2006.02.22
As I mentioned in my last post, an idea being criticized by people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris is the belief that "faith" is a virtue. Faith, as far as I can see, is belief without evidence, which can be very dangerous and is the thesis to Harris's book The End of Faith. I won't repeat what he has already discussed in great depth but Harris's idea in short, is that peoples' actions are based on their beliefs. If you have beliefs with no evidence the resulting actions can be very dangerous. This danger is becoming very apparent with the present proliferation of suicide bombers who believe their actions will bring them eternal bliss.
Do religious people really believe things with no evidence whatsoever? Obviously someone must have some evidence to believe something. For example, the Bible is the Christians' evidence for their belief. If God actually appeared now in the sky and wrote in flaming letters "The Bible is True", I might be inclined to start believing so, upon witnessing such a strong piece of evidence. (Or I would check to see if someone spiked my kool-aid.) From what I have read though, that belief is no longer the so called virtue of faith. It seems a religious faith must have a small amount, but not too much evidence to support it. Just enough to tickle your fancy and test to see if you will buy into it completely. This is the point where religion and science diverge. Religion will make absolutist claims based on the tiniest shreds of evidence in the form of millennia old myths, whereas science will take the admittedly anticlimactic position of "We don't know (yet)."
What is wrong with saying "I don't know"? If someone asks me what happened before (if "before" makes any sense) the Big Bang, I am comfortable saying I have no idea. Why must we invent stories to fill the gaps of our knowledge? I would have hope the human race has grown out of using myths to explain the unknown. (Obviously I am wrong.) When Newton questioned how the apple fell, he didn't say "God pushed it down" and packed his bags to go home. He got to work investigating the matter.
Newton didn't find out all there is to know about gravity. Einstein found out a lot more, and we still have probably only scratched the surface today. This is the progress of science and the power of saying, "I don't know, but lets try to find out!" Faith does not progress, it does not teach us anything new, it is a dead end. Although faith may give psychological comfort to many it also causes pain and suffering for even more. I choose the search for truth over comforting fairy tales.
Today's interesting link is related to the free thought theme of the these last two posts: The Infidel Guy. Check out the community forums there for some fascinating discussions. I haven't subscribed yet, but some of the site's internet radio shows are available to download for free.
--Old blog comments:
February 24th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
jer Says:
I've been thinking alot about faith lately
myself, and have kind of changed my thinking
in regards to it.
See, the way I see it, any type of belief is dependant upon faith. For example, my belief in evolution stems from the faith I have in the scientific method. I really have no way of knowing whether evolution happened the way scientists think it did, yet my faith in the processes they've used to deduce it allows me to believe.
You said that for Christians, it's the bible that is "evidence" for their belief, but I think you're mistaken. Without faith in the idea that the Bible is divine word, it's just a bunch of stories in an old book. The bible isn't evidencial unless you have faith in the accuracy of it. Therefore the belief in Christianity hinges on faith. I've yet to think of a belief that I hold that isn't dependent on faith, so at this point I can't say that I agree that faith is a negative thing.
Sure, faith is dangerous for sure, but I'm not so sure it's a negative thing, just something we all have in one form or another.
-February 24th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
GNBenson Says:
I think it comes down to a question of degree. How great
is the particular leap of faith you are making? If the
leap is small, I don't even want to call it "faith".
Maybe the word "trust" is a good alternative. I
believe atoms exist. I don't want to say I have faith
in atoms because that belief is based on a huge amount
of evidence, including first hand evidence from
experiments in college. So I think a distinction should
be made between the small leaps and provisional claims
of science, versus the large leaps and absolutist claims
of religion. I think only the latter can be called "faith".
Maybe I am stretching the definition of the word "evidence" in referring to the bible. I tried to attenuate it a bit by referring to the bible as the "tiniest shreds" of evidence. Maybe "cause" is a better word. There must be some reason or cause for someone's faith. I realize some Christians have some kind of direct experience that serves as evidence for them. I knew one guy who claimed he literally (yes literally) wrestled with Satan. I could imagine that being very convincing for the person it happens to. I guess the reason for someone's faith in the bible as something more than an old book of stories is different for each person. Personally, unless you have some kind of direct experience, I don't really understand why you would make that great leap. As Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
-February 24th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
jer Says:
I think a big part of making those leaps of
faith required for religious beliefs is the fact
that if you truly want to believe something, it's
a lot easier.
I think religion serves as a "comfort factor" for many people, and I admit that even for me, the idea that there's some plan and that I have a purpose is a pretty attractive idea. So combine that with some reasonable anecdotal evidence from a loved one who cares enough about you to want to spread the word to you, and I can easily see how one would get to that point. Your wrestling with satan example is a pretty good one (for the person who experienced it anyway). I've heard many such things in my life, including how my grandfather went off a bridge in a log truck and should be dead but wasn't, people who were stopped from getting on a plane that will crash, etc.
If you've already got a bit of belief tucked away, it's really easy to see things as evidence that someone without the same beliefs could easily dismiss.
As for your atoms example, I completely understand where you're going with that logic, but I think your perception of what faith is is coloring your opinion. Conversely, I'm also aware that my perception of what faith is is also coloring my opinion, so there ya go :) Anyway, I think you believe in atoms because of your faith in the validity of the evidence. Someone could present you with "evidence" that you could easily dismiss, and because you don't have faith in it, you wouldn't believe.
I think I've managed to talk myself into circles, because now I no longer have faith in my own argument. :)
I think your substitution of trust for faith is interesting in that I think they're pretty much the same thing. The fact that one seems ok and the other doesn't leads me to believe that is the perception of "faith" as a negative thing that that is influencing your thinking on it.
I've recently been having really interesting discussions with a friend of mine who is a Christian, and what I find most interesting is his ability to think critically about many things, yet not others. For instance yesterday we were talking about how crazy Gary Busey is, and I mentioned something about how his life was turned around by God when he was clinically dead. He responded with something to the effect that the fact that Gary thinks he literally had a conversation with God in Heaven is evidence ofhis insanity. This puzzled me some, because he believes in a) the immortal soul that is separate from the physical body, b) heaven as a literal place, and c) God as a literal being. It's just the "near death experience" that he passes off as not being real (and I know he has good reason for that from past discussions about experiements they've done with pilots in g-force simulators losing consciousness). He's thinking critically about near death experiences, to the point where even his own faith in the existence of everything supernatural required to have one doesn't allow him to believe in it.
Anyway, I guess I'm still formulating my theory on faith vs belief. This type of discussion seems really helpful in these types of endeavors, so thanks a bunch for bringing this stuff up.
-February 24th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
GNBenson Says:
And thanks to you for leaving your long and thoughtful
comments. They really help me clarify my own thoughts.
You give some interesting examples of the compartmentalization that I often see happening in some people's minds.
Maybe we are nitpicking over the meaning of "faith". I still think there is a difference between the faith a religious person refers to when he says "You must have faith in Jesus" and the "faith" you say I have in the evidence I have seen for the existence of atoms. I can imagine a conversation like this:
A: I believe atoms exist.
B: Why do you have faith in atoms?
A: It isn't faith. My belief is based on a lot of
evidence such as this experiment involving the electrolysis of water.
B: So you have faith in the evidence.
A: No, I trust what I am seeing through my eyes,
along with all the other evidence from other experiments I can see.
B: So you have faith in your vision?
A: No, because my vision correlates with my other senses.
I sense things that seem to indicate there is an outside world.
B: So you have faith in an outside world!
A: OK, fine you got me!
But are we really talking about the same "faith" as the "faith" of Pat Robertson?
Also if someone presented me with evidence for the non-existence of atoms it would have to be really amazing to contradict overwhelming evidence for the existence of atoms. I would probably dismiss the evidence not because I did not have faith in it but because it wasn't credible for whatever reason.
I still maintain that faith, as in the blind religious faith, is something bad. I'm not saying all beliefs based on faith are bad, but faith opens the door to believe anything with no basis on reality, which can be very dangerous. Here's a question: If we could wave a magic wand that removed the ability to have blind faith from the human race, would the world be better off? Why or why not? Would the world become a rationalistic Utopia like Missouri, the "Show me state"? ;-)
-February 27th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Georgie Says:
Now you did it, you pulled me into this philosophical
debate. A couple of texts to help bring some "answers".
Theatetus by Plato and...you know, that book by Aristotle.
You guys are tackling two distinct but often intersecting studies within philosophy. Religion (What is God?) and Epistemology (What is Knowledge?) are being jumbled into one thing here.
Knowledge Plato would suppose is, true, justified Belief. Can we know God? We have a belief that God exists. We think we have evidence in this divine text (the bible). Question is...how do we prove it to be true?
In all fields of thought, even science...there is a given. There is a primary...whether it be a number or language. Without these primary givens, we would not be able to communicate...science would be impossible. This is my paraphrase of the "unmoved mover" text proposed by Aristotle. For all things that move...something had to set it in motion. That is god. Spontaneous combustion my ass...big bang fine...who lit the fuse? What lit the fuse?
I don't assume to know anything more then...there is this "thing", this "entity", this "being", whatever, we will call it God. This is the primary whatever you want to call it. Primary number. Primary law of physics. Primary...being. But it exists...and this thought isn't so blind...but just faith in this idea...that can ultimately evolve into something much more then being blind. Only time will tell.
You want to rant and fave about something...try fanaticism. Blind Conservatives who aren't really republicans. Liberals who sit on their hands and poke instead of doing things. A war with no meaning other then money. Blah blah blah. Sorry Greg...I'll go back to my butt hair comment now. It's late and I'm restless here in HK.
-February 27th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Georgie Says:
One last thing...the whole idea of God is beyond our comprehension.
After all, how do we put an infinite being, entity,
thing...into finite terms? Can you truly comprehend all
that is god in any sense other than faith?
February 27th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
GNBenson Says:
Hi George, thanks for jumping in. I'm having a little trouble
following your first comment. (I wasn't a phil. major like you so you
got to keep things simple for me!) Regarding your one sentence:
I don’t assume to know anything more then…there is this “thing”, this “entity”, this “being”, whatever, we will call it God.
Why even make that assumption? How do you know there is this "thing"? What is it?
Also:
One last thing…the whole idea of God is beyond our comprehension. After all, how do we put an infinite being, entity, thing…into finite terms?
If it's beyond our comprehension, how can we talk about it? And how do you know it's (whatever you claim IT is) beyond our comprehension?
And:
Can you truly comprehend all that is god in any sense other than faith?
I claim you can comprehend nothing through FAITH.
In your first comment you seem to want to define "God" as the first cause, the creator of the Big Bang. First, the Big Bang may have been a local event in a larger universe that always existed so we don't need a first cause. Or Secondly, I can ask what created this "God"?
-February 28th, 2006 at 4:05 am
Georgie Says:
I'm sorry...I wasn't really writing a well crafted
argument as I was headed out the door...actually, it was
3AM, I couldn't sleep and felt like writing. So...here goes.
That is the essence of faith. It isn't dependent on anything other than something within. Let's call it a hunch. I don't know. But based on my other points, there sure can be...this "thing".
The whole concept of God is in itself beyond our comprehension if God does exist. As much as we debate about God, do we really comprehend this idea...fully. Can you fully comprehend the idea of infinity? Or do you sort of think you know?
Chicken or Egg? If we make God an object...who created God. Well God of course. The "thing" that created God is God...the "unmoved mover". Big bang might have been local...well, then what about the whole shabang? There is always a first cause... otherwise you saying this larger universe just exists...if so... why can't God?
How do we have relationships? I know nothing of the people I meet but I have faith that they are worth the time. Wasn't our years together worth it dear dear Greg?
-February 28th, 2006 at 9:24 am
GNBenson Says:
If faith is based on hunches, I think it is worthless.
Unless you can show me evidence or reliable results from your
hunches then I claim they have no value. Otherwise how would
I judge your hunches about the origins of the universe versus
someone else's hunches about lunar unicorns, or expensive cures
for cancer using magnets?
You keep saying this thing you call "God" is beyond comprehension, but you keep describing it. How can you describe something you can't comprehend?
If you say everything has a first cause, and you want to call the first cause of the universe "God", then God should have a first cause as well since he is part of everything. If you say God doesn't need a first cause, why not say the Universe doesn't need a first cause? Plugging that into your own sentence the "thing" that created the Universe is the Universe.
Of course I can't prove anything. I'm just asking questions. If you want to convince me of some cosmological model, you have to show me evidence. Maybe there was some "other" that created the universe, maybe not. It is beyond my knowledge to do anything but speculate.
I don't understand your question "How do we have relationships", nor how it relates to the discussion above. I might as well ask "how do we walk?" With legs? We have relationships by communicating with people, and creating a common memory? This seems like a different topic so I will stop here.
-March 3rd, 2006 at 12:35 pm
jer Says:
I don't really want to continue to seem nitpicky, but I really
want to try to get across how important the actual words used in
these sentences are. Here's an example: I have no idea for
certain, but I'm reasonably sure that if I asked you to write out
your thoughts on something, that you'd do it. In that scenario,
I have faith that you're going to do what I ask, and that faith is
based on several factors. 1) I know getting your thoughts straight
on things is important to you, and 2) in the short time I've known
you you've essentially done just that numerous times.
So I have faith that whatever I ask you to write for me, you'd write. Do I have "evidence" to back up my faith? No, I don't think I do. I have some circumstancial "evidence", but that's really it.
For someone who has faith that Jesus has washed away their sins, it's really a similar scenario. And really, when you think about it, even if you don't believe Jesus exists, He really could have washed them away. If that person now believes that living a good life and not engaging in sinful behavior is the right thing to do, and actually stops doing sinful things, his sin truly is washed away. And by Jesus.
Anyway, that got me off track, I just wanted to share it because it blew my mind. The point is, I really don't think the word faith is being used at all differently in situations of religious fanatacism.
I'm not sure there's really any such thing as "blind" faith either now that I think about it. In trying to think of examples of blind faith, the best one I came up with is the faith of a child. Until that faith is eroded away by conflicting evidence, a child will believe and do anything you tell them. I remember a couple situations where my faith played out as a child. First, my dad lifted me up on the roof to recover a frisbee, and when it came time to climb back down into his arms, I had to go backwards, and couldn't see him. It took me a while, but eventually my faith that he wouldn't drop me overcame the idea of stepping off into a nothingness that I couldn't see, and I was able to get off the roof.
The other time was when I was much younger, and my uncle jokingly suggested that I should grab the electric fence around his cow pasture and I up and did it. My faith that adult family members would never do anything to intionally hurt me led me to grab something for no other reason than they said it would be a good idea. It wasn't.
Anyway, what I'm trying to get to is that faith is always based on something, whether it turns out to that the basis for your faith is valid or not. I'm sure it really seemed like Jim Jones had good reason for them all to drink that Kool-Aide at the time, no matter how stupid it looks to us now.
Your belief in the non-existence of Lunarcorns is another example where faith is involved. There isn't any evidence at all that the moon isn't visited by a race of stellar unicorns. It is highly unlikely, sure, but likelihood does not correllate to proof. It is reasonable to not believe in Lunarcorns because of your faith in the absurdity and unlikelyness of them being there. But it is still faith, and faith on not very good evidence at that. I happen to agree with your lack of belief in them, because of my faith in how stupid that concept is.
Now for belief. When you say you believe something, believe is a
verb, something you have to actively do. To believe is to conciously
agree that it is so based on (your faith in) the evidence presented.
If you say you "don't believe" something, there is no action taking place,
you are not making a concious decision that you are sure something must be
true. If on the other hand, you say "I believe that it is not true",
you are actively making a decision that something must be , and is,
true. (And that truth is the nonexistence of whatever you've just
stated you believe not to be true)
I don't think you can really make that sort of claim about the nonexistence of God, because as you've said, it isn't something one can observe rationally. If you do make that claim, you yourself are guilty of "blind faith". On the otherhand simply not holding something to be true, or " I don't believe" gets you off the hook, because it is rational not to be able to make a claim because of the lack of evidence.
I hope this has cleared up some of my insisitence on the nitpickynes of wording, and maybe clarified how I really stand on the topics at hand.
-March 3rd, 2006 at 4:58 pm
GNBenson Says:
As always Wikipedia has an interesting article on the word "faith" and its various nuances:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith
You give some examples of having faith in things like me writing something or your father catching you. I would claim though that these beliefs are based on evidence coming from past events. The fact that your uncle tricked you is another data point for you not to trust him in the future, hence lowering your faith in him. Of course you would be making predictions based on the "faith" you have in your memory of past events!
I could define these examples of "faith" as "trust" or "confidence" and I think they differ to a vast degree from the religious faith which I defined before as "blind faith". You are right though, this blind faith is very much like the faith children have in the things adults tell them. That childlike blind faith is just like the faith someone must have to believe the stories in the Bible.
Sure we can debate about where the line should be drawn between everyday "faith" or "trust" and "blind faith", but on a case by case basis I think we can make some clear judgments. For example, the sun has risen everyday of my life, and according to other older people and historical records it has been doing that for a long time. I believe the sun will rise again tomorrow. Yes, maybe I believe this based on the "faith" I have in the vast amount of evidence, but it certainly isn't "blind". Now someone hands me a book full of stories about an invisible man in the sky rewarding and punishing people who please or displease him. Should I believe the stories in this book? There are other books with other similar but contradictory stories too, and they can't all be right. There is also a lack of hard evidence these stories every happened. To believe these stories will take a vastly different kind of "faith". Going with the "leap of faith" metaphor, it is more like a pole vault than the tiny hop I took to believe the sun will rise tomorrow. I would also judge that my "faith" (confidence) in the non-existence of Lunacorns is not so blind.
Furthermore with a scientific and rational world view we are free to change our minds. Through all my experience in this universe I find it absurd that Lunacorns exist. This is my evidence for belief in their non-existence and I have confidence (faith) in it. However if you showed me videos of real Lunacorns cavorting in the craters of the Moon, a captured and hopefully living specimen, and this evidence was corroborated through many reliable sources I would start to believe in them! I think this open-mindedness and willingness to change based on new information is very different from the blind faith of religion.
I agree that most people need something to base their beliefs on. Looking again at the specific case of the Christian Bible, many people base their belief on the fact that their life improved after joining their church, or maybe they even experienced some kind of vision. Personally I would be more critical of these reasons to believe. Maybe by joining the church they got a support network they lacked before, or maybe the vision was only a dream, etc. From your example, a murderer who quits murdering after believing in Jesus may have stopped because of his belief, not necessarily Jesus himself. The belief in the sugar pill cures the disease through the placebo effect, not the sugar pill itself. Sure either way it is a good result, but how much are we sacrificing by denying the truth?
Finally regarding the meanings of the verb "believe" when it is negated, I understand what you mean and I can try to write by that definition for this discussion, but I don't think it is the usual everyday meaning. If I say "I don't believe President Bush is a democrat", I am not saying I don't have the belief, I am saying I think he is not a democrat (a conscious act of disbelief in his democrat nature.) We could also argue about the meaning of "like". Is "I don't like apples" the same as actively disliking apples, or not having any opinion at all? Back to "believe", I could imagine it taking on the meaning of not having a belief if you change the intonation of your voice, like maybe you aren't sure. (I can't write that down, something like I don't beleeeve....) English is just like Chinese!