Yes, even atheists have faith

Great Debates
21

To all:

The point of this thread, in case it was not obvious, is this…

Often, during a discussion of faith vs. logic, a theist will point out what they feel is a logical inconsistency with an atheist’s assertion that logic is superior to faith, to wit, that the atheist’s reliance on logic is itself dependent on “faith” in various fundamental scientific principles. The theist will then claim that the atheist therefore has no right to question the theist’s faith.

I’m happy to acknowledge that my worldview is indeed based on some fundamental assumptions that cannot be definitively proven, and I’m willing to concede that my acceptance of these assumptions could be considered “faith” insofar as I let them guide my actions and expectations.

However, my point is that having “faith” in fundamental scientific principles such as causality, materiality, and uniformity actually allows me to make verifiable predictions about the world. Religious faith, on the other hand, in unable to do the same. “If I pray hard enough, I will be healed. I wasn’t healed. Oh well, I guess it wasn’t God’s will that I be healed, even though he said that anybody who asks will receive.” “If you deny God’s word, you will be smitten. Hmmmm… you actually seem to be prospering nicely. Oh well, I guess you will be smitten in the next life.”

In other words, yes, it can be said that even an atheist has “faith” in some things. But so what? Instead of playing semantic games and making subtle distinctions between “faith” and “assumptions,” I’d rather just argue that my “faith” is at least reasonable.

Regards,

Barry

22

GodlessSkeptic ( Hello Barry)

You seem to be one of a minority of people here who disagree in an agreeable way. I can fully understand why it is you find offensive those who pray, or make other comments in your presence, when they know, or should know, it offends you.

You have asked about faith. Let’s keep the underlying principle of your thread alive but change a few words around so that perhaps everyone can look at the subject without first choosing a sides. (not that everyone does, but, well many seems to)

If I want to lean of a concept like faith, I would make more sense to approach one who “practiced” it, and discuss the same with that person, than perhaps trying to understand it by applying dictionary definitions. Let me pose the following;

The Samurai lived by a code of conduct called Bushido. Bushido governed all aspects of their life, from the simple things to the more complex characteristics like honor, duty, even loyalty to those they serve. Part of the code allowed that it was an honor and a duty for a Samurai to offer his life in his masters service.

Assuming we wanted to understand why Bushido was such a driving force in the life of a Samurai, even to the point self sacrifice, we would have no better source for understanding than from a Samurai.

Bushido was the fabric that defined their life, it governed much, if not all, of their activity. To fully understand it, and why it created this seemingly unnatural willingness to sacrifice themselves, we would, at a minimum, need to understand “duty”, “honor” and “loyalty” as the Samurai saw it. Not criticality, but openly, but in the spirit of learning. This doesn’t mean we agree, instead we listen, and learn, then weigh and decide.

If thereafter, we engaged this warrior in a debate with respect to honor, duty, and loyalty, we would hear him speak reverently about these concepts. We would understand the depth of his philosophy. We may disagree with him, but are respectful of his position in so doing.

But the effort we made to understand Bushido, would have learned that no simple dictionary definition defines beliefs and philosophies. At best, it defines out belief about his belief.

On the other hand,
How well do you think our imaginary warrior would react to one of us referring to his beliefs as, “ Not the product of a rational, logical or scientific mind”. Or, I reject this hallucination as no different than belief in an IPU”.
When this happens, I imagine the warrior looks at his katana, decides the better of it, and walks away. End of discussion.
(however, a few hundred years ago, the results might well have been different)

Again, I agree that there are no innocent sides when it comes to respecting the rights others here, and maybe we should look a little harder at that.

Look back over many of the posts on faith. Do you think there has been an environment favorable to an open discussion about faith.

Barry, You are (IMO) one of more courteous posters on this board, so I’m not critical of you in this, as much as I am of the playing field. It just simply isn’t faith friendly.

Thanks
B

23

Beryl: I appreciate your comments. I have to ask, however, whether you would apply the same discussionary constraints to other seemingly irrational belief systems such as astrology, psychics, UFOs, etc.

You are probably correct that this message board is not the most favorable environment for religious minded people to discuss their beliefs. It’s also not the most favorable environment for people to discuss their beliefs that our lives are governed by the motion of distant stellar objects, or that there is a secret world-wide conspiracy of Jews, or that crop circles are caused by “plasma vortices,” etc.

With regard to Samurais and Bushido, I’m afraid I don’t know enough about the subject to intelligently discuss it. I do know a thing or three about religious beliefs, however. And as long as this message board remains dedicated to fighting ignorance, I will continue to challenge those who believe in irrational things, whether it be Elvis, astrology, TV psychics, or God.

Regards,

Barry

24

a

25

The english vocabulary is just not expressive enough. (I speak english, spanish, portuguese, chinese, and dabble in german and french).

There are two meaning for the word “faith”. “Faith” as in “conditional confidence” (definition 1) and faith as in “dogmatic acceptance without questioning” (definition 2). Both fit the slippery american english dictionary definition of “belief without proof”.

In contradiction alterego and (several others), I don’t think godzillatemple 's logic in the original post is correct. He uses Definition 2 when he is intending to mean Definition 1.

Fundamentalists have become very keen of such semantic shenanigans in recent years, and currently use the smokescreen to create confusion in the layman about the word “theory” as well. The two definitions of “theory” are as follows. First as in “theory of evolution” is meant as “most credible status for a model in science, no higher qualification is posssible” (definition 1). Second as in “I wasn’t at the scene of the murder, but my theory is…” which means “wild speculation”.

Other non-religious example include “love” (romantic vs. fraternal) and “free” (free beer vs free speech). There is much ambiguity in american-english words, but on the plus side, english’s simplicity make it very easy to learn (and consequently to server as an international tongue).

26

Barry, do you have faith in the things you mention, or do you provisionally accept them to be true because of a preponderance of evidence for them and a lack of evidence against them? Just a wild guess, but I suspect that if you did find significant evidence against these these things you would drop your acceptance of them. Right?

When I was young, I think I provisionally accepted the existence of god (the Jewish variety) because I was brought up in that tradition. I might have said I had faith, but when I started finding evidence against the existence of this god, I dropped it, which leads me to believe that I did not have faith at all.

27

I’d like to offer an alternative view of faith - that it is a myth. I’m talking about faith in the sense that people say they have faith in a particular claim that others disagree with. Faith as in “I believe this because of faith” or “religion cannot be justified by evidence, only by faith”.

It bothered me that if somebody believed something in the total absence of evidence, the belief would have no connection to reality whatsoever. I could believe by faith that I could cross a busy street without a car hitting me or that I could quit work because a huge sum of money would arrive at my doorstep tomorrow. But nobody believs things like this because of faith, only religious stuff. What is going on?

It finally became clear that nobody actually believes anything because of faith. The idea of faith itself is actually a myth. Faith is NOT the reason people believe their religions. I don’t think they are lying to us - I have little doubt they really think faith is the reason. They have been told “believe this stuff by having faith”, and since they believed the stuff, they naturally assumed that it was because of faith.

Some of the real reasons for believing are: 1) That’s what you were told, 2) Wishful thinking, and 3) You would be a bad person if you didn’t believe it. All of these sound really lame in a debate, so when pressed by someone with a different view, falling back on the “faith” reason paralyzes the conversation effectively. Who can argue against that? There are other reasons for religious belief, such as explaining creation or accounting for profound emotional experiences, but these are evidence-based and are more respectable in a debate, so faith doesn’t have to be brought in.

If faith were an actual mental mechanism for acquiring beliefs, most of us would die because we would believe so many things that were inconsistent with reality (like the cars won’t hit us).

I find it interesting to think of faith from the point of view of myself teaching a religion to someone else. I say this is true and that is true, but why should the person believe me? It would undermine my position to say “believe me because I say so”. Instead I not only tell them to believe it on faith, but I tell them that having faith is very virtuous and they should be proud of having faith. This sells the idea very effectively. They don’t feel gullible - they feel virtuous. I am not insincere when I tell them this - I learned the stuff the same way and think of myself as virtuous for believing it based on faith.

28

The fact that I might change my beliefs when faced with evidence to the contrary doesn’t change the fact that I hold the beliefs in the first place. Yes, I believe that I exist in the material world and not just as a disembodied consciousness. And yes, I believe that the world is not merely a series of random events that just happen to appear orderly to my senses. And yes, I believe that it is possible to make sense of natural phenomenon through observation and logic. These are basic principles that guide my life, and I don’t think of them as being “provisional” in any meaningful sense of the word.

Since I cannot prove any of these beliefs to be true, I concede that I must therefore have “faith” in them according to some definition of faith. My point is that I feel that, unlike reglious-based faith, my “faith” is justified since it has so far allowed me to make predictions with a great degree of accuracy and is not inherently self-contradictory.

I realize that many atheists bridle at the thought that they have “faith” in anything. After all, the people who tell them that are usualy die-hard theists who use faith as an excuse to ignore any evidence that contradicts their world view. Rather than debate whether or not an atheists “assumptions” can really be considered a form of “faith,” however, I prefer to simply acknowledge that acceptance of these assumptions is a form of faith and then say, so what?

Regards,

Barry

29

I am certainly not doubting that you hold these beliefs. I’m saying instead that you have so much evidence for these beliefs that you no longer see them as provisional. This can be contrasted to someone believing something as strongly without much, or any, evidence, and because of “faith” denying countervailing evidence. Many such beliefs are not even religously based - I might put belief in the effectiveness of homeopathy in this category. It is also not a theist vs. atheist thing. If Exodus had actually happened, an atheist Israelite pooh-poohing all the miracles right in front of him could be considered to have blind faith, as opposed to the completely rational belief in god of the others.

30

<Columbo> One more thing </Columbo>

I just thought of a splendid example of theistic faith. As a theist why God doesn’t show himself, and provide evidence to save all us heathen from hellfire, he will tell you that doing so will destroy faith, by giving evidence for the existence of god. In their view, and they understand faith a lot better than I do, evidence and faith are at odds. In your view, if I read you correctly, faith is required without either proof or perfect knowledge.

So, do you agree that your faith is different from a theist’s?

31

I think you are making a distinction between “blind” faith and evidence-based faith. I agree that my “faith” is superior since it is supported by evidence, but I acknowledge that since I cannot prove the validity of my beleifs they are still a form of faith.

Again, I think that atheists bristle at the word “faith” because of the religious connotations it carries with it, and because it is usually assumed that faith means blind faith. Yes, faith can mean “belief in spite of evidence to the contrary,” but I acknowledge that it can also simply mean “faith in something that cannot be proven.”

My point is not to state that even atheists like myself have blind faith in anything, but simply to (a) acknowledge that we do make certain fundamental assumptions that can not be proven and (b) point out that our “faith” in these assumptions is at least a rational one since it is supported by observable evidence, is not self-contradictory, and allows us to make accurate predictions as to future events.

As I said before, I’ve been in too many arguments with theists where they point out that even atheists have “faith” in some things, and therefore we are in no position to judge theists for their reliance on faith. One tactic is to quibble over the word “faith” until the cows come home. I believe, however, that a more productive tactic is to simply acknowledge the point and then explain why it doesn’t matter.

But then, that’s just me…

Barry

32

Another example of atheist ‘faith’:

Infinity as a concept manifests itself everywhere in our current perception of the universe. I’ve done quite a bit of calculus, and thrown around infinity willy-nilly, and dealt with numbers that in fact cannot be precisely named in decimal form as the description of their value goes on forever.

Existance seems to go on forever; time doesn’t stop, didn’t start. The universe seemingly extends boundless and formless.

Even though I accept these things, I could not tell you what infinity is. I don’t see it, I can’t identify it, it’s just ‘you know, like, forever and ever, amen.’

I can play with infinity, and use it to solve all sorts of interesting problems, but in the end, I’m just using it as a tool to explain certain processes. I don’t know that it exists beyond the fact that it’s the only way I have of explaining certain things. That is a small part of my atheist faith.

33

No infinities are known in the physical universe.

Eonwe, I think you are confusing a mathematical entities with a physical entities. I don’t know of any infinities in the physical universe. Most physical observables have been shown to be quantized at the low end, and finite at the big end (since the universe as we know has a finite extent according to astronomical observations). I think there people working on showing that even time comes in discrete indivisible units. Time started with the Big Bang.

(You might make an argument for the infinities appearing in the current iteration of quantum electrodynamics theory, but there are many theorical physicists working to get rid of them).

Folks, the evidence is there if you bother to look. Drop the faith crapola already.

34

Er, not to expound on things that I will freely admit I have only a layperson’s understanding, if that, but…

Are you then saying, Skeptico, that it is a given that the duration of time is not infinite. That at some point there was/will be a beginning and and end to the thing we measure using the word time?

In response to what you say about time, isn’t the Big Bang itself a theory? Not to argue its validity, but just because it’s the best working model we have (IM relatively uneducated O) doesn’t mean that it is gospel truth (if I can use that expression in this context).

I’d ask you to then explain what you mean by ‘time started with the Big Bang’. Nothing happened ever before it? A spontaneous explosion of things that did not exist in any time is responsible for the creation of time and existance?
Isn’t the debate open on whether or not math exists purely as an imaginary concept or as a real way to describe the universe? If I need to use the concept of infinity to find a limit, or to take an integral, then infinity is there. ‘Find the limit as such and such a sum approaches infinity.’ Now, it’s been too long so I can’t think of a practical application, but I’m sure that anyone who actually works with moderate-leveled math can come in and give one.

35

There is a limit to what evidence can support, Voyager, for a person needs a methodology through which to assess, weigh, and act on evidence.

36

I wanted to add that there is a way to have causality be “proven”, IMO. If we accept that certain logics apply to the “real world” then causality could be said to be manifested deduction, among other mathematical operations.

If we look at a simple linear dependence, for example like
y = 2x + 1
an increase in x “causes” y to increase as well in a well-defined manner.

37

I think faith is one of the most misunderstood words that has been overused by Christians and non-Christians alike. Biblical faith is not blind. If I was to say I’ve implanted a javascript virus in this thread, and when you read it you will receive a virus, and you disbelieved me, you are displaying faith in what I’m saying. Granted your faith is that I can’t do it, but it’s based on hearing what I’ve said, and making a judgement based on who I am. If I could do that, and it’s been seen to be done, you would listen to what I’ve said, and if you believe it, you’d act different. Faith is believing someone who said something will do what they say, based on their character. I ordered something from T.V. and gave my credit card number (no, I don’t do it often, if at all now). They said they would be shipping it within two business days. Every day after that, I’d check the mail hoping it had come, because I had faith that what they said they’d do. Now if they didn’t say they would send it, or if I didn’t call in my credit card and do what I was suppose to, it’d be pretty stupid for me to go look in the mail every day and call it faith.

38

In General Relativity, space and time are related (hence “space-time”), so very, VERY loosely speaking, if you don’t have space then you don’t have time either. So time had a beginning. (I’d imagine that whatever happend before that can’t be measured by 4-d space-time coordinates, but perhaps the extra dimensions of the 11-d string theory can?) (Quick note: there is currently no hard empirical evidence for string theory.)

Spontaneous “explosions” out of nothingness supposedly happen all the time :slight_smile: ; they’re called quantum foam fluctuations. If you keep your eye on empty vacuum for long enough, you will see an electron and a positron pop out of nowhere. Don’t blink though: they immediately anihiliate each other and vanish. (Particle colliders have evidence for this I think?)

Infinity in maths is a concept, and just a concept. Just like the Invisible Pink Unicorn TM is a concept. To find an area we could use Integrals technique and employ infinity. OR (IIRC) we could use Finite Element Analysis technique and arrived at the exact same result, but without infinitesimals. (The latter is often used when the equations are way way too hairy to be integrated).

39

Perhaps then it’s time for me to bow out due to ignorance. :slight_smile:

I’m fascinated though by the concept of no time, and no space for that matter. How could there be no space? Do I need a crazy degree to figure this out?

And, regardless, I imagine that what you are talking about is again a theory. I have yet to see an article stating that it has been proven that time is finite. But again, maybe I’m not looking in the right places.

40

Well, not to everyone - only to people who speak English.

More because it’s the wrong word.

As a sceptic I consciously try to maintain an attitude of scepticism towards even my most fundamental beliefs. On some level I try to be open to the possibility that someday someone somewhere may show them to be false.

Sceptics will themselves towards doubt.

The"faithful" will themselves away from doubt

To say that all amounts to the same thing - faith - is just too reductive. If scepticism is faith - then all thought is faith and the term becomes meaningless.

I will concede though, that just as the most faithful have their moments of doubt, the most sceptical can’t avoid having faith (or feeling faith) in certain things. It’s just human nature.