What is the value of faith?

Great Debates
181

(This seems to be the most recent post directly relating to the OP, though I will comment that I think it’s silly to argue about ‘what atheists believe’ when the term is used by one person to mean a certainty-level belief that no God exists, by another person to mean a personal absence of belief in any god, by a third to indicate the disbelief of the specific few gods that they’ve heard about, and by a fourth person to refer to any person (including self-procaimed agnostics) who hasn’t specifically identified themselves as a theist. Heck, “religious person” is a more uniformly defined and understood term.)

Scylla, what you describe here seems to only glancingly align with what I thought the definition of the word ‘faith’ was in this thread. The closest you get is “Faith. Faith let’s you act when your intelligence would otherwise dictate that you shouldn’t bother. It gives you the will to act on something doubtful as if it were true.”, and then you proceed to defend the small subset of ‘faith events’ where the belief being held is merely that one might succeed when the odds are against him; where the actions the person believes in following are a rationally determined (though perhaps improbable) course of action (as opposed to, say, sitting in the airplane praying or singing the latest Weird Al song), and where the success being sought is a specifically noble and worthwhile endeavor. You most certainly are not defending the person who has faith that spending his family’s food money on lottery tickets is so certain to succeed that he need not get a real job, or the person who has faith that merely praying is a better way of dealing with a broken arm than going to a doctor, or a person who believes that killing innocent bystanders will ensure themselves a special place in heaven.

Not to be rude, but the specific case of faith that you find valuable is such an uncommon example of faith that it isn’t hardly a defense of faith at all. It’s like defending ‘dismembering people’ based on the specific case where the individual in question is on the verge of slaughtering a whole crowd of innocent people, and the only possible way of stopping him happens to involve the unavoidable consequence of tearing him apart. It just doesn’t carry any weight in relation to the entire concept under discussion.

(Also, I call the virtue you’re touting “will” or perhaps “determination”. The dude with faith sits in plane and prays (and dies).)

It seems that in this thread a lot of the defense of the value of faith is based in focusing on a limited subset of faith applications (for example those that produce good outcomes) and are deliberately ignoring all the bad things that have been known to happen when people base their beliefs on that absence of evidence known as “faith”, and then act on those unsupported beliefs. (For example, racism is pretty much entirely a faith-based construct, though neither exclusively a religious or nonreligious one.)

As a practical matter, if you ignore all the bad outcomes of something and pay attention to only the good outcomes, then you can defend the claim that anything has value. (For example, the sodomizing of small children is in good to do because it causes pleasure for the sodomizer. --not a belief I hold, by the way.)

Needless to say, no defense of faith or anything else that relies on ignoring large portions of its effects and applications will ever be very convincing to me. That people bother to present such arguments makes me wonder if they have ever honestly considered the effects of the thing in question, outside the rosy image of it they have constructed for their personal edification.

182

This makes slightly less than 0 sense. Rationality is not a system of value. It’s a system of ordering propositions so that they make sense. In this case, you’ve failed completely to do something like that with this sentence.

Again, your post here seems to just play on the bizarre idea that you can just switch around definitions of faith willy-nilly as well as pretending that rationality is something that only Mr. Spock is truly capable of.

If your argument is then that if you try, you do in some cases succeed, then your rationality was mistaken and your whole argument collapses into self-refuting absurdity.

It’s not irrational to decide to keep trying against all odds. Desires and values and hope are not rational or irrational.

183

Then, as it frequently happens, faith is not necessary.

http://www.spcm.org/Journal/spip.php?article10212

184

I think I’ll just treat this as religious glurge.
When did this happen? We don’t know.
Where did this happen? We don’t know.
Any witnesses? None.
Any links to the original study? None.
Any other stories about “Russ Woolcock” to be found? None.
Is this an authentic news story or a religious column? Religious column.

185

Isn’t part of the point if discourse to try and understand what these terms mean to different people? Is it only atheists, who find faith to be a negative thing, that get to set the definition? Are you even interested in input from people who consider faith to have a positive meaning or has the argument been reduced to “that definition isn’t valid” end of story. I don’t find Scyllas meaning hard to fathom. A little too McGyver perhaps but the point is fairly clear.

I don’t think this “subset” of faith is uncommon at all. {unless you’re specifically referring to artic plane crashes with bears} I think what Scylla, myself and others have tried to point out is that there is indeed a positive common aspect of faith that people share. It’s the same thing I was referring to in my Wright Brothers example.

I think I’ve made it clear that I am not a fan of the faith subset that blatantly denies evidence and science to hold on to certain beliefs. I have my doubts about that particular subset being true faith at all. I think it has become an unfortunate misuse of the term. Sure makes for an easy target for ridicule though doesn’t it?

186

With no intention of accepting this story without question here’s a couple of things I find interesting.

Even as an atheist or agnostic MR. Woolcock still valued love and truth over most things. IMHO that is the essence of the spiritual journey. Coincidence I guess.

Even as an atheist or agnostic he was evidently “there” among his loved ones and in the presence of god. Later in the article after he becomes a Christian and the article turns into a promotion for a particular religion they add.

even though his experience actually seems to suggest that it’s what you value that counts rather than your particular dogma.

187

I think that it’s an important distinction: faith-based beliefs are not subject to falsification, even if there is an abudance of evidence that some of the underlying assumptions are false.

So YEC adherents and Biblical inerrantists are unreasonable and dishonest?
Better to address the specific issues rather than make claims about the person.

Who specifically does not value the truth, and what is “real” progress?

I’ve found that it’s not especially fruitful to discuss “them” and what “they” do.

Are you part of “people”? Are you, “subconsiously perhaps”, living in denial of clear evidence? How would you know?

On what basis are you concluding that it says “nothing” about god specifically? For some people, it’s the belief in Biblical inerrancy that allows them to make specifc claims about god.

Perhaps the person who holds those beliefs? :dubious:

188

Upon review, I realize that “god beliefs” are not the same as “claims about god”, but I think that my point still stands.

189

Not all experiences end with the experiencer becoming a Christian, if fact, most don’t go to church after the experience. What’s important is the experience, and there are hundreds of them very similar to Woolcock’s. They are about love and truth over all things as you said. Good post in my opinion.

What I hoped to point out is that for experiencers there is plenty of evidence and reason to change their lives, thus dispelling the skeptic myth that there is no evidence of the spiritual. Just because a skeptic has not had the experience, doesn’t mean it isn’t real and truthful. No one can judge another’s personal experience.

190

Wrong. Just because someone interprets an experience as spiritual, doesn’t mean it is. Just because someone considers something evidence for the spiritual doesn’t mean it is. Someone claiming something is not evidence. Interpretation is not evidence. For something to be evidence, real evidence, there has to be some kind of independent confirmation. One more time, interpretation is not evidence.

I’ve read lots of stories like the one posted, and most of them have the same problems Czarcasm pointed out. They look like they’re made up specifically to get new converts. I frequent an athiest forum and we get religiosos in there all the time claiming to be ex-athiests. But when they start talking it’s obvious that they know nothing about athiesm, and are lying. This kind of thing isn’t new. The behavior of the spiritual is pretty much the only reason I need to question claims of spirituality.

This is true. But, just because a person has an experience, doesn’t mean his interpretation of it is real and true.

191

Well, which definition of faith are we talking about here? Is it the Hebrews 11:1 definition “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”? That’s the one I thought was on the table; that is, faith is what we call it where you are certain of something that you do not have enough objective facts to actually be certain of it. Is this that far off base from what we’re talking about?

The “believing that you can triumph in spite of the odds” beliefs which Scylla presented as his examples of faith beliefs are indeed faith beliefs, and if they represented all faith beliefs (or even the majority of them) then I think that we could all pretty easily agree that faith had value overall. However, they don’t represent such a majority. Specifically, the “triumph against the odds” commendable faith beliefs are limited to ones that meet the following criteria:

  1. No completely unfounded (and very likely wrong) beliefs are integral to the faith claim. If your belief is that God will kill the bear for you and so you go out and shout heavenly imprecations in the bear’s face, then your faith is probably not going to serve you well.

  2. The objective you are attempting to accomplish is a good one (or at worst is objectively neutral). If I have faith that killing people who don’t agree with me is a justified act, and therefore go around slaughtering people, then my faith is not commendable.

The thing is, both completely unfounded beliefs and beliefs with negative consequences are still faith, by the definition of faith. And, in my experience, they are far more common than the occasional “odds are low that I’ll succeed in my worthwhile endeavor, but I still believe that if I follow these rational steps, I can do it” belief. I mean, there are a lot of theists out there who believe things pretty much independently of objective evidence or available knowledge. And ask any homosexual person whether they think that these all these faith-beliefs have assuredly positive consequences.

I stand by my position that the “against the odds” faith beliefs are a tiny, unrepresentative subset of all faith beliefs. The “faith beliefs with only positive consequences” subset is larger, but still isn’t even close to the full set. Faith beliefs have been known to be wildly independent of reality and to have various negative consequences on various occasions, and any discussion of faith which blithely pretends that that section of faith beliefs isn’t faith (or never occurs) is never going to be very convincing.

192

It is very real and true to the person who experienced it, I know first hand. There was no interpretation, I knew exactly what it was and why. Since there have been hundreds, even thousands of these experiences recorded in various media from all over the world I serious doubt they are being “made up” to influence atheists. So many of them that some scientists are taking note and starting to study them. The research that has been completed acknowledges they show consciousness continues after death. I am sure there will be much more research done in the future. It really doesn’t matter what our opinions or assumptions are, the only thing that matters is truth. True scientists will study them and let you know what they find.

193

I saw a Black Swan on 9.11.2001, it was the most televised event in history I believe. I have friends who watched it from their rooftops and knew people who had photos published in the New York Times of it.

194

I get the impression that you don’t know what the word spiritual means. I’m also skeptical of your understanding of your own position. When you are asking people to justify subjective experience based upon your subjective opinion of some sense of ‘authentic’ objectivity, then you are abusing both subjective interpretation and critical thinking.

Half of your argument has devolved into:

How do you know that you experienced what you think you experienced?

I could say the same thing to you. “How do you know that when you attended your critical analysis lessons, that it was really a critical analysis lesson?” You are taking the notion of objectivity and subjectivity to such an extreme level of burden of proof that you are bringing into question whether or not we can trust any experience at all, this leaves us with only one verification method, and that’s consensus, but how can you verify anything by consensus as it’s just a bunch of subjective interpretations of objective phenomena, and how can any of these people know that their experience of the phenomena is actually accurate in any way?

A material component to a spiritual phenomena does not deny its spiritual component.

195

What’s the other half of his argument?

And the thing you’re overlooking is consistency. The reason we put a high degree of trust in our normal sensory input is because it’s remarkably consistent. Every time I put my fork on the table, the image from my eyes shows the image of the fork to be apparently resting on the image of the table. When I try to reach out my arm to touch it, my senses agree that my arm is moving, and that when it reaches the point where it would come in contact with the visually-reported image of the fork, the sensory stomuli I recieve from my arm exactly matches the information I’m getting from my eyes. This consistency is why we trust our senses.

However, some of the time our senses send us contradictory information. I have at times stood up quickly and found that my inner ear was sensing the room to be spinning. At this point, I disbelieve the contradictory sense, since it it inconsistent. I don’t choose to believe that the room is spinning, unless more consistent evidence is brought forth supporting the theory. (This evidence will of course be brought forth to me via my senses.)

And, to directly answer the position lekatt is putting forth; I have had on two occasions in my life extremely self-consistent experiences that were at odds with reality. All senses at the time agreed that what I was experiencing was real. However, I do not choose to believe that I have spent time as WilyKat of the Thundercats, fighting against an upper class couple with a very powerful butler who invaded Cat’s Lair, nor do I choose to believe that I have spent time assisting a mob of Shirt Tales characters defending a fort from invading monsters. I make this choice because, in spite of the NDE-level internal consistency of the events I ‘experienced’, it just doesn’t seem too consistent with my overall understanding of the world. Even though it seemed very real to me at the time (at least until I woke up).

196

He’s been making some pretty good arguments in the other half asking pointed questions about things.

Not at all. Religionists report a remarkable level of consistency. They have buildings where they get together to commune on shared experiences. They are all over the world, every denomination has them.

One of the things I have been trying to get at in these arguments is the notion of semantic cosmology. What happens quite often is that people will try to debunk arguments when they do not show any evidence that they actually understand the semantics that the other person is using. I have yet to hear of anyone here who can quote St. Anselm. We’ve got a lot of people arguing about reason vs faith, but no one has shown and inkling that they even know who St. Anselm was, someone who wrote extensively on this subject. It is my opinion that people are tricked into thinking they are arguing with a common vocabulary. Wilhelm Liebniz a man who wanted to institute a universal church, who invented the Calculus that people learn today thought that all misunderstandings were a problem of grammar. I am not sure I agree with it as an absolute position, but I definitely believe the lack of a shared semantic space keeps us from knowing if our opinions are even at odds with one another. Hotflungwok wants people to justify their spiritual experiences, but he is working from a generalized model that may or may not be even applicable to the people he’s speaking to.

Here is a definition of faith that I will put forward:

Confidence in the face of uncertainty.

I think that this sort of faith is applicable to all people. It is one of the core human aspects. It is not limited to believing in the format of a particular culture’s graven image of God. I also don’t think that it is of a particularly different notion between people of ‘reason’ and people of ‘faith’, which are two extremely ridiculous appelations anyway. You use reason or have faith, neither one is a state of being.

197

So are hallucinations.

Then you should have no problem proving it.

I didn’t say all of them are false, but some of them are. Which is enough to make me question any of them I see.

Not this again. I’ll say the same thing I said before, the same thing that was ignored last time, where’s the proof.

And until now there’s been nothing found scientifically that demonstrates anything spiritual. Let me know when it does.

198

Um, no. ‘Am I attending critical analysis lessons’ is quite easy to verify. Does everything behave as if I was attending critical analysis lessons? Do the other people around me also think that we are attending critical analysis lessons? Is it like the previous times I have attended a critical analysis lesson? Is there anything to indicate that this is not a critical analysis lesson, but only looks like one. These can all be answered pretty easily.

The problem with spiritual experiences, especially ones that only occur to one person, is that the claims are much bigger (god exists vs I am attending a lesson) and that objective verification is very difficult. Much bigger claims should require much bigger evidence before they are accepted, by everyone. if you have an experience leading you to believe that you have just eaten a candy bar, then a simple examination should be able to verify it one way or another quite quickly without needing a double blind study. If you have an experience that might lead you to believe god talked to you, then you should try to verify it before leaping straight to the god conclusion. What evidence do you have that it was god and not something else? How can you tell it wasn’t something from your own mind? Do you know enough about psychology to make a good conclusion on that?

Most of the time when I hear someone say they’ve had a spiritual experience, their evidence consists of some variation of ‘I’m just sure of it’. Any kind of authentic supernatural experience would be of great importance to the scientific community. If you could show that anything that was considered supernatural was real it would be huge. But it’s never been done. So what we have here is a big claim, backed up by no actual evidence. And so when someone says ‘Ive had a spiritual experience, you wouldn’t understand, you didn’t have it, but I’m sure it was what I say it is’ then I think I’m justified in being a bit skeptical.

199

Okay.

Actually most of those buildings (in the US anyway) are there mostly for the dissemination of doctrine from the few to the many.

But the real thing to note here is that difference between being internally consistent, and being consistent with reality. Our senses are our best and only hope to understand reality; and in fact to define reality as “that which I can sense” is a perhaps limited but not unreasonable approach.

The majority of religions set forth a reasonably internally consistent statement about the way things are (assuming you don’t look too closely at the details, anyway). So do the majority of fiction books. Internal consistency isn’t good enough to convince us that anything is real; it also has to be externally consistent with reality as we know it. Our senses generally (but not always) get this for free because they’re the way we know reality as we know it. Other systems don’t.

I wholly agree that we have to be consistent and mutually agreeing upon our terms in order to have an honest debate. With that in mind, I reject your definition of faith; I do not feel that it captures the common use of the word.

I propose: “Unjustified confidence in the face of justified uncertainty.”

A person does not need faith to believe that the sun will rise in the morning, or that we’re not actually plugged into the Matrix. Or that 1+1=2. (Especially that 1+1=2.) The term faith is reserved for extraordinary credulity, such as “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”.

200

Well, it’s a good thing that you “wholly agree”. :dubious:

How about picking a definition from dictionary.com?
faith

  1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another’s ability.
  2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
  3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
  4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
  5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
  6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
  7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one’s promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.