[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
:dubious: I never said that. Sometimes we don’t know. Sometimes we have to wait for more data, or make a guess and hope we are right. That’s not faith.
[/QUOTE]
Hmmm, what is it, then?
I’m thinking of child-rearing (which is my current occupation) – making choices is necessary, yet there’s no way of knowing for sure that we’re making the right choices. It’s just a best guess, and I think it takes a lot of faith.
[QUOTE=enigm4tic]
However, I will once again agree that for some people faith can be a powerful instrument in keeping people happy, and leading them in the right moral direction. But it can, and sadly it seems in almost the majority of cases, has no or even negative effects on people.
[/QUOTE]
The problem is that faith can just as easily lead people in the wrong moral direction. If you act, or do not act, according to faith, you are not morally evaluating your action, or perhaps you add in unjustified factors. Those with faith that only by accepting Jesus a man can gain eternal life might well force or torture nonbelievers into acceptance for the greater good.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Let’s see; one study I recall was from back when they asked your religion before entering college. One of the things they did was stage accidents and see who stopped to help; the only group that was more likely to help than average was the atheists/agnostics.
[/QUOTE]
Links will be welcome. Although I am sure they will be plenty to nitpick, I find the general idea very interesting.
[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
Did you ever stop to think why science disallows subjective personal experiences as evidence? And did you ever wonder why people think it’s ok for religious experiences to be solely subjective and have no other evidence whatsoever? And more, why those experiences should be seen as some kind of knowledge, when they wouldn’t hold up to the most basic realistic examination? For what reason should religion be allowed to use subjective experience for evidence, when no one else is?
When you say you don’t buy the reasons science gives for excluding subjective experience, you’re doing exactly what I said in post. You’re fitting the events to your expectations and interpretations. And that’s one of the reasons faith can be bad.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, I have thought about it a great deal. Why would science say personal experience was unreliable? Because it provides science a reason not to listen to non-scientists? Because it works like a hook, holding science as the only truth? Because it allows science to not investigate claims by non-scientists? I don’t know, but I do know that just because people sometimes make mistakes in perception it doesn’t warrant the banning of personal experience. Science is the only institution that takes this stand. Personal experience is allowed as evidence in court, in hospitals, in politics, and in all jobs, the more experience the better.
Then there is no small problem of how do we separate personal experience from…??? What is there to separate it from, everything we experience is personal experience. It is impossible not to rely on personal experience. It would be like crossing a street telling yourself that the oncoming car is just an unreliable illusion. It just isn’t rational or logical to say personal experience is unreliable and go on using it because there is really nothing else to use, now is there.
As for spiritual experiences being personal experienice, what else could they be. I am open to your thoughts. How can you have a spiritual experience that is not personal. Can spiritual experiences be repeated, yes, not only in the original experiencer, but in others as well. There are literally millions of people who have experienced being out of their bodies. Can science measure this, yes, in a way they can measure the results of being out of body by checking the accuracy of what the person saw and told he saw. This is being done in several universities right now.
Please, tell me what we can use instead of personal experience?
[QUOTE=enigm4tic]
I think this is what we’ve narrowed the debate down to, more or less.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the idea that faith produces values via miracles if you follow the spiritual teachings of Jesus. However, I will once again agree that for some people faith can be a powerful instrument in keeping people happy, and leading them in the right moral direction. But it can, and sadly it seems in almost the majority of cases, has no or even negative effects on people.
[/QUOTE]
I did not say faith produces values via miracles. I said following the teachings produce miracles which in turn is knowledge. Jesus taught spiritual truths, the main ones being “love one another,” and “you will reap what you sow.” Following the first will quickly lead to understanding the truth of the second. Of course, if you don’t believe there is a better way to live, you won’t try it.
[QUOTE=lekatt]
I did not say faith produces values via miracles. I said following the teachings produce miracles which in turn is knowledge. Jesus taught spiritual truths, the main ones being “love one another,” and “you will reap what you sow.” Following the first will quickly lead to understanding the truth of the second. Of course, if you don’t believe there is a better way to live, you won’t try it.
[/QUOTE]
miscommunication then, what you call “spiritual truths”, I called good morality, and acknowledged that religion CAN have value if it leads to right action.
not a chance. This is exactly what the problem with people who have been taught “beliefs” equate to “truth”. Scientists do investigate a lot of paranormal claims, they consistently find no evidence for any real action having occurred (regardless of source). the JREF is a standing prize for anybody who can claim to have evidence of paranormal abilities, at one million dollars. But, the people who DO believe these unsubstantiated claims, when confronted by a scientific argument that seems to deny their “truth” (read: unsubstantiated belief) they scream bias, because “faith” has twisted what they even think of as truth.
[QUOTE=enigm4tic]
miscommunication then, what you call “spiritual truths”, I called good morality, and acknowledged that religion CAN have value if it leads to right action.
not a chance. This is exactly what the problem with people who have been taught “beliefs” equate to “truth”. Scientists do investigate a lot of paranormal claims, they consistently find no evidence for any real action having occurred (regardless of source). the JREF is a standing prize for anybody who can claim to have evidence of paranormal abilities, at one million dollars. But, the people who DO believe these unsubstantiated claims, when confronted by a scientific argument that seems to deny their “truth” (read: unsubstantiated belief) they scream bias, because “faith” has twisted what they even think of as truth.
[/QUOTE]
You are not up-to-date on the lastest research, but I will not bother you with it.
You see spiritual experiences have been substantiated hundreds of times. What you say here is the old spiel of skeptical scientists who have not studied what they are talking about. As for JREF, a joke, he has been challenged many times and refused to bring his “testing” procedures out in the open so they can be examined. If you doubt this try and find just one test and results of that test to show here on this board.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
Links will be welcome. Although I am sure they will be plenty to nitpick, I find the general idea very interesting.
[/QUOTE]
I have faith no such cite will be forthcoming. 
If you read the cite provided earlier, conservatives in America (especially religious ones) donate more money to charity, and even donate blood more often. It certainly correlates with religious faith. So does happiness in general in the US.
Thomas Sowell was once accused of “having faith in the marketplace”. He responded instantly, in icy tones, “I do not have faith in the market. I have information about the market.” In a sense, he was wrong - he did have faith - that his information correctly identified aspects of the market that were useful in understanding economics.
Faith in that sense is more like confidence in your own point of view. It doesn’t mean that it is never subject to revision when new evidence comes up; just that you have enough to go on in the meantime.
Suppose you believe in evolution, and some fossils are found that are much less deeply buried in some strata somewhere than would be expected. A reasonable person does not, therefore, instantly abandon his trust in the other evidence of evolution and start from scratch again. Rather, he examines the new evidence, objectively (I would hope), to see if there are any alternate explanations. The inability to observe stellar parallax was a problem for the heliocentric model of the universe for two hundred years or so until it was first observed in 1838, but scientists had faith in the validity of the new model long before that.
A common piece of advice for new doctors making differential diagnoses is “when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras”. That is a sort of faith, that unusual things are unusual. It is not always true, but it is a starting point for investigation, without which people are subject to paralysis by analysis. Occam’s Razor is faith-based in much the same way. So are most systems of geometry. All of cosmology is based on the faith that other galaxies and planets are subject to the same laws of nature that seem to control our own solar system. You have to take that on faith, since otherwise you cannot proceed.
Regards,
Shodan
[QUOTE=lekatt]
Yes, I have thought about it a great deal. Why would science say personal experience was unreliable? Because it provides science a reason not to listen to non-scientists?
[/QUOTE]
Remember that ‘fitting events to your expectations and interpretations’ thing I mentioned? You’re doing it again. Science does listen to non-scientists. Science tests claims made by non-scientists as a matter of course. Once science has tested a particular claim a few thousand times and announced their conclusion, it gets a little tired of people making the same claim over and over again and demanding it be tested. It’s the non-scientists that aren’t listening, not the scientists.
And again. Cuz no religion has ever claimed to be the only truth.
Now you’re just repeating yourself.
Um, yes, actually it does. Who makes those mistakes? How often? In what circumstances? Are they always right or always wrong in certain circumstances? Do you know the answers to these questions? Cuz if you’re going to accept subjective experience as any kind of fact, then they all have to be answered. It comes down to how much you can trust your perception and interpretation. In some situations, we have good perception and interpretation. In others, we have horrible perception and interpretation. Our interpretation is horrible when we can’t adaquately explain an event. We try to make it fit something we’re already familiar with. And if you’ve got god stories already in your brain from when you were a kid, then anything that comes close can be made to fit those stories, regardless of whether it actually does or not.
Now you’re confusing things. Personal experience might be admissable in court, but personal subjective interpretation generally is not. A court acknowledged expert on the subject can be viewed as an exception. A witness might be asked if they saw the person seated there leaving a building at a certain time, but they are not allowed to freely expound upon subjective interpretations as to why. Personal experience is not the same as subjective interpretation of an experience. I fail to understand how you have confused them or even brought this up.
How about separating the subjective from the objective? If I see little pink elephants, I can generally assume that there is something wrong with my perception, that’s subjective. But if another person can verify my perception, without the thing that may have caused my perception problem, then that becomes objective. Unless you have a reason to believe that the oncoming car is an illusion there is no reason believe it’s an illusion and you should treat it as if there was a car there. There isn’t much room for subjective interpretation. If you see a light in the sky and think UFO, then you are subjectively interpreting your perception and coming to a conclusion without a real reason.
The fact that spiritual experiences are solely subjective and have no objective evidence at all should be a big red flag that something might be wrong. You’re fitting events to your expectations again.
Oh and if you’re going to try the NDE argument here, you’re going to need much better ‘evidence’ than the attempt you made in the last thread that hit the subject. Claiming that millions of people have ‘left their bodies’ is a big claim, and big claims require big evidence. You might be able to say that millions of people believe they have left their bodies, but you would be leaving out the fact that not one of them have been objectively proven.
I shouldn’t have to, you use it every day. You use it anytime you do something outside of your area of expertise. Anytime you do something on someone else’s recommendation, be it a friend or a doctor, you are acting outside of you personal experience.
[QUOTE=lekatt]
You are not up-to-date on the lastest research, but I will not bother you with it.
You see spiritual experiences have been substantiated hundreds of times. What you say here is the old spiel of skeptical scientists who have not studied what they are talking about.
[/QUOTE]
No no, please, bother us. We would love to hear about these scientifically proven events. If there are hundreds, surely you can provide actual scientific data on just a few of them, right?
Pure bullplop.
First, the test protocol is different for evey applicant, and the applicant is one that determines what is to be tested. The JREF just observes and makes sure the test is objective and performed fairly and accurately.
Second, if you bothered to actually look for yourself you would have found a huge log of applicants and their correspondence at James Randi’s website here. Please note the vague and noncomittal way most of the applicants state their abilities. It’s very difficult to test vague things, so the JREF always tries to get the applicant to name something specific to test. ‘I can use a dowsing rod’ is vague, ‘I can use a dowsing rod to find small amounts of gold’ is specific enough to test.
Just grabbing one at random I immediately found not only the protocol used, but also the results of the test. You’ll notice that they not only offered him a choice of boxes to examine to, but also a choice of observers, in case he felt someone has ‘negative vibes’. He failed.
[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
Remember that ‘fitting events to your expectations and interpretations’ thing I mentioned? You’re doing it again. Science does listen to non-scientists. Science tests claims made by non-scientists as a matter of course. Once science has tested a particular claim a few thousand times and announced their conclusion, it gets a little tired of people making the same claim over and over again and demanding it be tested. It’s the non-scientists that aren’t listening, not the scientists.
And again. Cuz no religion has ever claimed to be the only truth.
Now you’re just repeating yourself.
Um, yes, actually it does. Who makes those mistakes? How often? In what circumstances? Are they always right or always wrong in certain circumstances? Do you know the answers to these questions? Cuz if you’re going to accept subjective experience as any kind of fact, then they all have to be answered. It comes down to how much you can trust your perception and interpretation. In some situations, we have good perception and interpretation. In others, we have horrible perception and interpretation. Our interpretation is horrible when we can’t adaquately explain an event. We try to make it fit something we’re already familiar with. And if you’ve got god stories already in your brain from when you were a kid, then anything that comes close can be made to fit those stories, regardless of whether it actually does or not.
Now you’re confusing things. Personal experience might be admissable in court, but personal subjective interpretation generally is not. A court acknowledged expert on the subject can be viewed as an exception. A witness might be asked if they saw the person seated there leaving a building at a certain time, but they are not allowed to freely expound upon subjective interpretations as to why. Personal experience is not the same as subjective interpretation of an experience. I fail to understand how you have confused them or even brought this up.
How about separating the subjective from the objective? If I see little pink elephants, I can generally assume that there is something wrong with my perception, that’s subjective. But if another person can verify my perception, without the thing that may have caused my perception problem, then that becomes objective. Unless you have a reason to believe that the oncoming car is an illusion there is no reason believe it’s an illusion and you should treat it as if there was a car there. There isn’t much room for subjective interpretation. If you see a light in the sky and think UFO, then you are subjectively interpreting your perception and coming to a conclusion without a real reason.
The fact that spiritual experiences are solely subjective and have no objective evidence at all should be a big red flag that something might be wrong. You’re fitting events to your expectations again.
Oh and if you’re going to try the NDE argument here, you’re going to need much better ‘evidence’ than the attempt you made in the last thread that hit the subject. Claiming that millions of people have ‘left their bodies’ is a big claim, and big claims require big evidence. You might be able to say that millions of people believe they have left their bodies, but you would be leaving out the fact that not one of them have been objectively proven.
I shouldn’t have to, you use it every day. You use it anytime you do something outside of your area of expertise. Anytime you do something on someone else’s recommendation, be it a friend or a doctor, you are acting outside of you personal experience.
[/QUOTE]
I will say there is no such thing as objective experience. All experience is subjective and there are even a lot of scientists who now recognize that. You never act outside of your person(al) experience, that would be impossible.
I am not doing the research, it is being done by qualified scientists. Real scientists, those who are still willing to look for the true, will prevail. Carl Sagan said “to be skeptical of everything is insanity.” He was right.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
I have faith no such cite will be forthcoming.
[/QUOTE]
Which is not the same than saying that you have no faith in that they will be forthcoming.
[QUOTE=lekatt]
I will say there is no such thing as objective experience. All experience is subjective and there are even a lot of scientists who now recognize that. You never act outside of your person(al) experience, that would be impossible.
[/QUOTE]
So what? That doesn’t validate your experiences as true. You can hallucinate and act on the hallucinations, that doesn’t make them true or your conclusions that they are real good ones. Subjective experience is fallible. Very fallible in some cases.
When an event is simple, it’s easy to eliminate things like bias or expectations, like your example of seeing a car on the street. But when things are complex or not understood, then the human mind has a hard time dealing with it, and tries to make up its own explanation. You don’t have to accept that explanation, regardless of how good it sounds or how much you want to believe it.
There are simply too many complications to allow subjective experience to be used as evidence for the kinds of things you want to use it for, and so rational people expect better forms of evidence.
[QUOTE=lekatt]
I will say there is no such thing as objective experience. All experience is subjective and there are even a lot of scientists who now recognize that.
[/quote]
Since you’re going to quibble semantics, I will too. There is such a thing as a measurement that is close enough to objective, and independently, repeatedly verifiable so as to be valuable as scientific data. For example, a thermometer is a testable and verifiable instrument to determine the temperature of an object. It will do so repeatedly on the scale we select. Thus, we can scientifically determine if a procedure heats up or cools off an object. Saying “scientists recognize that we observe everything subjectively” to seemingly attack the validity of modern day science is like saying “There’s debate about evolution and holes in the fossil record” to attack evolution.
tautologies don’t give you points in a debate. You CAN, however, use other people’s personal experiences to modify your own future personal experiences.
I’m skeptical because I’ve yet to see any repeatable and/or provable assertions of supernatural powers or miraculous intervention. Furthermore, you’re wording is slipping dangerously closer to the writing style of religious zealots with every post. There are real scientists doing real research on these things. Nobody denies that, but what they haven’t done is find any proof whatsoever of miracles of the nature you’re talking about. (reference the numerous studies that fail to demonstrate the power of prayer)
All people operate on some form of faith based on a combination of objective facts and their subjective perspective. We make our choices with some idea of what we believe will be a positive or negative outcome even though we don’t really know.
I think it’s important to consider this common component of faith when asking the thread title question. It is an essential element in human behavior and progress.
Speaking of faith only as religious beliefs is another matter. Then the pertinent question is faith in what? What do people have faith in specifically? It seems obvious to me that a component of religion is that people can have faith in what is just tradition or myth. I don’t see a lot of value in that.
Another question might be, can faith evolve? The verse I quoted says being *sure *and certain. We act on certain beliefs because we feel sure they are correct. What happens when we encounter new evidence that makes us doubt the certainty of our beliefs? I think there is an element of faith that allows for growth and change although people often resist it.
We can see this reflected in the non religious world as well. We may believe things about a loved one and be very reluctant to accept evidence that challenges our belief. The same principle sometimes applies for our beliefs about our own nation and anything thing else that might become iconic in our lives.
I don’t see any reason to *respect * that kind of emotional faith. We can understand it as part of the human equation and perhaps when we recognize that we all participate to various degrees, we might criticize less.
We can respect people’s right to work through whatever faith they have in their own way providing they don’t harm us or others. We can also question or challenge that faith in a respectful way.
[QUOTE=Sapo]
Which is not the same than saying that you have no faith in that they will be forthcoming.
[/QUOTE]
Faith is the assurance of cites hoped for, the conviction of cites not seen.
Regards,
Shodan
If you have faith and you do wrong, you reason, God will forgive you so why should I worry that the wrong was readdressed and not redressed?
[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
So what? That doesn’t validate your experiences as true. You can hallucinate and act on the hallucinations, that doesn’t make them true or your conclusions that they are real good ones. Subjective experience is fallible. Very fallible in some cases.
When an event is simple, it’s easy to eliminate things like bias or expectations, like your example of seeing a car on the street. But when things are complex or not understood, then the human mind has a hard time dealing with it, and tries to make up its own explanation. You don’t have to accept that explanation, regardless of how good it sounds or how much you want to believe it.
There are simply too many complications to allow subjective experience to be used as evidence for the kinds of things you want to use it for, and so rational people expect better forms of evidence.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, subjective experience is fallible, because humans are fallible. Humans make mistakes in perception, as well as english, math, choices, and judgement. Why pick on experiences. Usually people with the most experience are the most sought after.
Now, because experiences are personal doesn’t make them automatically false, or hallucinations either does it.
The real problem is vested interests. If research were to prove life contues after death, (I believe they already have) science would be in disarray. So many of their theories would have to be changed. Whole disciplines, like psychology, neurology, psychiatry and others would have to be revised or discarded. Too much at stake here. Now that is the reason science teaches personal experience is unreliable. But no one can stop progress forever, not even science.
[QUOTE=lekatt]
Yes, subjective experience is fallible, because humans are fallible. Humans make mistakes in perception, as well as english, math, choices, and judgement. Why pick on experiences. Usually people with the most experience are the most sought after.
[/QUOTE]
What? Why am I picking on experience? Isn’t that what we’re talking about? And why are you bringing up ‘experience’ when we’re talking about subjective interpretation? People with the most subjective interpretation are not sought after. You’re confusing definitions again.
So what? Did I say it did? I said subjective experience was unreliable, not totally false. ‘Not automatically false’ does not mean ‘reliably true’.
Yes. Yes it is.
Are you really trying to debate? This is laughable. Your belief in what science has and hasn’t proven is irrelevant. If you want to show us that life after death has been proven then provide a cite. Since you didn’t, I can only assume that your ‘proof’ consists of the same type of garbage you quoted in the last thread on NDEs. Science is afraid of progress? Science is afraid of life after death? This is diatribe, and not very good diatribe either. Do you honestly expect to convince anyone of anything with this? I’ve asked you before, and come up empty each time, but I figure I’ll ask again. Prove it. You’ve made the claim that science teaches personal experience is unreliable, not because it’s been shown to be with countless experiments, but because it’s afraid.
The vested interets here are yours, your beliefs. Science is able to change given new evidence, indeed it is one of best features. It is most certainly not afraid of change.
[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
What? Why am I picking on experience? Isn’t that what we’re talking about? And why are you bringing up ‘experience’ when we’re talking about subjective interpretation? People with the most subjective interpretation are not sought after. You’re confusing definitions again.
So what? Did I say it did? I said subjective experience was unreliable, not totally false. ‘Not automatically false’ does not mean ‘reliably true’.
Yes. Yes it is.
Are you really trying to debate? This is laughable. Your belief in what science has and hasn’t proven is irrelevant. If you want to show us that life after death has been proven then provide a cite. Since you didn’t, I can only assume that your ‘proof’ consists of the same type of garbage you quoted in the last thread on NDEs. Science is afraid of progress? Science is afraid of life after death? This is diatribe, and not very good diatribe either. Do you honestly expect to convince anyone of anything with this? I’ve asked you before, and come up empty each time, but I figure I’ll ask again. Prove it. You’ve made the claim that science teaches personal experience is unreliable, not because it’s been shown to be with countless experiments, but because it’s afraid.
The vested interets here are yours, your beliefs. Science is able to change given new evidence, indeed it is one of best features. It is most certainly not afraid of change.
[/QUOTE]
I see no need to carry this any further, you won’t acknowledge scientific data in this field and your other statements are opinions only. You are a true science evangelist.