faith is a useful tool

[chaffdog]

Faith is a useful tool for avoiding answering difficult questions:

Innocent believer: 'oh father, the existence of god doesn't really have any evidence and I see no reason to believe it.'

Father 'you must have faith'

IB 'oh father, why is evolution wrong according to our religion'

Father, 'god created all, you must have faith in that'

The nature of faith means that religion cannot be argued against.

 

[Storm]

Eh, faith can serve as a convenient excuse for people who aren't inclined to do the work of understanding either science or theology, granted. However, for people who are interested in either field, faith creates more questions than it answers.

In short, you're painting with far too broad a brush.

 

[ChristineES]

Too many people paint with too broad a brush. Generalizing is never a good thing.

 

[Ozzie]

faith creates more questions than it answers.

I agree. Faith is a useful tool for examining difficult questions.

 

[Riverwolf]

Faith is a sophisticated synonym of trust. Nothing more.

And "trust" is not very plentiful these days.

 

[danny vee]

Faith is believing in something, taking it to be true. Thus it answers questions for those who have it and for those who don't. It really depends which side your on.

 

[BaronVonKaiser]

Faith quite simply put is believing in something that you don't have facts to back up. And I propose that it is a major hinderance to the progression of the human race. Faith has the prominent effect of making people stop asking questions about their surroundings and even worse, rejecting evidence that might contradict their faith-based beliefs. History is filled with repeated examples of widespread and missplaced faith causing the masses to reject evidence that would have advanced our knowledge, slowing progress to a crawl as the truth fights for supporters amongst so many who see it's acknowledgment as heresy.
I'm looking forward to debate on this

 

[methylatedghosts]

Helpful in some instances, a hinderance in others.

I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow. That's helpful, else I could be sitting here with all this worry about whether or not the sun will rise and if I'll be able to see.

Having faith that I will win a truckload of cash and therefore won't need to work, well - that's not very helpful.. I will very quickly find out that I have no money left

 

[BaronVonKaiser]

Helpful in some instances, a hinderance in others.

I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow. That's helpful, else I could be sitting here with all this worry about whether or not the sun will rise and if I'll be able to see.

Having faith that I will win a truckload of cash and therefore won't need to work, well - that's not very helpful.. I will very quickly find out that I have no money left

I hate to drag this into a debate on definitions, but I don't think you need to have faith in the sun rising tomorrow. Once you understand the laws of momentum and gravity, and you come to realize that the sun isn't rising at all, it's just us rotating around the earth and seeing it come up over the horizon then you can except a sunrise as a fact, not a belief.

You mentioned, "Helpful in some instances". How is it that you feel that is the case. To use one of Christopher Hitchens challenges, provide one instance of a moral act performed by a religious person that could not have been performed by someone non-religious, Mr. Hitchens claims that none of the millions of people he's issued that challenge to has ever come up with something. On the other hand, name an evil act that has been comitted in the name of religion, pretty much anyone can come up with a handful of examples without even trying.

 

[methylatedghosts]

I hate to drag this into a debate on definitions, but I don't think you need to have faith in the sun rising tomorrow. Once you understand the laws of momentum and gravity, and you come to realize that the sun isn't rising at all, it's just us rotating around the earth and seeing it come up over the horizon then you can except a sunrise as a fact, not a belief.

Then don't

Forest for the trees, sir. Perhaps not the best example on my part, but my point remains.

You mentioned, "Helpful in some instances". How is it that you feel that is the case. To use one of Christopher Hitchens challenges, provide one instance of a moral act performed by a religious person that could not have been performed by someone non-religious, Mr. Hitchens claims that none of the millions of people he's issued that challenge to has ever come up with something. On the other hand, name an evil act that has been comitted in the name of religion, pretty much anyone can come up with a handful of examples without even trying.

Morality has nothing to do with having faith in something.

Faith is helpful because in some cases, like my previous example, can take alot of trivial worry out of life. Every time you drive, you have faith that the cars coming the other way aren't going to cross the centre line and into your path. I would argue that you NEED that faith, else you'd never go driving out of fear of that very thing happening. Faith in that takes out the worry.

 

[Copernicus]

Most of what we believe is based on faith. For example, I have faith that my refrigerator will keep my perishable food from spoiling, although that faith is not strictly speaking logical. What makes my faith reasonable is a collection of experiences about the world. It is a provisional faith in that it could be canceled out by new experiences--e.g. a sudden power failure.

So here is the difference between faith in religion or superstition and faith in everyday reality. Everyday faith is subject to verifiable conditions, and it is corroborated by multiple sources of information. Religion and superstition do not require much corroboration for their maintenance, and they tend to resist disconfirmation. I do not believe that religious faith persists in people because it is just a way of answering difficult questions. We all have the option of accepting ignorance, however uncomfortable it may be. What really drives religious faith is that it is a tremendously useful thing to have. It gives us a feeling of power over our circumstances, just as a superstition might give someone a feeling of avoiding danger or explaining a bad experience.

 

[BaronVonKaiser]

I have never debated this exact topic on these forums before, but certainly on others. From a purely hard agnostic point of view you are correct, we cannot know anything for sure, just because gravity has kept us from flying off the face of the planet for as long as history has been recorded doesn't necessarily mean it's going to hold true tomorrow. Just because we see our reflection in the mirror, walk around and live our lives, doesn't mean we're not in some celestial dream and that none of this is real. And you are exactly correct, you can't dwell on these things or you'd drive yourself bonkers. So at that most basic of levels, we use faith to believe that those things around us that are demonstratable and proveable and that are confirmed by others are fact. But there is a big difference between 'believing' that 2 + 2 = 4 and that it always has and always will, and believing in something that has no supporting evidence, something that is completely conjecture. Like God for instance. Using a theistic notion of the word, God cannot be touched or seen or registered with any of our physical senses, he was created thousands of years ago as a sort of thesis on how we came to be here and what our purpose is. But there is no supporting evidence for that, you can't prove him with math, there is no 'god variable' required to calculate the effects of the gravity holding us down. There is a lot that we don't understand about science but so far God has not been required for anything to work, and we haven't learned everything yet but there's no foreseable need for god to exist to explain anything. So when I say faith, I am talking about faith in that which is not proveable, not those things which we must accept in order to exist.

 

[Sunstone]

Generalizing is never a good thing.

Sometimes it is. I think you've over-generalized.

 

[Sunstone]

Faith is a useful tool for avoiding answering difficult questions:

Innocent believer: 'oh father, the existence of god doesn't really have any evidence and I see no reason to believe it.'

Father 'you must have faith'

IB 'oh father, why is evolution wrong according to our religion'

Father, 'god created all, you must have faith in that'

The nature of faith means that religion cannot be argued against.

Is there anything intrinsically wrong with faith?

 

[danny vee]

I have never debated this exact topic on these forums before, but certainly on others. From a purely hard agnostic point of view you are correct, we cannot know anything for sure, just because gravity has kept us from flying off the face of the planet for as long as history has been recorded doesn't necessarily mean it's going to hold true tomorrow. Just because we see our reflection in the mirror, walk around and live our lives, doesn't mean we're not in some celestial dream and that none of this is real. And you are exactly correct, you can't dwell on these things or you'd drive yourself bonkers. So at that most basic of levels, we use faith to believe that those things around us that are demonstratable and proveable and that are confirmed by others are fact. But there is a big difference between 'believing' that 2 + 2 = 4 and that it always has and always will, and believing in something that has no supporting evidence, something that is completely conjecture. Like God for instance. Using a theistic notion of the word, God cannot be touched or seen or registered with any of our physical senses, he was created thousands of years ago as a sort of thesis on how we came to be here and what our purpose is. But there is no supporting evidence for that, you can't prove him with math, there is no 'god variable' required to calculate the effects of the gravity holding us down. There is a lot that we don't understand about science but so far God has not been required for anything to work, and we haven't learned everything yet but there's no foreseable need for god to exist to explain anything. So when I say faith, I am talking about faith in that which is not proveable, not those things which we must accept in order to exist.

But if you look at it like that, then what can you prove? Nothing. You can always find ways to nullify a thought, and if we didn't have some small measure of idea that that thought might be correct, what would we achieve? For example, the discovery of antibiotics. The guy went to his lab one morning to find a substance which had destroyed bacteria. What would have happened if he had just thought, "Oh it's just a coincidence", and left without further thought on the matter?
The same goes with faith. You say that religious faith is different, that God cannot be proved, and yet you say some things can be proved. The fact that you say God cannot be proved is contradicting the some things can be proved. What do you say to those people who have had direct experiences where they feel they've talked to God, and felt His presence? That's proof. And how about the heart attack patients who have been brought back to life with defibrillators even after the meter on their heart has gone flat, the ones who say they felt themselves leave their body and they say they saw and heard things impossible to see and hear if you were in your body? There's proof. So you can't say there is proof for anything. We need to go on what seems to make sense and be correct.

 

[gnomon]

Helpful in some instances, a hinderance in others.

I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow. That's helpful, else I could be sitting here with all this worry about whether or not the sun will rise and if I'll be able to see.

Having faith that I will win a truckload of cash and therefore won't need to work, well - that's not very helpful.. I will very quickly find out that I have no money left

I have zero faith that the sun will rise tomorrow.

And yet so far, it has done so every new morning.

That's the point.

 

[gnomon]

It's best when people do not mistake the basic usage of the word "belief" with the more esoteric term "faith" when referring to religious belief.

Equivocation never builds a good argument. Next thing you know people have faith that the alarm will go off, that the hot water heater will work, that the bus will be on time.......thus rendering any actual necessity for the term faith absolutely useless.

 

[Copernicus]

It's best when people do not mistake the basic usage of the word "belief" with the more esoteric term "faith" when referring to religious belief.

Equivocation never builds a good argument. Next thing you know people have faith that the alarm will go off, that the hot water heater will work, that the bus will be on time.......thus rendering any actual necessity for the term faith absolutely useless.

The problem is that people do use the term "faith" in that way, and the meaning can get a bit wobbly in discussions like this. I agree with you that there is a kind of equivocation going on here. But it is also a fair observation that our trust in what scientists tell us is very much like our trust in what religious leaders tell us. Daniel Dinnsen (in Breaking the Spell) has made the point that he has faith in the claims of scientists even when he knows he cannot verify the claims. Is that any more justifiable than faith in the claim that someone really has had a divine revelation of some sort? It is a question of trusting sources of information. Much of our knowledge is based on such trust, not on logical deduction or acts of verification. We simply cannot get through life being skeptical and untrusting of every claim we hear.

Myself, I have no trouble claiming that I am a "man of faith", although I am also a pretty hard-nosed atheist. I have a lot of beliefs about the physical world that I have no way of verifying simply because I lack the skills. As Dinnsen pointed out, most of us believe Einstein's remarkable conclusion that E=MC2, but we haven't the faintest idea of how he arrived at it, and we couldn't verify it to save our lives. What makes me trust scientists is my experience of finding them to be right about some pretty surprising things. Scientists and engineers produce real verifiable miracles. On the other hand, there are all kinds of competing religious doctrines, and there are no evident concrete results that can be observed to support them. They all seem preoccupied with explaining why we should believe their doctrines despite the lack of evidence or results. They have to explain why they don't really explain much of anything at all, and I don't feel inclined to buy their explanations. Scientists can teach me to verify their results. Religions produce no methods for evaluating their results. Faith in that sense is "blind".

 

[gnomon]

We simply cannot get through life being skeptical and untrusting of every claim we hear.

Myself, I have no trouble claiming that I am a "man of faith", although I am also a pretty hard-nosed atheist. I have a lot of beliefs about the physical world that I have no way of verifying simply because I lack the skills. As Dinnsen pointed out, most of us believe Einstein's remarkable conclusion that E=MC2, but we haven't the faintest idea of how he arrived at it, and we couldn't verify it to save our lives. What makes me trust scientists is my experience of finding them to be right about some pretty surprising things. Scientists and engineers produce real verifiable miracles. On the other hand, there are all kinds of competing religious doctrines, and there are no evident concrete results that can be observed to support them. They all seem preoccupied with explaining why we should believe their doctrines despite the lack of evidence or results. They have to explain why they don't really explain much of anything at all, and I don't feel inclined to buy their explanations. Scientists can teach me to verify their results. Religions produce no methods for evaluating their results. Faith in that sense is "blind".

That's true and that's we call belief.

The statement, "I believe that pharmaceuticals will develop to reduce the incidence of _______ disease" is qualitatively different than the statement "I have faith that Jesus Christ is our Lord and savior". The two do not even enter the same realm of meaning. However, ignoring the functional difference between the two statements renders the ability to use religious faith as the same as empirical science when it just is not so.

I take a different approach with my trust in science based on the reasoning behind empirical observation, mathematics and the knowledge that no matter what any scientist states they may be wrong. When religious faith starts to carry the connotation of possibly being wrong then I might start equating the religious faith with reasoned trust in established methodology.

I do also recognize that the whole issue is for most people a futile exercise in semantics. So whenever I talk about this issue I feel like a pedantic *******.

 

[Copernicus]

The statement, "I believe that pharmaceuticals will develop to reduce the incidence of _______ disease" is qualitatively different than the statement "I have faith that Jesus Christ is our Lord and savior". The two do not even enter the same realm of meaning. However, ignoring the functional difference between the two statements renders the ability to use religious faith as the same as empirical science when it just is not so.

We aren't really in disagreement. I just put a different spin on the argument. For me, it is quite reasonable to say "I have faith that pharmaceuticals will develop to reduce the incidence of _______ disease" and "I believe that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior." The qualitative difference comes in how one supports those statements. My confidence in scientists is higher simply because they have a better track record of fulfilling expectations. And science possesses a self-correcting methodology for discovering truth, whereas religion possesses a belief-maintenance methodology that resists change of belief.

I do also recognize that the whole issue is for most people a futile exercise in semantics. So whenever I talk about this issue I feel like a pedantic *******.

As someone who wrote his PhD dissertation on lexical semantics, I can actually claim to be a pedantic *******.