Faith is Dangerous

[Nakosis]

This is the only part that really matters.

Life must go on.

No, imo, Life needn't. There's no guarantees.

 

[The Hammer]

No, imo, Life needn't. There's no guarantees.

Our life needn't.

But that's a choice we make everyday. Whether we know it or not.

Right living, right thought, and right action will endure this cycle can be maintained.

 

[Heyo]

Because it is a necessity does not make it an advantage.
It is a mistake imo to see evolution as a selection process.
Evolution is a non-selection process were sometimes mistakes turn out to be beneficial to a species survival.

Evolution is not the selection process, natural selection is the selection process that is one part of evolution. And natural selection can only select if there is an alternative that helps in individual fitness. And natural selection is slow. We have a lot of traits that were beneficial to our ancestors but are vestiges in the modern world.

 

[Heyo]

Faith is a luxury no one can afford.

Faith isn't a luxury. In fact, faith is cheap, so cheap that rich people often don't touch it but poor people have it in spades.
Faith and hope is what you have left when you have nothing left.

Is it dangerous?
Yes, when you are able to make a decision on informations and rational conclusions.
When you are not, it doesn't make a difference. It may even be the only thing that keeps you going.

 

[Nakosis]

One first needs to clarify what they take 'faith' to be. My definition would be something like this:

Faith is trust and confidence in propositions whose truth isn't absolutely certain.

Understood that way, all of human life, including science, is an expression of faith. We are demonstrating faith in physical principles that few of us fully understand every time we board an airplane. Scientism is an expression of faith.

It is your life. You are free to express what you want. Faith is a gamble on the unknown. Yes people boards airplane, some don't survive.
BTW, scientism is just my way of mocking any faith I might have in science.

That's the idea that the events of reality have a plot so to speak, that they have meaning and purpose and point towards some end. The tendency to read events as narrative, as story, is basic to what it means to be human.

It's what scientists are doing. They place the one-damn-thing-after-another parade of physical events that animals like dogs react to as they come into a story of mathematical equations and causation extending through time.

But science tells such an austere and abstract story that many/most people feel the need for something more... humane. People need something that speaks to their heart, not just their head.

Sure, everyone goes through life the best they can. Doesn't change the inherent risk that comes with faith.

Suicide is always an option. But most people do try to find some source of hope in life.

The existence of suffering doesn't contradict that, it justifies it psychologically.

If you're going to rely on faith for meaning, sure, what happens when faith runs out?
Some might choose suicide. Not everyone can sustain their faith eternally.

Faith is a necessity that no one can do without.

Doesn't make a reliance on faith any less dangerous.

 

[Trailblazer]

Maybe for it's Creation? With the keys for sustainability built in.

I've always felt we were all created in some fashion. Maybe that's just our identities, the "Creation".

I believe that God is necessary to rule and maintain the Universe, but however God does that is a complete mystery...
I also believe that God is necessary to send Messengers to earth to represent Him and reveal teachings and laws.

But as far as what goes on down here on earth in our daily lives, I don't think God is doing anything at all.... Of course I could be wrong about that because nobody can know what God is 'doing' at any time, we can only believe.

 

[The Hammer]

I believe that God is necessary to rule and maintain the Universe, but however God does that is a complete mystery...
I also believe that God is necessary to send Messengers to earth to represent Him and reveal teachings and laws.

But as far as what goes on down here on earth in our daily lives, I don't think God is doing anything at all.... Of course I could be wrong about that because nobody can know what God is 'doing' at any time, we can only believe.

Not a bad way to look at it.

 

[Trailblazer]

In fact, faith is cheap, so cheap that rich people often don't touch it but poor people have it in spades.

How rich do you have to be to not need faith?

 

[Nakosis]

Faith isn't a luxury. In fact, faith is cheap, so cheap that rich people often don't touch it but poor people have it in spades.
Faith and hope is what you have left when you have nothing left.

Sorry for the platitude.
Guess I'm as likely to make use of them as any.

Is it dangerous?
Yes, when you are able to make a decision on informations and rational conclusions.
When you are not, it doesn't make a difference. It may even be the only thing that keeps you going.

Ok, then we are in agreement about the danger. If you need to sustain your faith, to keep yourself going, got to do what you got to do.

I'm ok with not, sustaining it. So limiting it as much as possible, I see as the ideal.

 

[Nakosis]

Our life needn't.

But that's a choice we make everyday. Whether we know it or not.

Right living, right thought, and right action will endure this cycle can be maintained.

Didn't keep them folks in Ukraine alive. Their death came by not of their own action.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Faith is something we all rely on, all the time, every day. If we did not have faith in others or our knowledge of the world, we would go mad, as it is impractical to prove everything to ourselves all the time. An engineer has faith in his calculations for the bridge he is designing. I have faith in the brakes on my car.

There are several words spelled and pronounced the same, but with different definitions. One of them means unjustified belief, and another means justified belief. I believe that you are referring to the latter. You have faith in the brakes in your car, meaning you expect them to work when you need them, but understand that that might be incorrect. This is justified belief based in experience and understanding. And it is a correct belief. Most brakes will work most of the time.

The problem comes with unjustified belief if it is allowed to inform decisions. If one believes that angels are in heaven, it will probably be a harmless belief even if incorrect. The same cannot be said for the person who drives intoxicated because he believes that angels will watch over him when he does.

Faith in God is only dangerous if people tempt God and try to put him to the test.

Yes, but isn't that true with all faith, as in the example of the angels? As soon as one chooses action A because he holds faith-based belief B, he is putting that belief to the test. Do you have faith that the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus, or that God will protect you if refuse the vaccine, and did that cause you to refuse it? Did you end up in the ICU on a vent, dead, or with long-haul symptoms? You put your faith to an empiric test and lost, like the drunk driver if he dies, kills somebody, or gets pulled over.

If [faith] were not advantageous. It would have been evolutionarily selected against.

It's advantageous in children. Children who blindly obey their parents and other benevolent elders are more likely to live to reproduce than those who don't, and say cross without looking or get into a stranger's car, and pay the price. Giving this power to others who only pretend to have your best interests at heart as an adult is likely to be costly. Dawkins reviews this here: "What Use is Religion?" on the adaptive value of religion in human societies. He claims:

"Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. And this very quality automatically makes them vulnerable to infection by mind viruses. For excellent survival reasons, child brains need to trust parents and trust elders whom their parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the “truster” has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot tell that “If you swim in the river you’ll be eaten by crocodiles” is good advice but “If you don’t sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, the crops will fail” is bad advice. They both sound the same. Both are advice from a trusted source, and both are delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience."​

His point is that just because a behavior is widespread in a population does not mean it has survival advantage. Faith in priests as an adult is not the same as faith in one's parents as a child. Only the latter has adaptive value. Sometimes, a quality or behavior that has adaptive value in one context is dangerous in another. Dawkins gives the example of the moth to the flame. They all do it. Why? What's in it for them? Why was it selected for? His answer: It wasn't. The instinct was co-opted:

"Moths fly into the candle flame, and it doesn’t look like an accident. They go out of their way to make a burnt offering of themselves. We could label it “self-immolation behavior” and wonder how Darwinian natural selection could possibly favor it. My point, again, is that we need to rewrite the question before we can even attempt an intelligent answer. It isn’t suicide. Apparent suicide emerges as an inadvertent side-effect. Artificial light is a recent arrival on the night scene. Until recently, the only night lights were the moon and the stars. Being at optical infinity, their rays are parallel, which makes them ideal compasses. Insects are known to use celestial objects to steer accurately in a straight line. The insect nervous system is adept at setting up a temporary rule of thumb such as, “Steer a course such that the light rays hit your eye at an angle of 30°.” Since insects have compound eyes, this will amount to favoring a particular ommatidium (individual optical tube radiating out from the center of the compound eye). But the light compass relies critically on the celestial object being at optical infinity. If it isn’t, the rays are not parallel but diverge like the spokes of a wheel. A nervous system using a 30° rule of thumb to a candle, as though it were the moon, will steer its moth, in a neat logarithmic spiral, into the flame.

"It is still, on average, a good rule of thumb. We don’t notice the hundreds of moths who are silently and effectively steering by the moon or a bright star or even the lights of a distant city. We see only moths hurling themselves at our lights, and we ask the wrong question. Why are all these moths committing suicide? Instead, we should ask why they have nervous systems that steer by maintaining an automatic fixed angle to light rays, a tactic that we only notice on the occasions when it goes wrong. When the question is rephrased, the mystery evaporates. It never was right to call it suicide.

"Once again, apply the lesson to religious behavior in humans. We observe large numbers of people—in many local areas it amounts to 100 percent—who hold beliefs that flatly contradict demonstrable scientific facts, as well as rival religions. They not only hold these beliefs but devote time and resources to costly activities that flow from holding them. They die for them, or kill for them. We marvel at all this, just as we marvelled at the self-immolation behavior of the moths. Baffled, we ask “Why?” Yet again, the point I am making is that we may be asking the wrong question. The religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate manifestation of an underlying psychological propensity that in other circumstances was once useful."​

And so, the prevalence of organized religion is explainable by positing that it is advantageous for people to exploit one another using this propensity to trust and believe, which is normally a juvenile quality, but can be maintained into adulthood through conditioning. One nurtures the retention a variety of instincts such as obedience and submission to authority and father figures, belief by faith and magical thinking, and the idea that one is being watched and judged and will be punished for being bad - all ideas that diminish when maturation occurs outside of religious teaching, but are cultivated by organized religion, which actually praises childlike thinking, calls faith a virtue, and repeats warning of punishment from Father for disobedience to Him.

 

[Nakosis]

The OP is about blind faith. But it goes way too far when it comes to a blanket statement about trust. Without trust, where is a child when it comes to her parents? How can anyone trust a surgeon? Why go to school if one does not trust a teacher? How can one drive a car if you can't trust the wheels to not come off? Should a young baby not have faith in his mother's milk?

Clearly the missing ingredient is the mind. Blind faith or blind trust lands one into a "ditch" as does blind mistrust.

To me there's clearly a role for faith but faith tempered by the light of the intellect. As Rabbi Tzvi Freeman put it:

"You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed.

And yet, all this is a matter of faith
—the faith that there is a truth to be found.

It is another paradox: To truly question, you must truly have faith."

Yet what if there is no truth to be found?
Hopefully you'll never grow tired of looking for that which may not exist.
If you ever do, then hopefully you'll have more than faith to rely on.

 

[Heyo]

How rich do you have to be to not need faith?

You don't need much but some of the things you need are very valuable. You need a rational mind, some self-confidence and friends or the ability to make friends.

 

[The Hammer]

Didn't keep them folks in Ukraine alive. Their death came by not of their own action.

And that was someone's choice. Even if not their own.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I doubt I have faith by any definition, although hope is the nearest, even if I often doubt any signs of progress of the sort I would like to see - and I have seen much over my lifetime. So, for example, not so sure this will necessarily apply, and given the current circumstances:

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-mathematical-clear-cut-morals.html

Researchers at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, Sweden, have created a mathematical model to predict changes in moral opinion. It predicts that values about corporal punishment of children, abortion-rights and how parental leave should be shared between parents, will all move in liberal directions in the U.S. Results from a first test of the model using data from large opinion surveys continuously conducted in the U.S. are promising. Corporal punishment of children, such as spanking or paddling, is still widely accepted in the U.S. But public opinion is changing rapidly, and in the United States and elsewhere around the world, this norm will soon become a marginal position. The right to abortion is currently being threatened through a series of court cases — but though change is slow, the view of abortion as a right will eventually come to dominate. A majority of Americans today reject the claim that parental leave should be equally shared between parents, but within 15 years, public opinion will flip, and a majority will support an equal division.

 

[The Hammer]

There are several words spelled and pronounced the same, but with different definitions. One of them means unjustified belief, and another means justified belief. I believe that you are referring to the latter. You have faith in the brakes in your car, meaning you expect them to work when you need them, but understand that that might be incorrect. This is justified belief based in experience and understanding. And it is a correct belief. Most brakes will work most of the time.

The problem comes with unjustified belief if it is allowed to inform decisions. If one believes that angels are in heaven, it will probably be a harmless belief even if incorrect. The same cannot be said for the person who drives intoxicated because he believes that angels will watch over him when he does.



Yes, but isn't that true with all faith, as in the example of the angels? As soon as one chooses action A because he holds faith-based belief B, he is putting that belief to the test. Do you have faith that the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus, or that God will protect you if refuse the vaccine, and did that cause you to refuse it? Did you end up in the ICU on a vent, dead, or with long-haul symptoms? You put your faith to an empiric test and lost, like the drunk driver if he dies, kills somebody, or gets pulled over.



It's advantageous in children. Children who blindly obey their parents and other benevolent elders are more likely to live to reproduce than those who don't, and say cross without looking or get into a stranger's car, and pay the price. Giving this power to others who only pretend to have your best interests at heart as an adult is likely to be costly. Dawkins reviews this here: "What Use is Religion?" on the adaptive value of religion in human societies. He claims:

"Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. And this very quality automatically makes them vulnerable to infection by mind viruses. For excellent survival reasons, child brains need to trust parents and trust elders whom their parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the “truster” has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot tell that “If you swim in the river you’ll be eaten by crocodiles” is good advice but “If you don’t sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, the crops will fail” is bad advice. They both sound the same. Both are advice from a trusted source, and both are delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience."​

His point is that just because a behavior is widespread in a population does not mean it has survival advantage. Faith in priests as an adult is not the same as faith in one's parents as a child. Only the latter has adaptive value. Sometimes, a quality or behavior that has adaptive value in one context is dangerous in another. Dawkins gives the example of the moth to the flame. They all do it. Why? What's in it for them? Why was it selected for? His answer: It wasn't. The instinct was co-opted:

"Moths fly into the candle flame, and it doesn’t look like an accident. They go out of their way to make a burnt offering of themselves. We could label it “self-immolation behavior” and wonder how Darwinian natural selection could possibly favor it. My point, again, is that we need to rewrite the question before we can even attempt an intelligent answer. It isn’t suicide. Apparent suicide emerges as an inadvertent side-effect. Artificial light is a recent arrival on the night scene. Until recently, the only night lights were the moon and the stars. Being at optical infinity, their rays are parallel, which makes them ideal compasses. Insects are known to use celestial objects to steer accurately in a straight line. The insect nervous system is adept at setting up a temporary rule of thumb such as, “Steer a course such that the light rays hit your eye at an angle of 30°.” Since insects have compound eyes, this will amount to favoring a particular ommatidium (individual optical tube radiating out from the center of the compound eye). But the light compass relies critically on the celestial object being at optical infinity. If it isn’t, the rays are not parallel but diverge like the spokes of a wheel. A nervous system using a 30° rule of thumb to a candle, as though it were the moon, will steer its moth, in a neat logarithmic spiral, into the flame.

"It is still, on average, a good rule of thumb. We don’t notice the hundreds of moths who are silently and effectively steering by the moon or a bright star or even the lights of a distant city. We see only moths hurling themselves at our lights, and we ask the wrong question. Why are all these moths committing suicide? Instead, we should ask why they have nervous systems that steer by maintaining an automatic fixed angle to light rays, a tactic that we only notice on the occasions when it goes wrong. When the question is rephrased, the mystery evaporates. It never was right to call it suicide.

"Once again, apply the lesson to religious behavior in humans. We observe large numbers of people—in many local areas it amounts to 100 percent—who hold beliefs that flatly contradict demonstrable scientific facts, as well as rival religions. They not only hold these beliefs but devote time and resources to costly activities that flow from holding them. They die for them, or kill for them. We marvel at all this, just as we marvelled at the self-immolation behavior of the moths. Baffled, we ask “Why?” Yet again, the point I am making is that we may be asking the wrong question. The religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate manifestation of an underlying psychological propensity that in other circumstances was once useful."​

And so, the prevalence of organized religion is explainable by positing that it is advantageous for people to exploit one another using this propensity to trust and believe, which is normally a juvenile quality, but can be maintained into adulthood through conditioning. One nurtures the retention a variety of instincts such as obedience and submission to authority and father figures, belief by faith and magical thinking, and the idea that one is being watched and judged and will be punished for being bad - all ideas that diminish when maturation occurs outside of religious teaching, but are cultivated by organized religion, which actually praises childlike thinking, calls faith a virtue, and repeats warning of punishment from Father for disobedience to Him.

In your opinion

 

[firedragon]

Faith that God or the universe has some benevolent plan for you.

Thousands are killed daily, go hungry are homeless. There are no guarantees in the universe. No reason to believe the the universe is going to take your best interest into consideration. No reason to believe your future is bright.

My son believes the universe/God has a special plan for him. That he just needs to wait for the universe/God to reveal it.

Who has been watching out for him are his mom and dad. Parents who sacrifice so he has a place to live and food to eat. Not everyone has parents who are able or wiling.

Is it not folly to assume that someone or something exists that will watch out for your best interests? Or that tomorrow you will have a place to sleep. Food to eat. A family to rely on?

I think about the thousands on families in Ukraine who have lost their homes, parents who have lost their children, children who have lost their parents. Who are now homeless.

Faith is a luxury no one can afford.

Interesting title. I have not seen any study that proves faith is dangerous in your OP. You stated some issues in the world, but none of them give credence to your title or your end conclusion.

It could be that I have not understood your thesis.

Can you give your reasons for your position?

 

[The Hammer]

@Ponder This care to explain what's so funny to the rest of the class?

 

[Ponder This]

@Ponder This care to explain what's so funny to the rest of the class?

If it were not advantageous. It would have been evolutionarily selected against.

I feel like, to explain a joke is for it to lose its humor.

But considering that some people today have faith and other people today do not have faith, and some people may not have faith and will attain it, while other people have faith and will lose it...
it suggests, to me, that, as humankind currently is, faith has not been selected for or against evolutionarily speaking, and it is not clear, evolutionarily speaking, that faith is in the process of being selected for or against.

Add in common misconceptions about how evolution works, misapplications of the theories of survival of the fittest and natural selection, and it seems humorous to me. Apologies if you took offense.

 

[The Hammer]

Apologies if you took offense.

This is why funny is a garbage rating.

It conveys nothing but contempt when used in debate, unless something is explicitly humourous.

To laugh at a view held in sincerity is tantamount to mockery of the worst kind.

Apology accepted