The paradox of faith

Great Debates
1

It has become fashionable for people, especially politicians, to describe themselves as “people of faith” by which they mean faith in God. But none of them notice how problematic the whole concept of faith is. Faith is the voluntary belief in something for which there is no justification by critical analysis, by which I mean the use of inductive or deductive logic, or at least a “cost-benefit analysis” (playing the odds) to arrive at a set of conclusions or a plan of action. But heres the contradiction:

You can’t have faith in everything. Most assertions of fact contradict other assertions of fact, and you cannot believe in two assertions that contradict one another. You cannot have faith in Hitler and in Jesus at the same time. So you must choose what you will have faith in and reject what you won’t have faith in.
How to you do that? By using critical analysis! You can’t use faith to decide what to have faith in because that leads to an infinite regression. But if you have used analysis to decide what you will have faith in, it is not faith at all, just a cost-benefit analysis. You can’t have it both ways. Either critical analysis is the valid way to conduct your life or faith is, but not both. You can’t consider faith valid on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and analysis valid on the other days. If you really believed in faith you wouldn’t step out of the way of a speeding truck because you would have faith it wouldn’t hurt you. But if you have decided that faith would be misplaced in this case and step out of the way you have already chosen, on the basis of critical analysis, that this is not on the list of acceptable things to have faith in. Christians say they have faith in Jesus because the Bible tells them to. But when you ask them why they have faith in the Bible they tell you Jesus told them to. They go in a circle.

Only one person ever understood what it means to have faith. Kierkegaard knew that Abraham was acting absurdly when he chose to have faith that God wanted him to kill his son, even though he knew that killing your child was a great evil. Abraham saw the contradiction but it did not shake his faith. He chose to be absurd.

The only way out of this is to stop regarding faith as belief in propositions that can be judged as true or false. Every time religious people have faith in such an assertion, such as the earth was crearted 7000 years ago, science comes along and presents evidence that it isn’t true. The religious people get all defensive and offer a thousand dubious proofs that they are right, because they think if they are proved wrong they will have to become athiests. I think faith is not belief in a set of factual assertions, but rather an attitude. An optimist can never be proved wrong, no matter how many bad things happen to him, because his optimism is an attitude, not a set of beliefs. His only belief is in the goodness of life, regardless of what happens to him during that life. He can never be proven wrong. Get yourselves a philosophy of life not based on the validity of a set of factual propositions and you will be OK.

2

I think you are over thinking it. My experience suggests most people (not all mind you) do not critically examine their beliefs and often you can find people who hold conflicting beliefs with little trouble. One would hope people were more conscientious in forming their notions about the world but all too often they are not.

3

Some things are not subject to critical analysis. Beyond faith, I would point to love, responsibility, self-esteem and liking broccoli, among other things.

Not all people of faith believe the earth was created 7000 years ago. You’re confusing faith with a literal interpretation of one section of one book which one subset of people of faith believe to be holy.

That’s interesting, but it doesn’t explain the conviction of deists that “something” is out there that can not be measured or even totally comprehended by humans, yet is nonetheless real.

Again, you’re confusing faith with literalism.

4

Not according to any dictionary that I’ve ever seen… and yes, I have looked up a good number of them.

Almost every dictionary I’ve consulted says that faith is belief without proof. Obviously, this is not the same as saying that there can be no justification for these beliefs via critical analysis.

BTW – and I want to say this as tactfully as I can – I’ve found that the people who accused believers of lacking “critical analysis” are also the ones who trot out that erroneous (and IMO, unjustified) definition of “faith.” It’s as though they didn’t stop to analyze the definition that they use.

5

Okay. In that case – and again, I’m trying to say this tactfully – shouldn’t one’s criticism of faith also be based on factual propositions? For example, should one not adopt an accurate definition of faith? Similarly, should one not avoid crititiczing faith in general based on a representation (accurate or not) of a mere subset of faith?

6

Faith and critical analysis are compatible. As an example, many churches have study groups where aspects of the particpants’ faith are examined and analyzed in detail. Or, read up on theology–a lot of thought has been put into faiths of all kinds.

As a rule of thumb:
Belief because of logical deduction is mathematics.
Belief because of reproducible evidence is science.
Belief because of personal experience is faith.

7

I seem to have hit on a raw nerve here. Firstly, I am not criticizing people of faith. Notice I quoted Kierkegaard who was a very religious person. Secondly, there are very few things that can be proved, but we still believe as a result of critical analysis. I can’t prove the sun will rise tomorrow, but I believe it will, because of a process of inductive reasoning (it has happened so many times before it’s a good bet it will tomorrow.) When people say “I have faith” they usually mean something stronger than faith that the sun will rise tomorrow.

8

I’m not sure how the confusion applies to politicians:

-If I say I believe in God, I might get elected.
-If I say I don’t believe in God, I won’t get elected.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

9

Most of these study group discussions are in the nature of rationalizations. A person of genuine faith wouldn’t feel them to be necessary. Critical analysis of articles of faith is an oxymoron.

RE rule of thumb #3. How many people believe the Biblical account of creation because they personally experienced it?

10

Very true. Atheists have about an equal chance of getting elected in America as communists. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if several politicians claiming to be faithful to insert deity here were closet atheists, but they realized that revealing that wouldn’t get them elected in their lifetime…

11

Correct, faith is belief in something for which there is no proof or is not provable. If there were proof for it, faith would not be required. I need faith to believe that there is an afterlife. I do not need faith to believe that I cannot lift up a car. and don’t see why you’re trying to measure one by using criteria applied to the other.

Okay…

You make the erroneous leap here that because faith is a belief for which there is no proof, that it is also devoid of evidence. A personal experience can be evidence. A historical record can be evidence. Also, I’d offer there is the idea of necessity. Not to hijack this, I think that the best argument for the existence of a Creator god (non-denominational) is that we are here and that given our experience in the world, all things have a cause, even the Big Bang. That doesn’t make that a fact but, it works for me. Conversely, if you say there is not a Creator god, you hold faith that there is a way around first cause that we do not understand yet. and that view may be correct. But even there someone has faith in a certain world view, based on a grand sweep of evidence.

That’s where you get screwed up. You’ve moved from proof to evidence to analyis, conflating all three.

Sheesh. You’re not allowing that faith may have valid applications, but limited ones. If we are dealing in a definable, measurable physical world, faith is not necessary. When we deal with things outside that arena, faith may be used. It may be helpful. It may not. But once we talk abuot that world, the usual tools available to us are, by definition, useless.

That’s not what Christians—particularly those who have come to the religion later in life—tell me. You’re using a broad brush here (not to mention elsewhere) to paint a picture that just isn’t true. One of those more schooled in theology and its history can be helpful here.

Your being weaselly here. The problem is the word “judged”. We judge things all the time and need to. If based on my life experience I deem that the Christian faith is the true faith or the Jewish faith is the true faith, I’m not making an empirical claim of fact. I’m saying that I have enough evidence for ME.

Now here’s where you really hurt yourself. As has been pointed out to you already, you take a small subset of people of faith and ascribe what may be viewed as a problem with their belief as it compares with science to the much larger pool of people with faith. You are both using a broad brush and excluding the middle.

All the problems with this I’ve covered above.

12

Most of these study group discussions are in the nature of rationalizations.
That’s a sweeping generalization. The ones I’ve participated in have not been rationalizations.

A person of genuine faith wouldn’t feel them to be necessary.
That’s a No True Scotsman argument. You’ll not convince any real Doper with it. :wink:

Critical analysis of articles of faith is an oxymoron.
Really? You’ll have to spell it out in more detail, then. I can’t think of anything that can’t be subjected to analysis. Why should an article of faith be immune?

RE rule of thumb #3. How many people believe the Biblical account of creation because they personally experienced it?
Personal experience doesn’t need to be direct; it includes anything that a person experiences. They can have experience from revelation, witnessing, prayer, study, etc. Perhaps some event in their life convinced them of a truth.

Really, many beliefs are believed because of personal experience. It’s only a few beliefs that can be supported by more objective standards. That’s why science is regarded so highly–most beliefs cannot be supported with objective evidence. But just because a belief is subjective, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

13

Let’s not play games here. You specifically said that “none of them notice how problematic the whole concept of faith is.” I say that’s a pretty darned clear criticism, wouldn’t you?

You did a great deal more than that, as I’m sure that you recall.

Besides, quoting Kierkegaard doesn’t prove anything. I’ve often quoted people with whom I sharply disagree, as do many others here on the SDMB. Heck, I’m quoting you right now, and yet that’s obviously not an endorsement of your views.

Quoting Kierkegaard doesn’t change the fact that you did speak disparagingly of people who exercise faith. Nobody here will begrudge you the right to criticize; however, they will ask that you criticize fairly and accurately. I think people have already pointed out numerous ways in which your criticism fails these tests.

14

Why are you getting so touchy? I’m not criticizing you. I don’t even know you. I only said faith is a paradox, which in not an original view. Many religious people, including Kierkegaard have pointed it out. I also have faith in some things, but I recognize it is a paradox. It may be in inevitible human trait. Chill out.

15

How, precisely, is faith a paradox? What is self-contradictory about it?

So far, your analysis has not been persuasive. The dilemma you force between faith and analysis does not stand up.

You say Kierkegaard is religious. Since you believe that faith and analysis are incompatible, do you claim he had no faith, or that he did not analyze?

Pointing out examples of religious people who show lack of analysis (“Christians say they have faith … They go in a circle.”) does not imply anything about other religious people. Christianity is an extremely diverse religion and is not the only religion.

16

Why are you getting so touchy? I’m just pointing out that you’re using an incorrect definition and sloppy logic. I don’t even know you.

17

Apparently I didn’t make myself very clear. Faith is paradoxical because before you can have faith you must choose what to have faith in. You can’t use faith to do that. You must do a calculation of some sort. So, in order to excercise faith you must first abandon faith. I find that paradoxical, in the same way that the ancient Greeks found the idea of infinity paradoxical. I was not trying to attack any religion or any other group of people. Although I am not religious (at least not in the conventional sense) I have no patience with militant athiests who think the world would better if everyone became athiests.

Kierkegaard recognized the problem but chose faith anyway. There’s something heroic about that in an absurd sort of way. That’s why he became an Existentialist icon.

18

Ah, much more comprehensible. Thank you.

I wouldn’t call your observation a “paradox”, but rather a “boot-strap” problem. It’s not really a contradiction; it’s a where-do-I-begin question.

It’s also a problem for mathematics and science. Take Euclid’s geometry. Given a few axioms and basic logic, one can build theorems covering a lot of geometry. But we started with axioms and logic. Where did those come from? You have to take the axioms as granted–there’s no proof for them. And how do you prove logic is valid? You can prove logic is self-consistent in terms of itself, but that doesn’t mean it’s ultimately true.

Or take physics. At a basic level, it’s simply a description of how matter-energy interacts in space-time. But it doesn’t actually say what things are. What’s an electron or a quark? All we can really say is that it’s a thing that interacts with other things in certain specific ways. (String theory may push this question down to a lower level, but the question will remain.) So, again, we boot-strap our understanding from a few bits of unknown.

Faith, just like the other belief structures, has the same problem “where do I start?”. But that’s not a paradox, that’s nature of belief in general.

19

I’m not sure it’s the same thing. Once you have used critical reason to decide what to have faith in, you can’t go back. Everything you believe about the matter from then will be a consequence of your initial calculation, not faith. It will become mere trust, not faith. You trust your origional reasons for choosing to believe these things were sound, so you don’t have to re-do the calculation each time you believe them.

As regards your observation that we can never know the complete reason why reality is the way it is: How could be otherwise? We are a small part of that reality. Our brains (the only tool we have for understanding things) is made up of the very elementary particles we are trying to understand, subject to the same laws we are trying to explain. I think it violates Godels theorem for a part of a system to understand the whole system. It would be like expecting a computer to figure out how computers work.
My guest membership expires in a few minutes and I will not be able to respond to your replies. Sorry. this is getting interesting. I can still read them, however, so send them if you like.

20

It’s been my observation that where faith is in use, analyses become skewed, incomplete, or sometimes downright dishonest. That is, when thinking on subjects of faith, the person has an observable tendency to accept the things they have faith in as axiomatic, and then carry on from there arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or whatever. In cases where their analysis begins to approach a proof (by contradition) of the falsehood of their faith-based premises, it’s at that point that they tend to either start rationalizing or stop analyzing. In my experience, anyway.