Fair enough. I believe I haven’t explained it well. It is a new concept for me that I’m trying to articulate. It will probably come up again.
I understand “this is what I believe so far, based on current information” and being open to new developments. Some people have a real hard time letting go of certain beliuefs and traditions, even in the face of evidence. You will see that in examples other than religion. Perhaps it’s denial and wanting to protect an image you’re comfortable with. Someone who has been a Republican for may years may find it very hard to accept that the party no longer represents his beliefs and it’s time to move on. Or our republican Senator who supported the war only to confess two years later that he was wrong. It’s the same internal mechanism as religious faith IMHO.
We all make certain decisions based on what we accept as physical truths and facts. Electricity. The combustion engine. medicine we take etc etc. Not much faith there. We also make decisions on much less tangible things. We make decsiosns that certain behavior will have positive outcomes more often than not. We make those decisions based on our own subjective ecperience which is singularly our own. We have a form of faith in that subjective experience, until some new experience alters our view. It’s that internal mechanism that I see as the same thing in atheists and theists. Just a theory
Most probable to what? Sometimes the choice is , Do I do what is expedient in the moment and serve the immediate future or do I live according to a principle I believe in and have faith that in the unforseeable future it will turn out to be the best course of action, even though I see problems in the near future.
Interesting way of putting it. Certainly a big part of the formula is what we *want * to believe is true. That it most definatly very personal.
John Maynard Keynes’ first book suggested that though we can never know anything for certain, facts and knowledge occur when the probability (loosely defined) of something being correct approaches 100%. The Laws of Thermodynamics qualify, but so did Newton’s Laws, and they turned out to be incorrect.
But this isn’t faith. This is accepting something as true because nothing better has come along despite many opportunities, as opposed to faith which is accepting something as true even though (or because of?) something better has come along.
I think you explained it fine. I just don’t buy this is a useful definition of faith to use while discussing religion. But that’s personal preference.
Definitely. It’s called cognitive dissonance, I believe. Perhaps the distinction is the explanation used by this sort of person. The scientist defending a crumbling position doubts experimental results, interprets other results in odd ways, and sometimes resorts to saying “I’m not convinced.” A religious person believing by faith doesn’t do this, but simply says that they believe. This is not acceptable in science, which is why creationists come up with increasingly farfetched and loony explanations for the facts that clearly show the age of the earth and the evidence for evolution. If they stayed in church, they could just say they believed in Genesis by faith, and no one would care.
More probable in leading to a desired result, which may include the calculations you mention.
But how do we know with sufficient certainty that something has approached the designated mark? If we can know nothing for certain, then what is the point in establishing hash tables that may or may not be right? Keynes is like a man who begins a sentence with, “I have no idea what I’m saying…” and continues to speak.
Newton’s laws are correct. Thankfully. It’s just that they apply to a specific reference frame (an inertial frame).
I don’t think that’s faith either. Faith is not something that is produced by grunting and squinting until a trust materializes out of thin air. Faith is reliance upon the trustworthiness of experience. I believe precisely because the very best came along.
That is why I said that probability in this case was loosely defined. Closeness to certainly increases with the number of successful experiments (and thus the number of opportunities for something to be falsified where it was not.) The exact value is unknown, and no one is claiming it can be known. But certainly you agree that 100 successful experiments give more confidence than one?
Not true. There is always a small relativistic component, even at “normal” speeds, but it is too small to measure. It is not like relativity all of a sudden cuts in at a certain speed - it just becomes significant at high speeds.
It was you (and Poly) who I was thinking of when I wrote
Perhaps there is a faith component in considering this experience to map into reality, but unlike most believers you actually experienced something.
You don’t know that. If it was as simple as “ultra-compressed configuration”, they why would it “explode”?
The fact is that even today we don’t know if there was an “ultra-compressed configuration”. We usually say there was because we are assuming that if the Universe if expanding today, then if we admit that it has always been expanding we will go back to a single point in space. And it’s far from obvious that it works like that. And in fact that are loads and loads of theories that try to explain what we see nowadays in the Universe, the Big Bang theory being the one with less holes in it.
So I just wanted to remember people to not just throw “Big Bang” as if it is an absolute truth.
Thanks for the link. It’s a good article, very articulate. I like how he sees the circular reasoning in his atheist conclusions. His prayer is pretty funny as well as his telling of his heart attack. From my view I enjoyed how he appreciated the obvious link between the mystic portions of east and west, pagan and Christian. I’ve had similar experiences and drawn similar conclusions. I think this article deserves its own thread. What do you think?
right here in GD. I would invite specific comments about his thoughts on the circular reasoning of atheism, and the part where he says hallucination and dreams can’t explain the miricles and prayers answered he’s experienced.
Yes it is a theory, but with a great deal of predictive power. If the beginning of the universe is part of its definition, then the Big Bang (with associated inflation theories, or course) has quite a bit to do with it.
And explosion has very little to do with anything - it was not an explosion in any sense.
I see great positives of having faith…generally gives some people a reason to get up in the morning and do good things for their fellow man.
That answers the OP’s question for me.
A lot of the negatives about what religeous beliefs may have indirectly caused, IMO, tells me much more about the people who believe are capable of than about whether their belief can be proved or not.
It also motivates many people to do terrrible things to their fellow man.
Well, can you demonstrate that the religious underpinnings of their evil actions are any less true than those of people who do good? Do humans get to decide which words of an unknowable god are right and good, and which are wrong and mistaken and evil? How do we decide? By human morals?
Once you believe that there is a god who can direct your actions, anything is permissible so long as god commands it. If one truly believes god is directing them, no human law or ethic means anything. Fred Phelps may be as correct as Mother Teresa - only god knows for sure, and he’s not talking.
Perhaps it is not the motivation but only a smoke screen to cover their true motives from others and themselves.
Humans interpret what they percieve to be the words of God through the filter of their own emotional needs and desires. In that sense they do decide which words are good and which are evil.
The true zealots say he is. Other wise how would they know his commands?
Well, I don’t know, not if Keynes is right. How will you know what is and isn’t a success — let alone what a hundred of them are? I mean, if Keynes is right, then isn’t it the case that we can’t know? We can’t even know whether we agree with each other.
Well, that’s true, but an inertial frame is speed zero, which is the frame for which Newton’s laws are accurate.
