Is Faith Evidence of Things Not Seen?

[ppp]

I encouraged free exercise of conscience, the flip-side of promoting religious competition and allowance.

Witch burning, blood libel, conversion therapy, racial discrimination, religious discrimination and prioritizing the religion over the individual are prime examples of your free exercise of conscious.

 

[robocop (actually)]

Witch burning, blood libel, conversion therapy, racial discrimination, religious discrimination and prioritizing the religion over the individual are prime examples of your free exercise of conscious.

I am against all of those things.

 

[ppp]

Did I do good or bad?

Bad. See my previous post

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Witch burning, blood libel, conversion therapy, racial discrimination, religious discrimination and prioritizing the religion over the individual are prime examples of your free exercise of conscious.

Yes, more of that. Thrown in some lobotomies, nerve gas and the list goes on. And you could combine religion and science to make it even more better. /s

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Well, now we are getting somewhere. The interesting part is the bold one. What is the status of that sentence itself? Can you prove it right with science? Well, no, because it is not based on an observation as such. So what is the status? Well, it seems to be a combination of morality "... doesn't mean that ..." and aesthetics/morality sort of "... that we like ...". Now the joke is also the "we". It is free floating because it is not establish who it is and with what authority it speaks.
So first off, the sentence is self-referring because it is also about itself and thus we don't get to make it, because we don't, says the "we".

You are not that good at this, now are you, Evangelicalhumanist? You make a statement, which is not permissible under its own rule and you claim a "we" out of nowhere.
So here it is with yelling: YOU CAN'T SPEAK FOR ME WITH A "WE". You are not the authoritative source of humanity and I will resist your kind regardless of religion or not. You are in effect wrong, not morally, but intellectually because you have made an self-refuting rule without establishing the authority of the "we".
So "we" don't like that!

Who said? Even Bishop Berkeley, acknowledged a good philosopher, is quoted as saying: "That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow." "Our" being a word akin to "we," you understand.

You are playing word games -- the kind of thing Zeno used to create his paradoxes proving that if the tortoise has a head start, fleet-footed Achilles can never catch him.

I don't find that sort of game useful here.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Who said? Even Bishop Berkeley, acknowledged a good philosopher, is quoted as saying: "That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow." "Our" being a word akin to "we," you understand.

You are playing word games -- the kind of thing Zeno used to create his paradoxes proving that if the tortoise has a head start, fleet-footed Achilles can never catch him.

I don't find that sort of game useful here.

No, you prefer your own word games and claim a "we".

 

[ppp]

That is simple. It has to do with the 3 versions of wrong.
It is wrong, that I can fly in earth gravity solely by the use of my body. (P as physics)
It is wrong, that in base 10 that 1+1=10. (C as cognitive)
It is wrong to kill another human. (M as moral)

Now if everything is one category you have to be able to reduce P, C AND(logical strong and) M down to one or alternatively prove P, C AND M.

You are taking multiple usages of "wrong" and trying to treat them as though they are the same usage. If you were joking, that would be a pun. But as you are trying to build an argument, you are committing an equivocation fallacy. I do not accept your foundation.

The best way to stop a charging bull is to take away his credit card.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I need antibiotics. Your smile is infectious


Film producers wanted to make a movie about classical music composers starring Leonardo Dicaprio, Hugh Grant and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They ask Leonardo who he wants to be and he answers "I want to be Beethoven because I've always liked him". Next they ask Hugh and he says "I want to be Mozart because I've always liked him" lastly they ask Arnold and he says "I'll be Bach!"

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

You are taking multiple usages of "wrong" and trying to treat them as though they are the same usage. ...

Yes, you are correct. That is how I stated there are 3 versions. And gave different examples of the different usage of the 3 meanings.

 

[ppp]

I am against all of those things.

You said that you are for the free exercise of conscience. Those are all examples of the free exercise of conscience. So you must be in favor of people being able to do them without restriction by secular law,.

 

[ppp]

Yes, you are correct. That is how I stated there are 3 versions. And gave different examples of the different usage of the 3 meanings.

See the rest of my post. Thanks,

 

[robocop (actually)]

You said that you are for the free exercise of conscience. Those are all examples of the free exercise of conscience. So you must be in favor of people being able to do them without restriction by secular law,.

Basically a person can do what they want until they are a threat to themselves or others.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

See the rest of my post. Thanks,

And the rest of mine:

...
So what is involved in the 3 categories: Observation, cognition and feelings.
Now we test if you can observe everything. No, because you can't observe a feeling. You feel it, don't observe.
Now we test if you can think everything. No, because you can't think an observation. You observe, don't think.
Now we test if you can feeling everything. No, because you can't feel an thought. You think, don't feel.

So now to logic. Something can't at the same time and place and in a sense be and not be in that sense.
So for P, C AND M they can't be made logical consistent because the different senses of P, C and M can't be made into one.
I.e. you can't do everything humans do, only doing one of the categories and there is no one way to say what everything is in one sense.

The third option is that we can't do everything so that it adds up and makes sense. In naturalistic terms as per biological evolution we are evolved to live in the world and that doesn't require that we can make sense of everything.
Some religious people believe they can make sense of everything using God. They can't.
Some non-religious people believe they can make sense of everything using science. They can't.
Some people know there is a limit to both religion and science in terms of making sense of everything. They are called skeptics.

So you are a believer in that everything is physical. It is not, because it is too simple, just as God is too simple.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Basically a person can do what they want until they are a threat to themselves or others.

That is to vague. And what do you mean by a threat to themselves?

 

[robocop (actually)]

You said that you are for the free exercise of conscience. Those are all examples of the free exercise of conscience. So you must be in favor of people being able to do them without restriction by secular law,.

That is to vague. And what do you mean by a threat to themselves?

Laws are never perfect whether they are religiously or secularly based.

These are the criterion whereby a person forfeits their rights.

For instance, with mental illness, they only toss you in the system if you are considered a threat to yourself or to others. Their words, not mine.

I said "Basically." If you want to get more sophistication, we have to talk about different issues and the ways they are viewed by different common philosophies, and I'm rusty.

 

[Kenny]

Three things: 1) if prayer caused that to happen, why did doctors have to open the hole? If God did the miracle, why didn't he go all the way? 2) What is your evidence that faith actually caused the eardrum to grow? Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy. 3) You're again not addressing my earlier point. How many deaf people have prayed to hear and it never happens? You have to count Ws and Ls if you want to be objective here.

1) God did what man could not do.... put in an ear drum -- God lets do what they can do... make a hole in the skin where there was no hole. The question isn't really an important question. It was all the way... an ear drum all the way
2) Well... we know the doctors didn't do it and we know that medically speaking and biologically speaking we don't see ear drums being created years after birth. Do you have a better suggestion?
3) I have addressed the question. Would you like to go through a list of possibilities?

Not at all. If prayer was as effective at treating cancer as chemo or radiation or surgery...we'd prescribe it. The reason doctors don't, is because it isn't. Cancer treatments go through rounds of extensive clinical trials to determine effectiveness, and have to actually be shown to be consistently effective and safe to be approved by the FDA, etc. Prayer has also been scientifically tested...do you wanna know what the results have been? (Hint: not good)

No..

1) Doctors deal with physical... not spiritual.
2) You have already decreed that cancer treatment is no good because it doesn't always work (your principle and not mine)
3) Prayer that was scientifically administered was full of holes. (Since science doesn't understand prayer... would you like to know why?)
4) People still use prayer and it still works... BEFORE they go to the doctor.... guess why you never hear about it?

today? Oh, it was a Tuesday, I washed them on the wrong day, my attitude wasn't right, I didn't really believe in them...the excuses are endless. But the bottom line is, neither prayer/faith or lucky socks have not been shown to have any consistent miraculous sorts of effects. What it produces are similar to slot machine results, with just enough rewarding coincidences to keep people playing.

OK...

you can live without miracles (as you are basically saying you have no faith for it) - I will continue enjoying miracles because I do believe

Either way, we both seek to be healed. Doctors, faith, both -- it's all good. Difference is I never got a bill from Jesus.

 

[ppp]

And the rest of mine:

You foundation is equivocation. Nothing that you build on a fallacious foundation is sound.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Do you believe faith is the evidence of things not seen? Why or why not?

No. Faith is evidence of nothing except the will to belief without sufficient evidentiary justification. Religion the sets out to glorify this act of violence against reason by calling it a virtue, praising those willing to believe by faith, and Hallmark card banalities such as that scripture. There is no more sure way to hold a wrong belief than to be willing to hold it without evidence.

What would be evidence for no God?

I've given you a lengthy answer to that in the past, which I won't repeat in its entirety, but in summary, it's based on the idea that if either case A or B is true, and if A is true, either result 1 or result 2 is possible, but if case B is true, only result 2 is possible, and the result is always is always 2, then you have a strong argument for case B being the case, an argument that gets stronger with every result 2. I'll illustrate:

Case 1 is a fair coin. Result 1 is heads and result 2 is tails. Case 2 is a loaded coin that always comes up tails. After 1000 flips, all outcomes are tails. Is this proof that the coin is loaded? No, there is still a vanishingly small possibility that the coin is fair, but I doubt that you would bet on the next flip being heads, which would be just as likely as tails if the coin were fair.

I gave you multiple examples of "If the universe has a god, then either result 1 or result 2 is possible, but if there is no god, only result 2 is possible" with multiple. A couple of examples: If there is a god, the universe might or might not have had natural laws, as a god doesn't need a gravitational law to keep the planets orbiting their stars, but a godless universe requires it. If a god exists, it might or might not leave us a holy book that no human could have written or not, but if there is no god, only a holy book that human beings could have written is possible. In both of these cases, we see what is necessarily true in a godless universe. Let's call it tails.

The last time we went through this, I gave you about a dozen examples, all coming up tails. This is evidence against an interventionalist god existing (but not evidence against a deist god, who would leave our universe rendering it godless)

You cannot prove God does not exist because you cannot prove a negative.

Some negatives can be proven (there is no living hippo in this room), but I take your point, and add that that is irrelevant to the critical thinker, who needs no proof that a god doesn't exist to not believe i gods. I also don't have proof that leprechauns and vampires don't exist. Neither do you. But I'll bet you reject the notion nevertheless just as I will not believe in a god without good cause.

Faith is not only religion, it is also knowledge of the truth

Faith has nothing to do with truth. Faith is guessing, believing your guess, and eventually forgetting that it was just a guess. Ideas generated by faith have no utility.

How can a method that supports equally either of two contradictory and mutually exclusive ideas, knowing that at least one is incorrect, be a path to truth? It can't.

Truth is rooted in the proper evaluation of physical evidence (valid reasoning), and is confirmed by its ability to accurately predict outcomes. No other kind of idea is worthy of being called truth, although as you demonstrate, it is actually often used to mean any idea that its holder likes or wishes to be true.

They just call it truth anyway, often spiritual truth (@Left Coast - I wish you had commented this when I expounded on spirituality in a recent post of yours), even if the ideas can't be used for anything (I'm thinking of duality discussions, as if there is any benefit in such discussions). These are also just faith-based guesses not rooted in skepticism or empiricism, and also unproductive unless all that you want out of them is to be comforted or to feel that you have special insights or magic in your life.

Religion exist to keep life in tact.

My life was made better by leaving religion.

science is moot, only interferes with life

I think you have science confused with religion. Religion is moot because it is sterile. Intelligent design / creationism is a great example. Millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours later, the movement has nothing to show for itself. Why? It's predicated on a false idea.

No useful ideas come from any faith based system of thought. Astrology and alchemy are two such examples. Neither generated a single useful idea ever. Once faith and faith-based beliefs were expunged and replaced with skepticism and reason applied to evidence, they were transformed into science (astronomy and chemistry), and they went from useless to useful.

Science makes our lives longer, more functional (think eyeglasses and the polio vaccine), healthier (think antibiotics and X-rays), more comfortable (think air conditioning), safer (think smoke detectors), less labor intensive (think automobiles and indoor plumbing), and more interesting (think Internet and jet travel).

Religion does none of those things. That's your moot system of thought, not science.

there is no doubt God gave us two physical eyes and other senses with which to appreciate and enjoy His creation.

There ought to be such doubt. If you've eliminated doubt there, then you did so by faith and by violating the rules of reason (non sequitur fallacy - the conclusion is not supported by what came before it) . Reason does not allow one to rule a god in or a godless universe out. You did so anyway.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

No, you prefer your own word games and claim a "we".

Fine. Next time you're standing in front of a bus, I hope either it or you doesn't exist and it passes right through you. Meantime, I don't enjoy your game. I have never called myself a philosopher (note my handle identifies me as a humanist, not nearly the same thing). I made no special claim to anything except the use of ordinary human language in thinking and communicating.

One tongue-in-cheek definition of “philosophical question” is “any question that is unanswerable.” There’s more than a little truth in that characterization. What today we call sciences were once called “natural philosophy.” Now that we distinguish science as a separate set of domains, what’s left over, for philosophy to deal with, are the problems that we can’t tackle scientifically. And so, one answer to your question is that philosophy tackles the really difficult stuff, and this is both a weakness and a strength, a weakness because this makes philosophy difficult to do and a strength because someone’s gotta do it! The difficulty of the questions is one reason that, as the old joke has it, if you laid all the philosophers end to end, you would never reach a conclusion.

Here’s a completely different answer to your question. Contemporary philosophy has grown, like a lot of other academic disciplines, to be quite arcane and academic, to involve a lot of abstruse terminology and to require a great deal of training. So, it’s pretty cut off from everyday affairs and everyday discourse. We’ve come a long way from the times when kings and queens employed resident philosophers to teach their children and to advise them. This, I think, is a weakness, for some parts of philosophy ought to be of use and value to a wide audience. I think it a weakness that academic philosophers flourish in their communities by cutting themselves off from the world at large and talking only to other philosophers in their specialized vocabulary. I’m not saying, of course, that all philosophers do this or even that most of them never reach out to the general public, only that there should be rewards, within philosophy, systemic, built-in rewards, for making philosophy of general interest and concern. It’s encouraging to see some recent developments like experimental philosophy that involve the public at large, and it’s also encouraging to see how many people, from all walks of life, ask and answer philosophical questions on Quora and other Social Media platforms.

Robert Shepherd, Quora, December 9, 2018

So you carry on, and I'll just go my way. As I said, I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not, but I'm also not going to be stopped thinking the way that I WISH TO THINK just to satisfy your need for superiority. (I am referring here to your gratuitous and impolite comment that "you are not that good at this, are you?")

 

[Valjean]

I have the right to free exercise of religion, meaning I can use it in the public square.

Faith may not be scientific, but it is another form of reasoning that should be in harmony with science.

But it's not a form of reasoning, that's the whole point. By its nature I can't see how its "methodology" can ever be reconciled with the scientific method.

...Morality is something anyone can tell, so faith can be tested to see if it's working.

If it were reliably testable I'd expect the billions of faithful over the history of man to have come to some consensus by now.

 

[robocop (actually)]

But it's not a form of reasoning, that's the whole point. By its nature I can't see how its "methodology" can ever be reconciled with the scientific method.
If it were reliably testable I'd expect the billions of faithful over the history of man to have come to some consensus by now.

It's methodology includes obedience to principles and it's called the golden rule.