• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Logic requires Faith

Echogem222

Active Member
I don't think that "faith" is the proper word to use here.

You seem to be extrapolating from what IMO is a simple acknowledgement that we are not omniscient.

We indeed are not, but we must be careful not to simply assume that there is someone else who is.

As @Heyo quite properly points out in the first page of this thread, solipsism ought to be discarded not out of "faith" but simply because it is a dead end.
That seems to be implying that people don't choose to have faith in things that are otherwise dead ends, which is false in my case, as I have faith in my religion, Flawlessism, because to do otherwise would be a dead end.
 

Echogem222

Active Member
I suppose you could have said it simpler by saying that people can use different logic based on their own circumstances, i.e surroundings, upbringing, faith, location, etc.
Yeah, sure, people use different types of logic, but I'm saying all logic could be false.
 

Echogem222

Active Member
Solipsism, while not falsifiable, takes you nowhere. Just snap out of it. If you confine yourself to the axioms of logic and science - until proven to be invalid - you can reason yourself through the real and the abstract world just fine. And no-one, except other solipsists, will contradict you.
Yeah, which requires faith, which is fine. My argument here is not that people shouldn't have faith, if that were true, I would see no point in having this debate since I wouldn't be using logic since I would see logic as invalid.
 

Echogem222

Active Member
Which is why logical functions avoid using "the figurative" even in basic, informal logic.

"One" can also mean "a specific person," but you won't see that meaning used in maths, either.

Semantics and mathematics are separate magisteria.

The only articles of faith seem to be the laws of mathematics.
Yeah, once you have faith in something, you normally don't need more faith to continue to have faith in that thing, because that thing has structure you can work off from. Having faith in logic is like creating a foundation, upon which many things can be built. If that foundation is proven wrong though, then everything built on it is then proven wrong, but as you build everything on that foundation, you don't need to create another foundation, as that would negate the value of the original foundation. Like it's fine if you have two foundations which work using synergy with each other, but if you have another foundation which is redundant, then you're negating the value of the original foundation.

Take for example logic and science, these have two different foundations which work in synergy with each other.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
You can call that faith, I suppose. You can even approach that uncertainty in ways that resemble some of the (several and varied) emotional stances associated with that word.

Me, I think that there are better, more accurate, less confusion-prone words to be used instead. Words such as "unavoidable uncertainty", which are not as inviting of arrogance.

Again, that is just a bad and misleading word to use for such a thing. We may not be literally certain, but we have a duty to do the legwork to be reasonably sure instead of relying on "faith" - which can be difficult to distinguish from rather unhealthy emotional stances.

It is a possible conclusion. It is also a pragmatically useless one.
It's not the fault of the word "faith" that you attach a bunch of religious baggage to it. Simply put, faith is a combination of trust and action. And that is exactly how we humans are forced to engage with existence because we are not omniscient. We have to trust in whatever means we have of determining 'what is', and then we have to act on whatever conclusions we are led to, to survive.

So we are all living by faith whether we're religious about it or not.
 
Last edited:

Echogem222

Active Member
You can call that faith, I suppose. You can even approach that uncertainty in ways that resemble some of the (several and varied) emotional stances associated with that word.

Me, I think that there are better, more accurate, less confusion-prone words to be used instead. Words such as "unavoidable uncertainty", which are not as inviting of arrogance.
Arrogance? Even arrogance may not be as you think, in other words, you are just saying that's what your faith is.

Again, that is just a bad and misleading word to use for such a thing. We may not be literally certain, but we have a duty to do the legwork to be reasonably sure instead of relying on "faith" - which can be difficult to distinguish from rather unhealthy emotional stances.
That's your opinion.

It is a possible conclusion. It is also a pragmatically useless one.
In your opinion, once again, something you seem to have trouble understanding the difference of to being reasonable in others viewpoints.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
It's not the fault of the word "faith" that you attach a bunch of religious baggage to it. Simply put, faith is a combination of trust and action. And that is exactly how we humans are forced to engage with existence because we are not omniscient. We have to trust in whatever means we have of determining 'what is', and then we have to act on whatever conclusions we are led to, to survive.

So we are all living by faith whether we're religious about it or not.
How do abstract, logic-based concepts or beliefs involve action?
 

PureX

Veteran Member
How do abstract, logic-based concepts or beliefs involve action?
They ARE action. To try and discern 'what is' is an action. To determine what is valid evidence and derive a conclusion from it is an action. Choosing to trust this process within ourselves is an action. And then acting on it in the world is of course an action.

It's all how we negotiate with the mystery of existence.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
They ARE action. To try and discern 'what is' is an action. To determine what is valid evidence and derive a conclusion from it is an action. Choosing to trust this process within ourselves is an action. And then acting on it in the world is of course an action.

It's all how we negotiate with the mystery of existence.
Ok, that's an unusual take on "action." I generally associate action with movement or manipulation of some kind.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Yeah, which requires faith, which is fine. My argument here is not that people shouldn't have faith, if that were true, I would see no point in having this debate since I wouldn't be using logic since I would see logic as invalid.
If you call that "faith", I might have misunderstood your concern. I have "faith" in the axioms, as long as they are useful. Until now, they have proved to be internally consistent, parsimonious and in accord with the data. (Except for very special cases in quantum mechanics.)
 

Echogem222

Active Member
If you call that "faith", I might have misunderstood your concern. I have "faith" in the axioms, as long as they are useful. Until now, they have proved to be internally consistent, parsimonious and in accord with the data. (Except for very special cases in quantum mechanics.)
Not all faiths are equal to each other. We understand logic requires minimal faith, given how much you can build off of the faith of logic alone. I happen to believe in a religion/philosophy called Flawlessism which does something similar, however, it requires faith in logic and science, but it also has high synergy with logic and science, at least from my perspective it seems to. Faiths that have bad synergy to logic require more faith because they have bad synergy with logic, and by extension they would have bad synergy with science due to science's good synergy with logic... at least that's the way it seems to be, given that I can't know if logic is true or not, it's technically possible that a faith could have bad synergy with logic and science, but actually require less faith (it would be the discovery of the century though).
 
Top