Is faith realistic?

Great Debates
1

In this post, Der Trihs makes a couple interesting statements:

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Faith makes wisdom impossible, in the areas it touches on. Faith cripples the mind. And you can’t get knowledge from faith; it’s empty. It has no way of giving you knowledge; it’s just a guess combined with denial.

Not if you trust faith you don’t. Faith is immensely arrogant. Faith denies reality, denies the arguments of others, denies everything but your egocentric fantasy of what the world is. Nothing could be more arrogant than faith.

You cannot, by definition, have an open mind on something you have faith in.

And a faith based belief is never better than any other wild guess, with the difference that the guesser will refuse to change his or her guess as the facts come in. THAT is “why not”.
[/quote]

I realize that in this context he is talking about “faith” when it comes to belief in a deity. However, what about other definitions of faith? I have faith in my wife that she loves me and would not have an affair (be “unfaithful”). I have faith in my friends and know I can trust them to be there when I am in need just as they can count on me.

I have no proof that my wife won’t stray, just a feeling based on my experiences with her over the years. The same for my friends.

Could I misplace my faith? Sure. I’ve trusted people, put my faith in them, only to have them hurt me.

But I don’t see as many negatives and limitations to faith as Der Trihs does. I believe that my faith in my relationships makes me stronger because I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to others, to count on them and let them know they can count on me. I don’t see it as a flaw or fault but as a strength.

Is having faith, whether it is in a person, your country, your religion or your belief in the sanctity of life or whatever an unrealistic attitude? Are beliefs a negative? Should we rely only on what we can prove with logic and evidence or is it OK to trust in things that we feel?

2

[QUOTE=Slypork]
I have no proof that my wife won’t stray, just a feeling based on my experiences with her over the years. The same for my friends.
[/QUOTE]

You have no proof, in that sense, that the sun will rise tomorrow (as David Hume pointed out), but it’s still not unreasonable to make plans based on that assumption. Faith in supernatural matters is fundamentally different.

3

I believe DT was speaking solely of religious faith.
There are other types of faith, as you pointed out. Faith can also be construed as hope, trust, and being able to depend on others (or at least wanting to). We can also have faith in ourselves, as in self-confidence.
Can we be disappointed and hurt by others and crushed when we fail? Of course. But faith/hope gives us a reason to go on, to keep trying, to fall in love again, and so on.

IMHO.

4

[QUOTE=Slypork]
I have faith in my wife that she loves me and would not have an affair (be “unfaithful”). I have faith in my friends and know I can trust them to be there when I am in need just as they can count on me.

[/QUOTE]

Actually, I’d say the examples you gave aren’t faith, so much as they are examples of trust. You trust in your wife and your friends because they have demonstrated themselves to be trustworthy in the past.

Faith is, in my experience, blind belief. Trust is something which is earned and demonstrated.

5

“Faith”, in a religious context, seems to be an awfully slipperly concept; different Christians seem to use it in very different ways. It actually seems to be the more theologically liberal believers who are fond of using “faith” to mean “substitute for evidence” (“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”) “Well, that’s just a question of faith; evidence doesn’t have anything to do with it.” The more “fundamentalist” believers actually are sometimes more willing to offer up evidence or arguments for why one should believe. Maybe not good arguments, but it’s still better than pure fideism.

“Faith” in a non-religious context invariably winds up meaning trust or belief as a result of evidence. A man has faith in his wife based on, as the OP says, years of experience: That whole bit with her telling him she loves him, agreeing to marry him, maybe bearing his children, spending years treating him as if she loves him, giving repeated evidence of happiness at being with him, etc.

People who have “faith” that other people love them without any evidence to back it up will likely become the subjects of restraining orders.

Note that I’m talking about “evidence” here. “Proof” is something you only find in geometry textbooks. And of course evidence-based conclusions are always to some extent tentative. If you prove a geometric theorem, assuming you didn’t commit any fallacies, that’s that. (Someone else can come along later and prove some other conclusion based on other premises, but the original proofs still hold true and will always hold true for the premises they were based on.) Conclusions based on evidence, on the other hand, may always be subject to revision–Lots of people have had faith in other people which has turned out to be misplaced.

6

[QUOTE=BrainGlutt n]
You have no proof, in that sense, that the sun will rise tomorrow (as David Hume pointed out), but it’s still not unreasonable to make plans based on that assumption. Faith in supernatural matters is fundamentally different.
[/QUOTE]

Well I’d agree that is a bit different when you include the supernatural, but assuming that some of you don’t beleive in the supernatural it becomes the same. You trust in it because it has a past history that you trust. In matters of God we have a multi 1000 year record that it does work.

7

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
In matters of God we have a multi 1000 year record that it does work.
[/QUOTE]
Hardly; we havre a multi thousand year history of complete failure.

To the OP : Trust in other people, or in anything else that you have evidence that lets you predict them isn’t faith. Neither are opinions or desires; for example, I consider human freedom desirable, and I require neither proof nor faith for that. It’s an axiom of mine; I make that assertion, and I don’t particularly care if there’s some moral absolute that agrees.

Faith is about making assertions for matters of fact for which you have no evidence.

8

In religious terms, faith is not a synonym for being swayed by feelings. It is the exact opposite: a way to avoid being at the mercy of normal human feelings.

Human beings are naturally fickle creatures, easily misled, manipulated, tricked, and distracted. If we are not careful, we are easily taken in by anybody who wants our money, our time, or our vote. Even those who pride themselves on their skepticism and reason are often tricked by sophisticated means, and they aren’t even aware of it.

Faith means building a mental collection of your most important memories, lessons, and beliefs, and then holding to those things in the face of attack. A person with strong faith is not bothered by his or her short-term emotions or swayed by anyone with an argument that appears convincing at first glance.

Faith is not only an ally of wisdom. It is a necessity for wisdom. Anyone who doesn’t have some faith will end up getting swept all over by the prevailing intellectual currents in their time and place, and will achieve the mental stability necessary to actually learn important things.

[QUOTE=Lightnin’]
Actually, I’d say the examples you gave aren’t faith, so much as they are examples of trust. You trust in your wife and your friends because they have demonstrated themselves to be trustworthy in the past.

Faith is, in my experience, blind belief. Trust is something which is earned and demonstrated.
[/QUOTE]

Look up faith; you’ll see it’s the same thing as trust.

9

I think MEBuckner covered the definition of faith. The post by DT was aimed at religion. Religious faith has helped many people cope with the problems of life. I see nothing wrong with it. There are many advantages of belonging to a religion. A few of them are discussed below.

10

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Well I’d agree that is a bit different when you include the supernatural, but assuming that some of you don’t beleive in the supernatural it becomes the same. You trust in it because it has a past history that you trust. In matters of God we have a multi 1000 year record that it does work.
[/QUOTE]

And the amazing thing is that it works just as well no matter which god you believe in!

Religious faith allows people to be sure that no matter what disaster happens, it is for the best, and whatever discovery is found contradicting the Bible, either the Bible actually means something non-contradictory or the discovery is wrong. To extend the marriage analogy, religious faith as applied to marriage would have you believing your wife loves you despite the fact she is out every night and none of your children look like you. Dick Martin on Laugh In had this kind of faith.

(For non-geezers out there, they had a continuing sketch where all of Martin’s kids looked exactly like neighbor and best friend Dan Rowan.)

11

[QUOTE=ITR champion]
In religious terms, faith is not a synonym for being swayed by feelings. It is the exact opposite: a way to avoid being at the mercy of normal human feelings.
[/quote]
Of course. Faith turns you into what amounts to a preprogrammed robot, to the extent you have faith. Someone motivated by faith will ignore the welfare of himself or his family, the death and suffering of his victims, and any contradictory facts he comes across. Those are objective things; faith overrides those. Faith is the supremacy of the subjective over the objective.

[QUOTE=ITR champion]
Human beings are naturally fickle creatures, easily misled, manipulated, tricked, and distracted. If we are not careful, we are easily taken in by anybody who wants our money, our time, or our vote. Even those who pride themselves on their skepticism and reason are often tricked by sophisticated means, and they aren’t even aware of it.

Faith means building a mental collection of your most important memories, lessons, and beliefs, and then holding to those things in the face of attack. A person with strong faith is not bothered by his or her short-term emotions or swayed by anyone with an argument that appears convincing at first glance.
[/quote]
No, they are swayed by the FIRST person who gets to them with an appealing line of dogma; that’s why there’s such a focus on infecting children with religion while they are young and helpless. Faith makes sure that the truth or competing lies have less of a chance. It makes one impervious to ALL arguments and to external reality, not just short term arguments or emotions.

[QUOTE=ITR champion]
Faith is not only an ally of wisdom. It is a necessity for wisdom. Anyone who doesn’t have some faith will end up getting swept all over by the prevailing intellectual currents in their time and place, and will achieve the mental stability necessary to actually learn important things.
[/quote]
People can and do use their intelligence to learn, not faith. A person with faith CANNOT learn in the areas that faith touches on, because they will ignore the facts.

Faith is NOT the ally of wisdom; it’s poison to it.

[QUOTE=ITR champion]
Look up faith; you’ll see it’s the same thing as trust.
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s not. Trusting someone or something when you have evidence, and trusting/believing in something or someone without evidence are two different things. Like it or not.

12

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
In matters of God we have a multi 1000 year record that it does work.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll see your thousands and raise you a few hundred million.

13

Faith.

Example: I have faith that Der Thrihs totally misunderstands the concept of faith.

14

I have confidence that his take, while probably more acerbic than necessary, is pretty much bang on.

15

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
I have confidence that his take, while probably more acerbic than necessary, is pretty much bang on.
[/QUOTE]

You’re bang on when you described his method of his misunderstandings.

16

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
I have confidence that his take, while probably more acerbic than necessary, is pretty much bang on.
[/QUOTE]

Indeed. If, for example, you actually read philosophers of religion (theistic and non-theistic) on the subject of faith, what they are writing about is belief based on insufficient evidence or no evidence at all. And I’m talking people like C.S. Lewis here.

17

[QUOTE=Yeticus Rex]
You’re bang on when you described his method of his misunderstandings.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t agree that he has a misunderstanding, just a undiplomatic method of expression.

18

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
You trust in it because it has a past history that you trust. In matters of God we have a multi 1000 year record that it does work.
[/QUOTE]
Similarly, people have been murdering each other for millions of years. We’re still around, and progressing nicely. In matters of murdering people, we have a multi 1000 year record that it works!

19

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Similarly, people have been murdering each other for millions of years. We’re still around, and progressing nicely. In matters of murdering people, we have a multi 1000 year record that it works!
[/QUOTE]

Yes people also chose to follow Satan too.

20

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Yes people also chose to follow Satan too.
[/QUOTE]

I sense a no true Scotsman argument lurking in the wings here. “Oh, yeah, all those Protestants who killed tens of thousands of ‘witches’ during the reformation, and the Catholic Church when it carried out the Crusades, and the Protestants and Catholics going at each other in Northern Ireland, and the Muslims conquering by the sword, and the Hindu nationalists in India killing off Muslims by the trainload…they weren’t really following God.”