What is Faith?

[Trailblazer]

Untested, it is faith. Tested it's knowledge.
"Not really faith, only belief" is an odd concept. Belief comprises all levels of confidence. It's an all-inclusive term. Faith is the least evidenced, least tested level of belief, not the most.

And what sort of tests are we talking about; observable, repeatable, falsifiable tests, or subjective impressions?
Objective tests would yield knowledge, rather than faith, no?

I said: "I agree, untested it is not really faith, it is only belief. I have been tested so much that I know that only too well."

I was not talking about the kind of test you are thinking of. I was talking about trials and tribulations of life, what Baha'is refer to as tests and difficulties. Our faith is tested by these because we have to endure them and still believe in God and that God is good in spite of our suffering.

(Qur’án 29:2)
Do the people think that they will be left to say, "We believe" and they will not be tried?

There can be no objective tests that are observable, repeatable, and falsifiable that can prove God exists since God is not a physical entity that can be proven to exist. That is why there is no proof that God exists, only evidence, which is the messengers of God. If we have faith in God, our faith rests on that evidence.

 

[osgart]

Critical thinkers are not motivated by any of that. They don't see themselves as being in a competition with the religious, nor do they need reasons to reject religious claims beyond them being unfounded. In epistemology, one studies the idea of knowledge - what it is and how it is obtained. Some, like Descartes, say knowledge can be obtained by pure reason, as when he decided that he must exist because he can think about the problem. They are rationalists. Then there are those who believe that knowledge can be obtained through reason applied to the evidence of the senses and experience. They are the empiricists. Some consider intuition a source of knowledge. Many do not. They would call it a creative source, a source of new ideas to investigate, but not knowledge. This last group would include the fideists - those who believe without empirical or rational confirmation, which is what is meant by justification when a critical speaker is judging.

The phenomenon of the ability to gain knowledge is abstract. It appears that knowledge is a meaning that is given objective and subjective standards for reasons. How does an empiricist know that s/he knows? Not everything is grounded in empiricism. Math is abstract, knowing that I know something is abstract. Knowing when I am being honest is abstract. Abstract reality is unavoidable. Empiricism works within its limits.

For knowledge I wouldn't wear just one hat. I can be objective about my subjective experiences and come up with true statements about the abstract phenomena that I experience and have certain abilities with; such as my honesty.

I can introspect about my abstract qualities and come up with knowledge of myself and abilities with such qualities. What evidence leads to a person knowing they are being honest? This kind of evidence is abstract; I know my honesty by being aware of my intentions, motivations, and I have the choice of acting or not acting up on my honesty.

This is empiricism, not fideism as just defined. Belief based in experience as you just described is justified if the experience is properly understood, and is justified belief by the standards of critical thought (academic standard). There is a different word with the same spelling and pronunciation that means the opposite of justified belief, the one employed to believe that gods exist, that the last election was a hoax, that the vaccines were more dangerous than the virus, and that climate change is a hoax. These ideas are all believed the same way - without justification, which is sufficient supporting evidence to justify belief. Isn't that what all of the recounts and other election integrity interventions were about - finding evidence of fraud, without which the claim of fraud was unjustified. Now consider my definition of religious-type faith as unjustified belief again. That's exactly what it is.

What's interesting is how people willing to believe by faith object to that being called unjustified belief. There was a time when people took pride in that. From Wiki:

"Credo quia absurdum is a Latin phrase that means "I believe because it is absurd", originally misattributed to Tertullian in his De Carne Christi. It is believed to be a paraphrasing of Tertullian's "prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est" which means "It is completely credible because it is unsuitable", or "certum est, quia impossibile" which means "It is certain because it is impossible."

Which is one reason to me - comforting. I don't use the word truth the way this author does. Faith is not a path to truth. It is a path to insufficiently justified belief.

An unbeliever wouldn't get his definition from a holy book. The Bible praises faith as a virtue. It has to, since it depends on belief by faith. It's central tenets can only be believed by faith, because the supporting evidence is inadequate to justify belief by the standards of critical analysis.

I can't agree. Faith isn't a thing. It's the name of a method for coming to a belief. And I suspect you are using an informal (lay) definition of justified, which appears to mean the same as "It feels right, so it's true," or what also goes by the name spiritual apprehension. This is intuition, and by itself, is not a path to truth.

Agreed. It is obviously meaningful to the people who engage in faith-based thought, but not to me. I find meaning in nature and life without such beliefs.

I explained why the definition you provided was mine rewritten. Spiritual intuition doesn't justify belief by the standards of critical thinking, and that is what the word justified means when a critical thinker uses it. It means something else when you and many others use it. You mean that YOU are satisfied with the evidence, and that is justification enough for you. As I said, that's a different meaning than when others employing the laws of reason and the rules of inference to evidence use it. They are referring to a sharply proscribed process that leads to justification, or sound conclusion, or correct belief - they're all interchangeable.

Yes, I know. Are you aware that we mean different things when we say justified and unjustified, since we have different criteria for calling a belief justified?

Many have tried. The scholastics came up with a series of arguments that they thought were sound. Pascal's Wager could be called a plea to reason. The ID people tried as well. None have succeeded to date.

By your standards of justification, not those of academia.

You seem to think that your opinion justifies your beliefs. Now you say that personal opinion justifies nothing, yet, that is what you have. And you keep implying that all opinions are equal. The conclusions of sound arguments derived from the application of valid reason to evidence are different from all other kinds of ideas. You have never understood that what you do is not that, which makes the beliefs you accept faith-based even if faith is sufficient justification for you. That's fine with me if faith is acceptable to you. That's not my objection here. It's that you call what you believe justified. Not by objective standards it's not.

Agreed again. For how long have I been telling you that if you will stop claiming that your ideas are justified, based in reason, constitute knowledge, etc. and proudly proclaim that you believe because it feels right, nobody will disagree with you. Why would they? But you seem to want to try to claim that your belief is more than that. Why? Is it embarrassing to say that you believe without sufficient evidentiary support, so you call what you have sufficient anyway?

Is that why you started this thread and named me in your OP? You love it just like I do. This is endlessly entertaining for you. You love the thrust and parry of discussions like these, which is why you are one of RF's more prolific posters. When I get tired of discourse, I disengage. The RF posters I consider tiresome are on ignore.

But that's not the argument. Critical thinkers (who are often atheists, although an atheist can be an astrologer or a Stalinist, so not synonymous with atheist) argue that nothing including the existence of gods should be believed without justification as they define justification.

Somebody else commented on the incoherence of that statement. I agree. To start, faith is not a substance. Like many others, I hope for things, but reject belief by faith. And faith is belief without sufficient evidence, not a substitute for evidence. That phrase is similar to your spiritual apprehension in place of "proof" definition of faith, both of which are equivalent to calling faith insufficiently justified belief. Faith and spiritual apprehension

 

[Trailblazer]

OK, but how is it evidence?

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

That is a good question.
I do not think faith is evidence that things that are unseen actually exist. Faith is evidence that we can believe in and hope for things that are not seen, things that we hope will happen in the future but have not happened yet.

 

[Trailblazer]

How is this evidence for God, or for the claims of a prophet?

The Prophets are really the only evidence for God, but their claims are not the evidence since that would be circular reasoning.
The evidence is who they were (their character), what they accomplished on their mission, and what they revealed through scriptures.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

For instance, you can have faith (hope) in your spouse not cheating on you.

It's essential in these discussions to not conflate words just because they are spelled and pronounced the same if they have different meanings. I have been referring to unjustified belief, which is called faith. Here, you are referring to justified belief, assuming that the belief that the spouse is loyal is based in experience. That's a different word, opposite in meaning, making them contranyms (also, contronyms): "contronym - a word with two opposite meanings, e.g. sanction (which can mean both ‘a penalty for disobeying a law’ and ‘official permission or approval for an action’)." Dust is a contronym. One word spelled and pronounced that way means remove dust from a surface as when housecleaning. A different word spelled and pronounced the same means the opposite, as when a detective dusts for prints. He's ADDING dust to a surface.

I wouldn't be ignorant about the fact, that there are lots of things we simply hope for is true. Some are more justified than others, depending on the amount of evidence we have indicating whether something is the case or not.

Justification doesn't apply to hope, but rather, belief. Hope is an expression of preference. Belief is an expression what is thought true or likely. You and I go to a ballgame and root for opposite teams. It's 10-0 in the bottom of the ninth. My team is behind and yours ahead. We both have the same hope, but you are optimistic while I am pessimistic. If you predict your team will win, your belief is justified by evidence the history of baseball. If I do the same, my belief is faith-based and contradicted by that evidence. We can have the same hope - "I hope my team wins" - but if we have the same belief - "My team will probably win" - only one of us is justified by evidence.

It appears that knowledge is a meaning that is given objective and subjective standards for reasons.

I don't know what that means. For me, knowledge refers to the collection of ideas one holds that are demonstrably correct, meaning that they can be used to predict outcomes.

How does an empiricist know that s/he knows?

If one has followed the rules of reason properly to evidence (or true premises, but we're discussing empiricism here and not formal logic), his conclusions will be correct (sound). For example, upon moving to a new home, I learned empirically that I live five blocks north and three blocks east of the pier. How do I know that is correct? If I counted properly, I am correct. If I want empiric confirmation, I can walk five blocks south and three blocks east from my front door and see if it takes me to the pier. If it does, then I can call that knowledge. It can be used to anticipate outcomes.

Not everything is grounded in empiricism.

All knowledge about what is true about the world is empirical for me. I don't call other kinds of ideas knowledge about reality.

Knowing when I am being honest is abstract ... What evidence leads to a person knowing they are being honest?

Honesty is an abstraction with a definition, and one can compare his motives with his words and deeds to assess the degree of fidelity between them. Do you not have a firm opinion on the matter regarding yourself? I have one for me, and it's based in empiricism. What else could it based in? I experience my thoughts and intentions and can assess them by a standard called honesty.

I can be objective about my subjective experiences and come up with true statements about the abstract phenomena that I experience and have certain abilities with; such as my honesty.

That's empiricism. Brussels sprouts reliably and reproducibly create a bad taste experience for me. I can use that information to successfully predict and control outcomes. That's exactly what empiricism is - induction derived from prior experience ("yucch!") used to deduce the outcome of future experience ("that stuff will make me retch if I taste it.")

 

[Trailblazer]

I don't have complete trust in anything. Seems like a bad idea to me.

The amount of trust one has is built up through experience but I'd personally never let it get to the level of faith.
I have trust in myself but I don't have faith in myself and I know myself better than I know anyone or anything else.

I don't have complete trust in anyting or complete faith in anythng except God. I certainly do not have complete faith in myself since I often screw up and make mistakes.

I don't "know" anything about God.

Ok, fine, God is so great and mighty that it is impossible for God to present themselves. That is certainly not a reason to have faith in God.

No, that is not a reason to have faith in God, it is only a reason to realize that if one is going to believe in God it has to be on faith and evidence, since there is no proof that God exists.

If it was the God of the Bible, certainly no reason to trust them. The God who decide to flood the entire world. The God who killed all of the first born of Egypt. The God who allowed Satan to Job experience hell on earth. Not sure why anyone would trust such a God let alone have faith in them.

I do not believe that God actually did those things, I believe they are stories with spiritual lessons. I also do not believe that Satan is a real entity, I believe that references to Satan i the Bible are symbolic of the lower selfish nature of man, the evil ego within, not an external entity.

 

[osgart]

Honesty is an abstraction with a definition, and one can compare his motives with his words and deeds to assess the degree of fidelity between them. Do you not have a firm opinion on the matter regarding yourself? I have one for me, and it's based in empiricism. What else could it based in? I experience my thoughts and intentions and can assess them by a standard called honesty.

Before words and deeds manifest how can I have evidence of my motivations and intentions? I'm aware of my motivations and intentions before I act on them. I know my motivations and intentions before acting them out.

Where do all these standards and meanings come from that they apply so well to reality and people have abilities with them and they accurately reflect what's actually going on? I think this is a valid question.

 

[Trailblazer]

Journey of 1000 miles starts with 1 small step. Self-care, small steps - celebrate each accomplishment

Yes, my motto is one day at a time and I live in the present day.
Sometimes I have to force myself to do things for myself, like last night I went out for a 2 hour walk.

 

[Trailblazer]

Spiritual intuition doesn't justify belief by the standards of critical thinking, and that is what the word justified means when a critical thinker uses it. It means something else when you and many others use it. You mean that YOU are satisfied with the evidence, and that is justification enough for you.

I did not use spiritual intuition to decide if my beliefs are true, I used critical thinking. I am satisfied with the evidence because I used critical thinking. You are not satisfied with it because you think differently about the evidence. It is illogical to think that everyone who uses critical thinking would come to the same conclusions about the same evidence and anyone who does not come to those conclusions did not use critical thinking. That is the fallacy of black and white thinking. All humans are wired differently thus it does not mean a people did not use critical thinking just because they came to different conclusions about the evidence.

Am I wired differently?

Yes, we are just wired differently; in fact, each human is wired uniquely. By its very nature, the wiring of our brain cannot alone account for different personality, emotion, political outlook, skill, talent or ability since even individuals with similar traits would necessarily have different neural wiring.

Are We Really Just Wired Differently? by Tedd Roberts​

Yes, I know. Are you aware that we mean different things when we say justified and unjustified, since we have different criteria for calling a belief justified?

Of course I am aware of that.

By your standards of justification, not those of academia.

That is correct, by my standards and the standards of most people in the world who understand that God communicates through Messengers of God.
Academia has no place in justifying the existence of God since that is not within their purview.

You seem to think that your opinion justifies your beliefs. Now you say that personal opinion justifies nothing, yet, that is what you have.

A personal opinion is all that I have and it is all that you have.

Personal opinion justifies the beliefs of the person who holds them.
My personal opinion justifies my beliefs for me.
Your personal opinion justifies your beliefs for you.

And you keep implying that all opinions are equal. The conclusions of sound arguments derived from the application of valid reason to evidence are different from all other kinds of ideas. You have never understood that what you do is not that, which makes the beliefs you accept faith-based even if faith is sufficient justification for you. That's fine with me if faith is acceptable to you. That's not my objection here. It's that you call what you believe justified. Not by objective standards it's not.

What I believe is justified by me, and that is all that matters since I am only accountable to God and myself for my belief.

Faith alone is not sufficient for me to justify my beliefs. I am not a faith-based believer. I am an evidence-based believer who relies upon faith for what can never be proven.

There are no objective standards for belief in God since such belief is not subject to objective standards. If you don't like that you can choose not to believe in God.

Agreed again. For how long have I been telling you that if you will stop claiming that your ideas are justified, based in reason, constitute knowledge, etc. and proudly proclaim that you believe because it feels right, nobody will disagree with you.

I am not going to say that my ideas are not justified and not based in reason, and I am not going to proudly proclaim that I believe because it feels right, because that would be a lie, and I am not a liar.

Why not just speak for yourself, why you believe or disbelieve?
Speaking for me is rude and disrespectful. Nobody else on this forum does this except one other person who is in bed with you.

All this boils down to ONE thing: In your mind I have to be wrong so you can 'believe' you are right. Thus it is all about ego.

Why would they? But you seem to want to try to claim that your belief is more than that. Why? Is it embarrassing to say that you believe without sufficient evidentiary support, so you call what you have sufficient anyway?

I am not claiming anything, I am only stating what I believe. I am not a bit embarrassed since I know I have evidence that is sufficient for me.

You still don't get it do you? What is sufficient evidence for one person is not sufficient for another person because we are all different people.
There is no such thing as sufficient evidence.

Is that why you started this thread and named me in your OP? You love it just like I do. This is endlessly entertaining for you. You love the thrust and parry of discussions like these, which is why you are one of RF's more prolific posters. When I get tired of discourse, I disengage. The RF posters I consider tiresome are on ignore.

And now you are going to speak for me again and tell me what I love. You have no idea why I post what I do. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't, but I rarely think in terms of what I like to do, I think in terms of my duties and obligations to God and others, what I think might benefit others. If I did what I would like to do I would be out enjoying myself because I certainly have the means to do anything I might like to do. I do like that it keeps my mind active and that I learn new things and meet new people on this forum, but I do not like arguing.

I think you are projecting your loving it onto me. You cannot separate yourself from me because you have no personal boundaries.

But that's not the argument. Critical thinkers (who are often atheists, although an atheist can be an astrologer or a Stalinist, so not synonymous with critical thinker) argue that nothing including the existence of gods should be believed without justification as they define justification.

Fine then. You have your own definition of justification. Did you ever see me telling you what you should believe or what is justified for you to believe? No, I only ever speak for myself. My late husband taught me long ago never to speak for him and so I learned never to speak for others.

Somebody else commented on the incoherence of that statement. I agree. To start, faith is not a substance. Like many others, I hope for things, but reject belief by faith. And faith is belief without sufficient evidence, not a substitute for evidence. That phrase is similar to your spiritual apprehension in place of "proof" definition of faith, both of which are equivalent to calling faith insufficiently justified belief. Faith and spiritual apprehension are neither substance nor evidence.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

That verse is clumsily worded, but to me that means faith is what we hope for, things that we believe but cannot see yet, since thye are in the future.

I hope for things, but reject belief by faith alone. I do not have faith and believe without sufficient evidence, because I have evidence that is sufficient for me to believe. My evidence is not sufficient for you to believe so you do not believe what I do. It is as simple as that.

 

[Nimos]

There is more than one version for knowledge that the claim that only the methodology of natural science is knowledge or truth.

I think I would agree, it depends on what exactly we mean by science in this regard. Because I agree, that knowledge/truth doesn't require a scientific study. But merely to get closer to the knowledge we have to be able to demonstrate something.

 

[Nimos]

Justification doesn't apply to hope, but rather, belief. Hope is an expression of preference. Belief is an expression what is thought true or likely. You and I go to a ballgame and root for opposite teams. It's 10-0 in the bottom of the ninth. My team is behind and yours ahead. We both have the same hope, but you are optimistic while I am pessimistic. If you predict your team will win, your belief is justified by evidence the history of baseball. If I do the same, my belief is faith-based and contradicted by that evidence. We can have the same hope - "I hope my team wins" - but if we have the same belief - "My team will probably win" - only one of us is justified by evidence.

I would agree, that your explanation is correct.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I think I would agree, it depends on what exactly we mean by science in this regard. Because I agree, that knowledge/truth doesn't require a scientific study. But merely to get closer to the knowledge we have to be able to demonstrate something.

Well, yes, in a sense. But then you have to explain what you mean by demonstrate and by which standard?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Before words and deeds manifest how can I have evidence of my motivations and intentions? I'm aware of my motivations and intentions before I act on them. I know my motivations and intentions before acting them out.

I think you answered your own question. One knows his motivations and intentions directly and immediately. Others can only know them through their words and deeds.

I did not use spiritual intuition to decide if my beliefs are true, I used critical thinking.

Say that all you like, but the claim is rejected on the evidence against it. Whatever your thought process, when you come to unsound conclusions, it wasn't critical thought. You're like a student in a math class arguing with the teacher when she gives a wrong answer on her test. If she came to a different conclusion than the math teacher and the rest of the class, most of whom agree with the math teacher, then she did it wrong it wrong. This would be where she might say that that his answer is just his opinion.

I am satisfied with the evidence because I used critical thinking.

No, you are satisfied with the evidence because you don't.

It is illogical to think that everyone who uses critical thinking would come to the same conclusions about the same evidence and anyone who does not come to those conclusions did not use critical thinking

Here's where you demonstrate that you don't really know what critical thinking is. That is perfectly logical to believe. This is what makes the math student in the example above wrong. Everybody who used critical thinking (reason applied to addends in this case) came up with same answer, and it was correct. Everybody who came to a different conclusion was wrong. This feature of critical thought seems to elude you. It's not any kind of thinking you happen to feel like doing and are satisfied with. I don't think you'll ever understand that. I don't mean just never believe it. I don't think you can understand it enough to know that there is something others do that is invisible to you, so you think you're doing what they're doing. The term Dunning-Kruger syndrome is unflattering, but this is it exactly. You don't understand enough to know that you don't understand. What else does, "That's just your opinion" mean when said about a sound conclusion. It means the speaker can't tell one from an unsound conclusion. And why would that be? Unfamiliar with the vetting process - critical thinking.

Of course I am aware of that.

I asked "Are you aware that we mean different things when we say justified and unjustified, since we have different criteria for calling a belief justified?" There is no evidence in your posting that you understood that when you say justified that you mean something different from what I do. Why else would you keep arguing that I am wrong about your beliefs being unjustified? You must think that we're talking about the same thing, but we're not. I'm talking about passing a proven, time-honored test that underlies all of science, and you're talking about whatever feels right to you. I don't think you knew that then, and I wonder whether you do now.

A personal opinion is all that I have and it is all that you have.

No, it's all YOU have. I have more.

Faith alone is not sufficient for me to justify my beliefs. I am not a faith-based believer. I am an evidence-based believer who relies upon faith for what can never be proven.

Why do you bother repeating that? It's not credible. You undoubtedly believe it - you're an honest person - but I don't, and I'm not alone.

There are no objective standards for belief in God

There are for me and the rest of the community of empiricists. It's the same standard as for the belief in wolves and werewolves - sufficient supporting evidence to justify belief, and not your version of justifying belief. Spoiler: only one of them meets that academic standard, but maybe they both do using your criteria for justified belief - anything you believe.

I am not claiming anything, I am only stating what I believe

Same thing. I believe that you have been wrong and that means that I claim it too. I believe that the sun is out now and that means that I claim it, too. But you've been on this merry-go-round before and came off unchanged, so you needn't keep objecting that they are different things other than that a claim must be stated but a belief need not.

You still don't get it do you? What is sufficient evidence for one person is not sufficient for another person because we are all different people. There is no such thing as sufficient evidence.

I get it. You don't. I am fully aware that your evidentiary standards of belief are not those of critical analysis, and there is such a thing as sufficient evidence to justify belief. That's what it means to say that a belief is justified - that one had sufficient evidence to believe by the criteria of science and academia in general including a courtroom.

You cannot separate yourself from me because you have no personal boundaries.

More dime store pop psychology. Your assessment of me is generally in terms of an ego that needs to bolster itself by making others wrong. And now this. I can't separate myself from you, and I have no personal boundaries.

Didn't you say that you were formally educated in psychology - maybe even a bachelor's degree in it? Do you have any clinical experience? Have you ever treated patients?

 

[Trailblazer]

Maybe this is helpful:

I liked that part in the video where he said we should only focus on the things that we know we can do, and as I have told you in the past I am limited in what I can do. Can I really do other things that I think I cannot do? Well, the only way to find out would be to try to do them. Like he said, it is the programming in our brain that tells us things so if we want to change our thinking we need to reprogram our brain and one way to do that is by trying out new experiences.

 

[Nimos]

I liked that part in the video where he said we should only focus on the things that we know we can do, and as I have told you in the past I am limited in what I can do. Can I really do other things that I think I cannot do? Well, the only way to find out would be to try to do them. Like he said, it is the programming in our brain that tells us things so if we want to change our thinking we need to reprogram our brain and one way to do that is by trying out new experiences.

Its worth a try

I personally have it that I just give it a try and don't focus too much on whether it goes well or not, one can always improve if it fails

 

[Trailblazer]

Say that all you like, but the claim is rejected on the evidence against it. Whatever your thought process, when you come to unsound conclusions, it wasn't critical thought. You're like a student in a math class arguing with the teacher when she gives a wrong answer on her test. If she came to a different conclusion than the math teacher and the rest of the class, most of whom agree with the math teacher, then she did it wrong it wrong. This would be where she might say that that his answer is just his opinion.

No, you are satisfied with the evidence because you don't.

Here's where you demonstrate that you don't really know what critical thinking is. That is perfectly logical to believe. This is what makes the math student in the example above wrong. Everybody who used critical thinking (reason applied to addends in this case) came up with same answer, and it was correct. Everybody who came to a different conclusion was wrong. This feature of critical thought seems to elude you. It's not any kind of thinking you happen to feel like doing and are satisfied with. I don't think you'll ever understand that. I don't mean just never believe it. I don't think you can understand it enough to know that there is something others do that is invisible to you, so you think you're doing what they're doing. The term Dunning-Kruger syndrome is unflattering, but this is it exactly. You don't understand enough to know that you don't understand. What else does, "That's just your opinion" mean when said about a sound conclusion. It means the speaker can't tell one from an unsound conclusion. And why would that be? Unfamiliar with the vetting process - critical thinking.

I asked "Are you aware that we mean different things when we say justified and unjustified, since we have different criteria for calling a belief justified?" There is no evidence in your posting that you understood that when you say justified that you mean something different from what I do. Why else would you keep arguing that I am wrong about your beliefs being unjustified? You must think that we're talking about the same thing, but we're not. I'm talking about passing a proven, time-honored test that underlies all of science, and you're talking about whatever feels right to you. I don't think you knew that then, and I wonder whether you do now.

No, it's all YOU have. I have more.

Why do you bother repeating that? It's not credible. You undoubtedly believe it - you're an honest person - but I don't, and I'm not alone.

There are for me and the rest of the community of empiricists. It's the same standard as for the belief in wolves and werewolves - sufficient supporting evidence to justify belief, and not your version of justifying belief. Spoiler: only one of them meets that academic standard, but maybe they both do using your criteria for justified belief - anything you believe.

Same thing. I believe that you have been wrong and that means that I claim it too. I believe that the sun is out now and that means that I claim it, too. But you've been on this merry-go-round before and came off unchanged, so you needn't keep objecting that they are different things other than that a claim must be stated but a belief need not.

I get it. You don't. I am fully aware that your evidentiary standards of belief are not those of critical analysis, and there is such a thing as sufficient evidence to justify belief. That's what it means to say that a belief is justified - that one had sufficient evidence to believe by the criteria of science and academia in general including a courtroom.

More dime store pop psychology. Your assessment of me is generally in terms of an ego that needs to bolster itself by making others wrong. And now this. I can't separate myself from you, and I have no personal boundaries.

Didn't you say that you were formally educated in psychology - maybe even a bachelor's degree in it? Do you have any clinical experience? Have you ever treated patients?

I want to point out one thing, how many times you said YOU and YOUR in your post. This clearly demonstrates how much your focus is on what I do.
If you knew anything about psychology, you'd know that it is not healthy to focus so much on what other people do.

I see very few 'I statements' in your posts. If you do refer to yourself, you are referring to yourself as part of a group of critical thinkers who of course are all atheists, since no believer could ever think their way out of a paper bag.

You said I love this and I told you that sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't, but I failed to add that sometimes I love it, like right now, since I am laughing ear to ear seeing how many times you said YOU and YOUR in your post, which I am just about to point out, as I laugh ear to ear.

So below is what you wrote to me:

Say that all you like, but the claim is rejected on the evidence against it. Whatever your thought process, when you come to unsound conclusions, it wasn't critical thought. You're like a student in a math class arguing with the teacher when she gives a wrong answer on her test. If she came to a different conclusion than the math teacher and the rest of the class, most of whom agree with the math teacher, then she did it wrong it wrong. This would be where she might say that that his answer is just his opinion.

No, you are satisfied with the evidence because you don't.

Here's where you demonstrate that you don't really know what critical thinking is. That is perfectly logical to believe. This is what makes the math student in the example above wrong. Everybody who used critical thinking (reason applied to addends in this case) came up with same answer, and it was correct. Everybody who came to a different conclusion was wrong. This feature of critical thought seems to elude you. It's not any kind of thinking you happen to feel like doing and are satisfied with. I don't think you'll ever understand that. I don't mean just never believe it. I don't think you can understand it enough to know that there is something others do that is invisible to you, so you think you're doing what they're doing. The term Dunning-Kruger syndrome is unflattering, but this is it exactly. You don't understand enough to know that you don't understand. What else does, "That's just your opinion" mean when said about a sound conclusion. It means the speaker can't tell one from an unsound conclusion. And why would that be? Unfamiliar with the vetting process - critical thinking.

I asked "Are you aware that we mean different things when we say justified and unjustified, since we have different criteria for calling a belief justified?" There is no evidence in your posting that you understood that when you say justified that you mean something different from what I do. Why else would you keep arguing that I am wrong about your beliefs being unjustified? You must think that we're talking about the same thing, but we're not. I'm talking about passing a proven, time-honored test that underlies all of science, and you're talking about whatever feels right to you. I don't think you knew that then, and I wonder whether you do now.

No, it's all YOU have. I have more.

Why do you bother repeating that? It's not credible. You undoubtedly believe it - you're an honest person - but I don't, and I'm not alone.

There are for me and the rest of the community of empiricists. It's the same standard as for the belief in wolves and werewolves - sufficient supporting evidence to justify belief, and not your version of justifying belief. Spoiler: only one of them meets that academic standard, but maybe they both do using your criteria for justified belief - anything you believe.

Same thing. I believe that you have been wrong and that means that I claim it too. I believe that the sun is out now and that means that I claim it, too. But you've been on this merry-go-round before and came off unchanged, so you needn't keep objecting that they are different things other than that a claim must be stated but a belief need not.

I get it. You don't. I am fully aware that your evidentiary standards of belief are not those of critical analysis, and there is such a thing as sufficient evidence to justify belief. That's what it means to say that a belief is justified - that one had sufficient evidence to believe by the criteria of science and academia in general including a courtroom.

More dime store pop psychology. Your assessment of me is generally in terms of an ego that needs to bolster itself by making others wrong. And now this. I can't separate myself from you, and I have no personal boundaries.

Didn't you say that you were formally educated in psychology - maybe even a bachelor's degree in it? Do you have any clinical experience? Have you ever treated patients?

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What you pointed about me is not true. They are simply statements about me as you perceive me. You completely misrepresent me but I don't care because (1) I know it is not true since I know myself and why I believe, and (2) people on this forum can make their own assessments as they see fit.

Yes, I have a Masters degree in psychology and I used to have a counseling practice, but I do not need more than psych 101 to know that anyone who talks about another person as much as you do has some kind of problem. Whether or not it warrants a clinical diagnosis I do not know.

And with that I will bid you adieu, as I think I have had more than enough fun for one day.

 

[Trailblazer]

Sorry, I thought I was done, but I could not let this one pass me by.

No, it's all YOU have. I have more.

No, you do not have any more than I have.
I have a personal opinion about my religious belief and you have a personal opinion about the conclusions you came to via what you call critical thinking.

 

[Trailblazer]

You are correct, even though these would be amazing things, they are not evidence for God and you hit the head of the nail with what you write about why that wouldn't be the case. Just because something seems too good to be true, doesn't mean that we can draw a conclusion without actually demonstrating that it is also the case. Surely if something like this happened it would raise a lot of eyebrows and would need investigation. I can't remember who made the point that humans most likely wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a highly advanced alien race and that of God. So it wouldn't be impossible for such aliens to maybe exploit humans' beliefs, knowing that we couldn't tell the difference. Also, we know that humans are easily fooled, which is why magic shows work.

You are last but not least.... I always save posts from my favorite atheist for last so I can end on a positive note.

The problem is that these things could never be demonstrated to have originated from God, no matter how much they were investigated, and that was the point I was making in my OP. And you are right in saying that humans are easily fooled by magic, so whever evidence came from God would have to be something that did not look like magic.

To me, the best answer to this is that God would know. He would know what would convince us so there would be no doubt at all and so it could not be misinterpreted as aliens or anything else.

Of course God would know because God is all-knowing, but whether God would use a method that would convince us so there would be no doubt at all would only be true if God was trying to convince us so there would be no doubt at all, but we don't know if that is God's objective.

Alternatively, if God is an intervening one, then we should in theory be able to measure or see the effect of such intervention and thereby demonstrate it. However, no one has been able to do that.

But even if God is an intervening God, how could we ever know what we were measuring were the effects of God's intervention?

Even if we are just talking about the supernatural, no one has been able to demonstrate that either, despite having tried to. For instance, you have had experiments at hospitals to see if people that had out-of-body experiences could read stuff placed on top of cabinets etc. yet none have been able to. There have also been studies done trying to figure out if prayers work and so far it has not had any effect.

I have read about experiments where a person who who had an NDE was aware of everything that was happening in the room while they were unconscious. I do not think prayer studies are valid at all as there is no way to know if God answers prayers.

I don't think it is illogical, because if you want to demonstrate something, as you yourself point out, the demonstration needs to be somewhat conclusive, meaning that you can rule out other explanations and you can investigate the claims being made. A religious person claiming that they spoke with God or he answered their prayers, is nearly impossible to demonstrate. That doesn't mean that the person is lying, but simply that it is not good enough when we are talking about conclusive evidence.

Kind of like if you found a hole in the ground and you claim that it was dug by a fox and I say it was a cat and none of us have seen what animal did it. The only thing we can agree on is that there is a hole. Then we can start looking for evidence like paw marks etc. And eventually, we might be able to reach the conclusion that it was in fact a fox that did it because we found no paw marks from a cat, and we found hair from a fox etc. The same idea holds true for religious claims.

I was probably unclear in my post. What I meant is that some atheists claim that for example, if God an intervening God existed we would expect to see things that we don't see, like God curing cancer or making people's limbs grow back or God saving victims of rape. These atheists argue that God does not exist because we do not see these things. Other atheists argue that God does not exist because if God existed God would communicate directly to everyone in the world.

But none of these atheists have any way of knowing that God would do any of these things if God existed. Moreover, if God does exist and we do not see any of these things happening that means that if God exists God would not do any of these things. So the only logical conclusions one could come to are (1) God exists and chooses not to do any of these things, or (2) God does not exist, because obviously a nonexistent God cannot do anything at all!

So you see, one cannot logically argue that if God existed God would do any of these things we do not see happening in the world because if God existed and did these things we would see them happening.

Of course we cannot say that God never intervenes to cure cancer because it is possible that some cancers are cured by God's intervention, and we cannot say that people were not saved from a rape by God's intervention since we cannot know if God intervened. However, if someone's limb grew back that would be miraculous so we would have a reason to believe that God did it.

Sorry that was so long, but I think these are important points to make.

I don't think there is one answer to this, but merely that people believe in all sorts of things or that we seek explanations, it is not particularly easy for humans to say "I don't know" it is not really a satisfying answer to a lot of people.

I always appreciate your humility. Some atheists come up with all kinds of reasons why believers believe in God, that it is for emotional reasons, because they need to feel secure, or because they have a fear of death. That could be why some believers believe in God but it is illogical to say that is why all believers believe in God since that is the fallacy of hasty generalization. These atheists believe that belief is emotional because they are so sure there is no evidence for God. This is their way of saying that no rational person would believe in God so it has to be for emotional reasons.

However, I agree with atheists who say that most people probably believe in God because they were raised in their families to believe in God, and since most people were raised as believers that accounts for a lot of people. That does not mean there is not a good reason to believe in God, as that is a separate subject, and if there was never a good reason to believe in God, nobody would have believed in God in the first place.

But maybe a better question than asking "Why do most people believe in God, if he is not real?" would be to ask, "Why did so many people believe in false gods?"

There have been countless gods and religions throughout human history, yet we are left with very few. Why did all these people, ancient Rome, Greek, Egypt, Norse etc. get it wrong? They were just as convinced, if not even more than we are today, that their religions and gods were true as their whole societies were filled with these things and offered the best explanations for what these people experienced.

That is a good point. I do not believe in the fake gods, only the one true God.
Why did so many people believe in those fake gods back in history? It is noteworthy that there are less people who believe in them in the modern age and the bulk of people believe in the the one God of the Bible, the Qur'an, and the Writings of Baha'u'llah. Still, that is only about 55% of the world population, so there are many other God conceptions out there and many people who still believe in multiple gods.

 

[Valjean]

Yes and so what in the following sense? If it is possible to use objective evidence in at least one case, it doesn't follow that it is possible to do so in all cases.
In other words, just because a person is not a theist, it doesn't follow that that person only use objective evidence for all the person claims about the world.
Further if it is so as it seems that it is fact of the actual world, that theists in fact can use faith in some sense, then it is a fact in part of how the world works, it would seem.

I have no problem with faith-based belief, so long as the believer is aware that it's largely subjective and poorly evidenced. It's the repeated insistence that faith is equivalent to objective evidence, or its promotion as 'proof' that I find problematic.

 

[Valjean]

When we are speaking about Bible and faith, I think we should use the definitions Bible has. Bible has many examples of what fate means. For example Noah was faithful to God, when it was told to him that there will come a flood and he should make the ark. Obviously there were no signs of flood yet, but Noah trusted to God, believed what God had said and was faithful and did the ark, even though it probably looked very weird before the flood.

By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
Heb. 11:7

The Bible's definitions are ambiguous, at best. They weren't intended for use in an epistemic debate.
Critical analysis of evidence requires a semantic precision that biblical poetry doesn't provide.