Is Faith Evidence of Things Not Seen?

[ppp]

Observation, thinking and feeling are not the same.

That was my first part. So if we can agree that the human behaviors of observation, thinking and feeling are not exactly the same we can continue?

Are we discarding your entire previous post and only starting with your statement, "that the human behaviors of observation, thinking and feeling are not exactly the same"?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

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.
...

Well, here is how I was taught that one.
I was born on the edge of a cliff and I have don't nothing all my life, but standing on the edge and wondering if I should try to jump off or not and wondering if I would fall to my death hen. This is the reduction ad absurdum version, because life is not just these examples.
So let me explain it for you: Your example with the bus would be relevant for everything in the universe and everything in a human life if that was the only type of situations going on; i.e. life and death ones including effect of the physical. But that is not the case.

So back to this:

...
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?")

Well, you rubbed me the wrong way with your "we". You properly don't like it when somebody make a universal claim of morality that includes you and claim authority over what is right and wrong. You did that and I told you off. If you want to do universal morality, learn to do so. Don't make a self-refuting claim and use a free floating not grounded with a reasoned argument case of an universal "we".
So you where in effect the superior one, because you claimed the authority of "we". And then yes, I topped your superiority by showing you that your argument wasn't rational.
So yes, I properly shouldn't have done it exactly like I did, but the core of it I stand by.
We are in debates and you made a claim of how we ought to behave as humans. I refuted that.

Now as to superiority, here is how it works. No human is objectively as for right/wrong, good/bad and what not superior to another human. There is no objective morality and authority in this world we share. As back to biology we can either cooperate, fight or go our separate ways. We are different as individuals but equal as humans.
That is the balancing act in morality if you want to include other humans as both individual yet also equal.

Now you can of course claim that you have figured out, but here it is as testing. If you claim a universal answer, that is not really universal, I will point out that it is not universal by testing it against the world. That includes your example of the bus.
So here is what happened. You tried to make an universal claim and I showed you that it didn't work. Now you can learn from that or you can walk away. I am not superior as a human to you nor inferior or in reverse. But I have been doing this for over 20 years now - debating right/wrong and good/bad for this world we share.

Regards
Mikkel

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Are we discarding your entire previous post and only starting with your statement, "that the human behaviors of observation, thinking and feeling are not exactly the same"?

We are discarding my whole post and starting anew for whether there is only one ontological category in the world or if it is unknown what the world is in the ontological sense.

So are the human behaviors of external sensory experience, cognition in the brain and feelings in the brain for these 3 cases exactly the same?

 

[ppp]

So are the human behaviors of external sensory experience, cognition in the brain and feelings in the brain for these 3 cases exactly the same?

No. But do not let yourself get too carried away. There has been no discussion as to what respect that they are different. Nor to what degree.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No. But do not let yourself get too carried away. There has been no discussion as to what respect that they are different. Nor to what degree.

Okay, I will use a standard form of neutral approach. I won't claim what the world is, but rather look at as how we humans act and if we can reduce that acting down to one type of acting. I.e. one type of knowledge with an universal methodology, which works on all of the world.

So the next thing about the world I will take for granted is, that if we are to talk of all of the world, that includes humans? Yes or no?

 

[MonkeyFire]

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.



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)



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 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.



My life was made better by leaving religion.



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 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.

I feel like your mixed up on the definition of faith, or you are awfully deceptive. Faith is defined as absolute trust in a thing. Religion is belief (absolute trust) in God without aprehension, as hope goes beyond science.

 

[ppp]

Okay, I will use a standard form of neutral approach. I won't claim what the world is, but rather look at as how we humans act and if we can reduce that acting down to one type of acting. I.e. one type of knowledge with an universal methodology, which works on all of the world.

Why are we trying to do this? Why do you think it would matter whether we can reduce human acting down to one type of acting?

So the next thing about the world I will take for granted is, that if we are to talk of all of the world, that includes humans? Yes or no?

if by "world" you mean the planet Earth, then yes, that includes humans.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Faith is defined as absolute trust in a thing. Religion is belief (absolute trust) in God without aprehension as hope goes beyond science.

No, religion is not that.
religion | Definition, Types, & List of Religions

Religion, human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence. It is also commonly regarded as consisting of the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death. In many traditions, this relation and these concerns are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitude toward gods or spirits; in more humanistic or naturalistic forms of religion, they are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitudes toward the broader human community or the natural world. In many religions, texts are deemed to have scriptural status, and people are esteemed to be invested with spiritual or moral authority. Believers and worshippers participate in and are often enjoined to perform devotional or contemplative practices such as prayer, meditation, or particular rituals. Worship, moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious institutions are among the constituent elements of the religious life.
...

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Why are we trying to do this? Why do you think it would matter whether we can reduce human acting down to one type of acting?

Because if you can show that everything is physical, then in practice it means that you use one and only one type of methodology and a methodology is a form of acting. When and if you say: Everything is physical. Then if effect you can reduce everything do to one specific form of behavior, acting and methodology.

if by "world" you mean the planet Earth, then yes, that includes humans.

And the world including humans are include in the universe and the universe is reality and everything that is?

 

[ppp]

Because if you can show that everything is physical

Just to be clear. I have not claimed that everything is physical. I have claimed that the physical is the only thing for which we can currently test.

then in practice it means that you use one and only one type of methodology

That is not necessarily true. We have only discovered one reliable methodology for demonstrating the probability of a claim being true in the natural world. There may be other methodologies, but none are yet in evidence.

methodology is a form of acting.

Methodology is the conception of a process. Following the methodology is acting.

When and if you say: Everything is physical.Then if effect you can reduce everything do to one specific form of behavior, acting and methodology.

As I said above, I do not. I am not a philosophical naturalist.

And the world including humans are include in the universe

Yes.

and the universe is reality and everything that is?

I don't know.


*edited out some bad inclusions
*edit added "currently"

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Just to be clear. I have not claimed that everything is physical. I have claimed that the physical is the only thing for which we can test.

...

Thank you for the whole post, but we only need this.
You: The physical is the only thing for which we can test.
Me. No!

That is the end. We can test through observation as that relates to the physical. We can test for reasoning, mathematics, logic and philosophy. And we can test individually, how we feel. And we can try to combine all of these 3 categories into one and test how that works.

So here it is as for testing. If you have a test, you can test if the test have limits for what it can test. But that includes what you take for granted as a valid result. So if you don't accept that your test has limits and it is not the only test, you can act accordingly. I just test if I can act differently.

So we end here. If you want to act as if your test is the only test, you can do so. I act differently. How you evaluate that is up to you and how I do it, is up to me. But we are playing the game of what to do with negative results. I.e. if a test has a limit and the limit shows up as a negative.

Regards
Mikkel

 

[ppp]

That is the end. We can test through observation as that relates to the physical. We can test for reasoning, mathematics, logic and philosophy. And we can test individually, how we feel.

I see no reason to consider reasoning, mathematics, logic and philosophy or feelings to be outside of the physical world. In fact, I see no reason to regard them as anything but brain states.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I see no reason to consider reasoning, mathematics, logic and philosophy or feelings to be outside of the physical world.

You can't see that as seeing with observation through external sensory experience. Your "see" is not literal seeing and you can't use your own test on it. You in effect confirmed my point by testing using reasoning and not observation.

Regards
Mikkel

 

[ppp]

You can't see that as seeing with observation through external sensory experience. Your "see" is not literal seeing and you can't use your own test on it. You in effect confirmed my point by testing using reasoning and not observation.

I have no idea what your first two sentences mean.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I have no idea what your first two sentences mean.

Take the words "see" and "show". I can show you a cat. I can show you that 2+2=4. It is not the same "show". You do see the difference between seeing a cat and seeing the meaning.

 

[ppp]

Take the words "see" and "show". I can show you a cat. I can show you that 2+2=4. It is not the same "show". You do see the difference between seeing a cat and seeing the meaning.

Yes. I see the differences between the multiple usages of a given word. Explain why I should think that a word having different usages is significant. Please be brief and speak to that specific point.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yes. I see the differences between the multiple usages of a given word. Explain why I should think that a word having different usages is significant. Please be brief and speak to that specific point.

If you can't unite the 2 different meanings into one, you can't unite everything in to one test of one meaning: Physical.
You to the effect of: I can test everything in only one meaning.
Me: No!

 

[ppp]

If you can't unite the 2 different meanings into one, you can't unite everything in to one test of one meaning: Physical.
You to the effect of: I can test everything in only one meaning.
Me: No!

I'm sorry. But no. Words having different usages does not make any of the different usages non-physical.
If I say "iron", I can be referring to a type of metal, or a device for getting the wrinkles out of clothes. Or a tonic. Or a pistol. All usages of the word refer to something physical.

Appealing to homonyms is not a rational argument for you claim that there is something non physical. Is that all you've got?

 

[Milton Platt]

Depending on your favorite translation, Hebrews 11:1 reads:

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Some religious folks believe that their faith itself is evidence that what they have faith in is actually true. This is particularly the case, it seems, when it comes to supernatural claims or ones that don't have good evidence for them.

In my view, this is a manifestly absurd and circular position. People believe all kinds of things, some true, some untrue. The fact that I believe, for example, that the world is flat, is not evidence that I'm correct about that.

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

Faith might be evidence of their belief, however, it is not evidence that the belief is true. There is pretty much nothing one cannot believe on faith alone, therefore faith is not a reliable pathway to truth.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'm sorry. But no. Words having different usages does not make any of the different usages non-physical.
If I say "iron", I can be referring to a type of metal, or a device for getting the wrinkles out of clothes. Or a tonic. Or a pistol. All usages of the word refer to something physical.

Appealing to homonyms is not a rational argument for you claim that there is something non physical. Is that all you've got?

You are using mental reasoning and not physical action. You are doing philosophy and you confirm my point by using mental and not physical behavior in your reasoning.

Now here is the technical problem in fancy wording. Is it possible to do physicalism in a reductive sense for which all processes can be reduced down to the physical or is physicalism non-reductive in that, the mental is caused by the physical, but can't be reduced to the physical. In other words: Are there emergent properties, which are non-reductive in terms of the physical?

That is the game we are playing. And you are not alone in that nor am I alone in that. We as humans have been doing that for over 2000+ years now and then answer in practice is that everything is the set of interconnected categories, which can't in practice be reduced down to one category.
You can't do it with the physical and religion can do it with God. And philosophers can't do it with reason and logic alone.