belief without revelation that can be substantiated scripturally. Certainly there is a lot of social pressure to conform, and that leads to people virulently defending their belief, but without revelation it’s all meaningless.

[Key_Lime_Guy]

@truthpizza

I don’t mean faith based on experience, as “I have faith that my car will start” or “I have faith the pilot will land the plane safely”, but faith given as a reason for a belief (normally religious) in the absence of some actual evidence that the belief is true. It bothered me because it was apparent that there was nothing about faith that favored a true belief over a false one. “Faith” seemed to be whatever you felt like believing, and typically what people would like to be true has no particular connection to what is actually true.

It seems to me that a lot of people’s faith IS based on authentic (true) experience. For instance: the experience of love; the feeling of having a soul; the aesthetic delight of nature; etc…

[Captain_Amazing]

@mswas

I agree with Aquinas on this issue:

You’re actually disagreeing with Aquinas on the issue. That’s a quote from the Summa Theologica you’ve quoted. The way the Summa works is that Aquinas sets up arguments in his first part, like so:

Article 1: I should go to lunch

It seems like I should not go to lunch, for the following reasons:

1. I’m at work, and being paid for my time, and they expect me to work for my pay.

2. Obesity is a major detriment to health, and so by going to lunch, I will be eating calories that will make me fat.

3. Lunch costs money and I should save my money

Then he answers the question, against his original claim, and giving a reason

But I say that I should go to lunch because I’m hungry

He then goes on to rebut the arguments he made originally.

In response to 1, my employer expects me to go to lunch and has established a lunch break as part of my daily schedule. In response to 2, even though food can cause obesity, if one eats in moderation, one will not be obese. In response to 3., it is accepted in budgeting that one may spend money on the necessities of life, of which food is one.

And now, I’m going to lunch.

[begbert2]

@truthpizza

Perhaps the problem is that faith is not really a mechanism or reason for having a belief. Instead it is a reason people give when the real reason for having the belief is unacceptable for the purposes of argument. It is a rationalization. Like other rationalizations, the people giving it usually think it is the actual reason.

I think this hardly ever happens, that people have a subversive agenda and merely claim ‘faith’ even though they know perfectly well the “real reason” for their belief (something nefarious, presumably).

No, from what I can tell having faith is simply the act of believing something without a lot of good reason; often the extent of that reason being that you were told to believe it by someone or something you consider to be a religiously authoritative source. There is no ulterior motive or secret ‘real reason’; they have faith, and so they believe, and that’s that.

Now, I do think that persons will subconsciously gravitate toward accepting statements that they agree with, and will subconsciously or deliberately reject statements that they find uncomfortable or repugnant. So, a person will tend to have faith in things that support their behaviors and other beliefs. But this doesn’t mean they selected the faith beliefs to support their whims; it just means that their beliefs are filtered somewhat by their personality.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of faith. But I think that calling it rationalization is crossing into the realm of error.

[truthpizza]

Originally Posted by the PC apeman

I still cannot get away from the idea that faith is belief. So your first sentence reads to me as “belief is often invoked as if it is a reason for belief.” If faith isn’t belief what is it?

I think a better term for what seems to be concerning you is tradition.

In some cases faith might be belief itself, but in my experience people often use the term as if it explains why they are confident of their belief.

It seems pretty rare that people justify their beliefs based on “tradition”, although when they do it’s pretty clear what’s going on, so it’s not much of a subject for debate.

[mswas]

Captain Amazing I’ll look more deeply at that then. Thanks.

[truthpizza]

Originally Posted by Key Lime Guy

It seems to me that a lot of people’s faith IS based on authentic (true) experience. For instance: the experience of love; the feeling of having a soul; the aesthetic delight of nature; etc…

I’ve had these experiences too, but they don’t lead to particular religious doctrines. So it seems to me people must adopt their doctrines for some other reason.

[Apos]

@mswas

I agree with Aquinas on this issue:

I’ll leave to others to comment on this error, since this digression really doesn’t have much to do with my comments anyway, not having any comment on what God can or cannot do.

One of the arguments I see put forth is often that because something is explainable it is therefore not miraculous. This definition of miracle was put forward by Hume:

Ok, so do you disagree with this definition? You appear to, but then go on to say things which don’t really speak directly against his definition at all (since the quoted definition doesn’t say anything about explainability). To Hume, maybe something was explainable, maybe it wasn’t (who knows? apparently mswas thinks he does, but on what basis?), but the point was how we might come to know it.

To me the way skepticism is portrayed by the more vulgar of skeptics at the expense of the more vulgar of the faithful is a bit higher form of the cruel games of children. It is putting someone on the spot and essentially berating them for being too stupid to properly explain the phenomena they experienced. The vulgar of the faithful, like a child will try to transduce the phenomena by using metaphors from within their phenomenalogical field, to the frustration of the skeptic who cannot make sense of what they are saying as it does not fit within the notion of common communication that they have come to accept as a baseline.

I’m afraid you’d better give us some cites or examples of this, otherwise, it’s no more useful or relevant to this debate than “I hear some vulgar Republicans love money” would be in a debate on tax policy.

[Der_Trihs]

@the PC apeman

I still cannot get away from the idea that faith is belief. So your first sentence reads to me as “belief is often invoked as if it is a reason for belief.” If faith isn’t belief what is it?

Well, for example, beliefs can be based on “facts” that are false or nonexistent; that’s being mistaken or decieved, not having faith.

They can be based on assertion, collective or otherwise; most people think human life is valuable, value is human defined, therefore human life IS valuable. That’s not ( or not always ) faith; some people think there’s an objective reason to value human life, but as for me I don’t even care if there is; I want it to be valued, other people want it to be valued, and people who don’t value it are dangerous for me and mine, so that’s good enough.

As for faith, as defined by the OP, I regard it as irrational, dishonest, cowardly, or insane. I most certainly don’t regard it as a virtue; it’s primary function is to defend indefensible beliefs.

[the_PC_apeman]

@truthpizza

In some cases faith might be belief itself, but in my experience people often use the term as if it explains why they are confident of their belief.

It seems pretty rare that people justify their beliefs based on “tradition”, although when they do it’s pretty clear what’s going on, so it’s not much of a subject for debate.

People attempt to justify their beliefs based on tradition all the time. (They may not be fully aware that that is what they are doing though.) The confidence you mention stems from tradition. The typical example here is religion: Why is it considered proper to give deference to religious beliefs? We do it because it is a long established cultural norm - a tradition. It is that traditional deference that is being invoked in defence of belief, not faith.

[Key_Lime_Guy]

@truthpizza

I’ve had these experiences too, but they don’t lead to particular religious doctrines. So it seems to me people must adopt their doctrines for some other reason.

True, I think ‘having faith’ is a different issue from following a specific religious doctrine.

If we’re talking about why someone might follow a specific religious doctrine, then I agree with whoever pointed to ‘tradition’ as the primary motive. You could call that a rationalization, but I don’t see how it’s helpful to do so.

Think of it this way: If you believe in a ‘higher power’ by experience, and you have an institution available by tradition to cultivate that belief (plus it offers other social benefits), then why not participate? The minutiae of the doctrine is often not taken especially seriously anyhow.