We're all working through faith, hope, trust, and confidence.
Which are four different things, and different people place different values on each. Compare the following sentences:
"I have faith the Packers will go undefeated next year."
"I hope the Packers will go undefeated next year."
"I trust the Packers to go undefeated next year."
"I am confident the Packers will go undefeated next year."
They have different meanings, don't they? Faith is belief in the absence of justification. Hope is desire without necessarily any belief. Trust is an expectation about a person's behavior. And confidence is belief with (supposed) justification.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
We're all working through faith, hope, trust, and confidence.
Which are four different things, and different people place different values on each. Compare the following sentences:
"I have faith the Packers will go undefeated next year."
"I hope the Packers will go undefeated next year."
"I trust the Packers to go undefeated next year."
"I am confident the Packers will go undefeated next year."
They have different meanings, don't they? Faith is belief in the absence of justification. Hope is desire without necessarily any belief. Trust is an expectation about a person's behavior. And confidence is belief with (supposed) justification.
Yes, but the point is that these things work without evidence or proof. Indeed, lack of the latter is entirely the point.
So the claim that one does not operate without evidence or proof is an erroneous statement. No human being operates that way.
The Born rule basically says that the universe can be correctly described by a certain type of statistical mechanics, not just in aggregate but all the way down to the level of individual events. In other words, there are a class of phenomena that are governed by probability in exactly the way that you say things can't be governed by probability. (and what's more, those phenomena are fundamental to the universe)
So car accident probabilities derived from various sources of data can "accurately", whatever that word means in this particular case, be used to determine my chance of getting into a car accident?
That would have to assume that every possible situation is accounted for, wouldn't it?
If the statistics are true at a global level, they must also be, on average, true on an individual level. While some people obviously have a higher chance and others a lower, we don't know who is who. Therefore, our estimation of any individual's chances must be the same as the global chance. This estimation incorporates both the global statistics, as well as our lack of knowledge about how they will play out individually.
Right, I understand that. But wouldn't you have to look at local statistics and make a determination for your chance of getting into a car accident, for example?
I mean, if you take an actual national %, then it's rather useless. The circumstances behind it could be radically different from the daily situation you're in. So obviously the more closely you specify the circumstances and the situations/what have you, the most closely you can get a % that actually applies to you.
See, the dilemma I face here is that I understand what you all mean with statistics. What I have problem dealing with is the apparent thought that the statistics apply to me. Of course it does, provided that you get one that closely matches your daily situation and circumstances, but it's much the same reason why I always run for cover when there's a thunderstorm. The actual probability of me getting struck by lightning is apparently remote, but isn't me believing that I won't get struck by lightning because said probability is remote me placing my confidence in something that I had no actual hand in creating or able to verify?
Just because I do something dangerous doesn't mean I assume everything will be OK. I know from evidence that most of the time it will be, but I also know the inherent risks, and that people die, and I do it anyway. That's what draws me particularly to certain activities. If I knew I couldn't get hurt, what fun would it be (clearly this idea doesn't apply to just anything like say, playing video games)?
I think you have kind of missed my point. I'm not implying that doing things for adrenaline isn't fun. What I meant by 'faith is ignoring the odds' is that faith is a form of both strength and complacency we all have. Faith means believing everything will be okay when odds are it won't be.
I feel like I'm talking in circles here. I do NOT believe everything will be OK. Even when the odds say I'm safe I don't assume nothing bad will happen. I honestly don't know how better I can put it.
I don't see how you can say I have faith. I'm telling you very clearly I don't have the belief that "everything works" or that "everything will be OK" unless there is a plethora of evidence, and even then there is the acknowledgment that everything might still go badly.
That can be translated to a lot of things - believing a seriously sick person will recover
I hope sick people will get better. I can't say I believe anyone is going to get better until they are actually better.
If we worried about our chances all the time we'd be completely ineffective - but yet we still know there is a not insignificant chance that we could be crippled or killed.
I don't have believe everything will be OK to not worry about every little thing. The two things do not go hand in hand.
Quote from Highroller »
Yes, you very clearly do, just like every other human being does.
Nu-uh. Contradiction is fun. You're making the claim, back it up.
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Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
So car accident probabilities derived from various sources of data can "accurately", whatever that word means in this particular case, be used to determine my chance of getting into a car accident?
Well, it takes quite a bit of legwork (an impractical amount, actually) to get from the Born rule to car accident probabilities, but yes, that is ultimately how it works. It's "probabilities all the way down" to the fundamental level of nature.
Of course in practice, reducing everything to the Born rule could never work. The calculations involved would be far too numerous and complex. This bit about the Born rule was a response to your general claim that "statistics don't work the way you think they do," not about the particular claim about car accident statistics. I thought Tiax covered that part well.
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Yes, but the point is that these things work without evidence or proof. Indeed, lack of the latter is entirely the point.
So the claim that one does not operate without evidence or proof is an erroneous statement. No human being operates that way.
What human being operates without evidence or proof for any important notion with the possible exception of religion?
I believe that the New England Patriots will do well this year, but that's a combination of a fairly shallow understanding of football and a tremendous amount of cognitive bias. It's evidence-based, the evidence just isn't very good (and I'm keeping it that way, so if you want to put down the Patriots, I will happily stick my fingers in my ears and shout, "LA LA LA" at you til you stop). The fact that my evidence sucks doesn't mean that I'm not basing my beliefs on evidence.
* Tangent: I say possible because I think it's worlds more likely that religion is a misfiring of evidence-based reasoning than it is genuine faith - that is, that a religious mindset comes about by some combination of innate feelings - humans have lots of erroneous feelings about the world, we're born dualists even though dualism is virtually indefensible as a position, for example - and belief in authorities. Humans operate on evidence, but humans don't necessarily operate on statistically significant evidence, we're actually pretty bad at that, and I'm fairly certain that we're wired up to take certain kinds of things - such as the word of an authority figure - as strong evidence even though it isn't. So the short version would be that if you looked deeply enough into a religious mind, you'd find that they 'have faith' because they think, on balance of the evidence, that the thing they have faith in is true, it's just that the evidence is invalid for argumentation 'faith' operates as a way of shielding them from having to acknowledge the consequences of the fact that they think it's true based on evidence that is, on closer examination, literally not real evidence.
I digress, though. This isn't fundamental to my earlier argument, which still works even if we simply accept religion as the one exception.
We use words like believe, trust, faith, etc. in very much the same, and very different ways. If someone tells you that they believe your illness will go away soon, they could be expressing a belief based on their morning prayers, shared with their congregation at Church last Sunday, or they could be a doctor who has seen the vast majority of patients similar to you improve in a short period of time. Both are using the same word, but both mean very different things.
We also say things like:
"I believe you're angry."
"I think you're angry."
"You look angry."
"You seem angry."
etc.
All can mean the same thing, and some people will choose different words based on their experiences, who they hang out with, their vocabulary, where they grew up, etc.
Your belief that Jesus was resurrected, and my belief that I will make it to the card shop alive and uninjured, are not the same thing. That we use the same word is more an indication of our lack of nuanced vocabulary than it is an indication of similarity.
They have different meanings, don't they? Faith is belief in the absence of justification. Hope is desire without necessarily any belief. Trust is an expectation about a person's behavior. And confidence is belief with (supposed) justification.
is that none of these terms are meaningful if the outcome is already known. That is to say, it is meaningless to say that one has faith, hope, trust in the Packers winning if the outcome of the Packers winning. (Confidence can go one way or the other depending on how the word is used.) Therefore, these terms are defined by the absence of evidence or knowledge. Not that this requires total absence of any evidence or knowledge, but still a noteworthy absence.
Nu-uh. Contradiction is fun. You're making the claim, back it up.
You cannot argue that you never exhibit any signs of faith, hope, or trust without making the argument that you are not a human being. Thus, no, you're still making a bogus claim. And if you aren't, how very unfortunate for you.
You cannot argue that you never exhibit any signs of faith, hope, or trust without making the argument that you are not a human being. Thus, no, you're still making a bogus claim.
Hope is not faith or a belief, it's essentially wishing that something will happen.
Yes, we all trust that people in line at the supermarket won't stab us in the back with a knife, but there's good reason to believe they won't beyond just blind faith. We're not talking about belief without evidence here.
If we're going to talk about "faith" being good, because it can be equated to trust, and we all must trust...then sure, "faith" is good. However, faith is usually not presented in such a way, and we can't label "faith" as good with it having so many different definitions. We can talk about trust being good, or religious faith being good. Simply talking about "faith", it all of its meanings, and labeling it as good or bad seems a waste of time.
If we're going to talk about "faith" being good, because it can be equated to trust, and we all must trust...then sure, "faith" is good. However, faith is usually not presented in such a way, and we can't label "faith" as good with it having so many different definitions. We can talk about trust being good, or religious faith being good. Simply talking about "faith", it all of its meanings, and labeling it as good or bad seems a waste of time.
Which is what I've been saying this entire time.
The problem with both the OP and Oldaughd is both of them are making blanket statements about "faith," without distinguishing the numerous different concepts attached to that word, or acknowledging just how vast those different definitions run.
That's been my primary criticism about this thread from the start. TomCat is making an obviously evangelical thread trying to conflate faith in anything with faith in a very specific religious belief system, but the problem with this is, as you say, you can't conflate them because they're not the same thing. Similarly, Oldaughd is making the same error in his attempts to argue his own position on religion, and this fails also because, again, they're not the same thing.
So the answer is I'm not trying to lump them all together. I'm saying you CAN'T take faith in all of its meanings and try to label it good or bad, and the problem comes when people try to, because they then end up making nonsensical, meaningless, and empty statements.
What human being operates without evidence or proof for any important notion with the possible exception of religion?
Everyone.
There are times in your life where you will not know the outcome, you will not know the end, you will not know the correct answer; and in these times you will have to choose whether to proceed along your course or change course, and you will not be certain what to do.
But you will have a confidence, a hope, a belief, or a faith that will direct you towards a particular course. You will not be certain, indeed all of those words are defined by the lack of certainty, but you will take that risk away.
That is faith.
You cannot tell me you do not operate on it, you cannot tell me every single human being on this earth does not have it or need it because such a statement would be absurd. It is contrary to the reality of what being a human being means.
Nu-uh. Contradiction is fun. You're making the claim, back it up.
You cannot argue that you never exhibit any signs of faith, hope, or trust without making the argument that you are not a human being. Thus, no, you're still making a bogus claim. And if you aren't, how very unfortunate for you.
Prove it (regarding the bolded section). You keep saying it over and over again like just saying it makes it true. Maybe for you repetition is a means for truth or evidence, but not for most of us. So once again, prove it.
To be a human being, I see no reason why one must have faith. No reason to bring hope or trust into this. Blink very well put in an earlier post that they do not all have the same meaning. For example I can hope someone gets better without having faith that they will. And I can trust a police officer without having faith that he will do his job correctly. I'd hope that the trust that I put in him isn't missplaced, but I don't have faith that it isn't.
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Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
If by faith you mean religion then no. I don't see a use for the easter bunny or santa either so yeah.
If you mean faith as in hope then yeah it has some merit. If we don't believe in our dreams then what are we?
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In life all we can do is try to make things better. Sitting lost in old ways and fearing change only makes us outdated and ignorant.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
To be a human being, I see no reason why one must have faith. No reason to bring hope or trust into this.
They have the same root.
Blink very well put in an earlier post that they do not all have the same meaning.
They're all rooted in faith.
All of them are situations in which a human being is confronted with uncertainty and must move forward. That is faith. Your denial does not constitute an argument.
All of them are situations in which a human being is confronted with uncertainty and must move forward. That is faith.
Proof by redefinition. This is like the pantheist who defines "God" as the universe and declares that he's proven God exists.
Exactly.
Highroller, if you somehow proved what you claim you proved, please point it out to me. Otherwise what I see if you redefining "faith" to a meaning that is not consistant with the generally accepted definition.
Answer me this, since the debate has debased into arguing about the meaning or words, are the following tow sentances saying the same thing:
- I have faith that God will answer my prayers.
- I hope God answers my prayer.
They do NOT have the same meaning, and your attept to suggest they do is ridiculous. It's an undefendable position.
You call faith the act of moving forward into the unknown. I simply disagree with you. Faith is the act of claiming knowledge you can not possiblty hope to have. Such a claim can be made because you don't need evidence, you have FAITH!
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Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
faith [feyth] noun 1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability. 2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact. 3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims. 4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty. 5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
Some of you are using definitions 1&2 and some of you are using definitions 3&5.
On behalf of my pounding headache I ask that you pick a single set of definitions.
EDIT:
Well--more to the point--can we just agree that all humans do 1&2 and not all humans do 3&5 and leave whether or not it's called "faith" out of the equation?
Mods, I hope I can revive this thread without fear of being flagged for necroing. I believe 6 weeks is limit.
Anyways, I'd like to refocus this thread a little bit because I tried very hard to circumscribe what I meant by faith. My Opening to this thread even explicitly stated
By this question, I'm not talking about a religion, like a 'religious faith', or a 'person of the faith'.
I wrote in this my very opening to this thread which has been overlooked.
I'm talking about:
-believing in things you cannot prove
-believing in spite of a lack of evidence
-believing in thing that you simply because you want to believe(ex. trust)
For example, self confidence.
If self-confidence is something that required sufficient evidentiary basis to obtain,
then it cannot be derived in the face of failure. In fact, if I fail at something, i can only be more and more compelled to believe in the face of evidence that I will fail harder in the future.
There has been some speculation as to my intent in starting this thread. I think the way best way to put that to rest is to state it right now.
What I am interested in is whether or not atheists are inconsistent with the way they treat their burdens of evidence for accepting things. (or if there are any inconsistencies at all)
I picked out atheists in particular because i find that many of them hold a major objection to accepting God because it requires belief in the face of lack of evidence. I singled them out because this is the typical response I have gotten in the past:
"stupid, childish, nonsensical, and logically erroneous" <- This is how I feel about faith most of the time. --Oldaughd
What I want to find out is whether or not that is really their objection. Because it seems to me when someone says categorically I refuse to accept things based on faith(things for which there is not evidence)....that that's not really the crux of their objection at all.
Instead it's something else. Maybe is that Christians are unpopular. Maybe it's because they don't like the self-righteousness they believe Christians have.
Maybe its because they don't want to be lumped in with "those people" --fox news, westboro, the catholic church or however else they perceive christians to be.
Maybe they see the scandals in the catholic church, the hypocrisy of their pastors growing up.
Maybe they see lack of mental rigor in Christians and don't want to associate with a group like that.
Maybe they don't like the feeling of being judged or being told they will goto hell.
I'm not here to judge the merits of those above reasons. The merits of all those speculated reasons above are for another day.
But what I want do want to see if mere lack of evidentiary basis is really the reason for NOT accepting God.
Because to me, it seems there are there are many things we, atheist and nonatheist do in fact accept on faith--believing in oneself, believing in others, confidence, accepting another's goodwill, family, bonds, believing in one's dreams, believing that one will prevail despite the odds. None of these things requires or depends strictly on evidentiary basis. (though I do not deny that evidence may help.)
In other words, it's not just lack of evidence.
It's lack of evidence + something else which causes Atheists not to believe.
The belief or non-belief in God are statements of faith.
to expounds as a christian it is my personal belief that God exists.
Can i physically prove it? answer is no. God is not a physical essence he is a spiritual essence.
Can i tell you of the things that God has done in my life? yes.
Can i tell you the things i have seen him do in other peoples lives? yes.
Will that convince someone that there is a God? maybe maybe not.
However for me it is a statement of faith that He does exist.
The exact opposite of this is true as well. There i not one atheist out there that can claim God does not exist. If there is would like to see what proof they have. When they say God does not exist it is a statement of personal belief.
what evidence can they present that shows that God does not exist?
none
Now you can believe that God does not exist. Then again that is a statement of faith. You believe without solid proof or evidence that God does not exist.
atheism like everything requires a matter of faith to believe. belief in there not being a higher power is still a belief when you get down to it.
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What I want to find out is whether or not that is really their objection. Because it seems to me when someone says categorically I refuse to accept things based on faith(things for which there is not evidence)....that that's not really the crux of their objection at all.
Except yes, that really is the crux of our objection. And most people get kind of annoyed when you insinuate that they're lying, or that you know their mind better than they do. You say you value trust, so trust our word when we tell you what we're thinking.
Because to me, it seems there are there are many things we, atheist and nonatheist do in fact accept on faith--believing in oneself, believing in others, confidence, accepting another's goodwill, family, bonds, believing in one's dreams, believing that one will prevail despite the odds. None of these things requires or depends strictly on evidentiary basis. (though I do not deny that evidence may help.)
You're equivocating. The phrases "belief in God" and "belief in oneself" have very different meanings, in spite of their similar forms. To "believe in God" is to hold it as a fact that God exists. To "believe in oneself" is not to hold it as a fact that oneself exists, but rather to have a positive attitude towards oneself. Your other examples are similarly positive attitudes rather than factual existence claims. And these positive attitudes are in fact predicated on implicit evidence-based factual existence claims - you can't have a positive attitude towards your family if you do not know you have a family, and you know you have a family because you have evidence in the form of your numerous and consistent interactions with them. If you were a lonely orphan on the streets of Victorian London, you would not be able to say that your family exists, and thus it would be nonsensical to say that you "believe in" them.
My second, more general response to your logic is that it assumes human beings consistently apply the same standards to everything. And you ought to know that this is not the case. Even if you find an atheist who believes in the existence of something despite the lack of evidence (which shouldn't actually be difficult; I'm sure there is no shortage of atheist ufologists), it does not follow that he must be rejecting God for some reason other than the lack of evidence. Most likely he is simply espousing a double standard. And probably something is predisposing him towards UFOs, not against God. This is regrettable for him, but it's certainly not unusual, and it's a death blow to your whole line of thought.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
What I want to find out is whether or not that is really their objection. Because it seems to me when someone says categorically I refuse to accept things based on faith(things for which there is not evidence)....that that's not really the crux of their objection at all.
Except yes, that really is the crux of our objection. And most people get kind of annoyed when you insinuate that they're lying, or that you know their mind better than they do. You say you value trust, so trust our word when we tell you what we're thinking.
Because to me, it seems there are there are many things we, atheist and nonatheist do in fact accept on faith--believing in oneself, believing in others, confidence, accepting another's goodwill, family, bonds, believing in one's dreams, believing that one will prevail despite the odds. None of these things requires or depends strictly on evidentiary basis. (though I do not deny that evidence may help.)
You're equivocating. The phrases "belief in God" and "belief in oneself" have very different meanings, in spite of their similar forms. To "believe in God" is to hold it as a fact that God exists. To "believe in oneself" is not to hold it as a fact that oneself exists, but rather to have a positive attitude towards oneself. Your other examples are similarly positive attitudes rather than factual existence claims. And these positive attitudes are in fact predicated on implicit evidence-based factual existence claims - you can't have a positive attitude towards your family if you do not know you have a family, and you know you have a family because you have evidence in the form of your numerous and consistent interactions with them. If you were a lonely orphan on the streets of Victorian London, you would not be able to say that your family exists, and thus it would be nonsensical to say that you "believe in" them.
My second, more general response to your logic is that it assumes human beings consistently apply the same standards to everything. And you ought to know that this is not the case. Even if you find an atheist who believes in the existence of something despite the lack of evidence (which shouldn't actually be difficult; I'm sure there is no shortage of atheist ufologists), it does not follow that he must be rejecting God for some reason other than the lack of evidence. Most likely he is simply espousing a double standard. And probably something is predisposing him towards UFOs, not against God. This is regrettable for him, but it's certainly not unusual, and it's a death blow to your whole line of thought.
well you see something that I don't see. You say that these positive attitudes, believing in yourself, are all predicated on implicit evidence.
But what I am asking is whether or not these require evidence.
I concede that evidence can certainly help to buttress them. A wife might feel more secure that you love her if you presented little acts of kindness throughout the day.
But do these 'beliefs' require your implicit evidence?
It sounds like what you're saying is at the very heart, belief in oneself, self confidence, trust in other people, goodwill; it sounds like you claim there is in fact and must be evidence for every one of these things. It sounds like what you're saying is that the evidence may not be blatant, or obvious, but they are behind the scenes--implicit---but they are there and in fact required.
TomCat26, a "all or nothing" logic would be completely unfeasible. The logical negation of it would require theists to believe in EVERYTHING to which there is no evidence, if it were to be logically consistent. That would be equally silly.
It sounds like what you're saying is at the very heart, belief in oneself, self confidence, trust in other people, goodwill; it sounds like you claim there is in fact and must be evidence for every one of these things. It sounds like what you're saying is that the evidence may not be blatant, or obvious, but they are behind the scenes--implicit---but they are there and in fact required.
You seem to be confused as to what "evidence" is. Tiax already answered this question in what I think was a pretty good and succinct answer:
One small example I was thinking of was:
Taking someone at their word when they say "I care about you" rather than demanding proof.
Hmm...It kinda seems like there's usually a lot of evidence in those situations. For one, most people would be honest about that. Further, you've probably got a lot of previous interaction with the person that would make it clear. Of course, most people care about each other to some extent, so there's that as well. Taking them at their word doesn't seem to require much faith. But suppose you're in a situation where you have no evidence - such a stranger, or someone who hasn't acted in a way that would indicate they care. Would you simply trust them when they say that? That seems like potentially damaging behavior.
You never responded to him.
TomCat26, you keep stating the same things, but saying them in a different way as if it will suddenly "click" with us if you phrase it right. It seems to me that you're trying so hard to make us understand what you're saying, that you're not listening to what we are saying. We DO understand what you're saying; I know I get it most of the time. However, you need to understand what we're saying if you want to know why it's not "clicking." There is a reason we aren't just agreeing with you, and rephrasing your assertions will not help.
Why don't you address this post of Tiax's from page one and then we can move on again.
Which are four different things, and different people place different values on each. Compare the following sentences:
"I have faith the Packers will go undefeated next year."
"I hope the Packers will go undefeated next year."
"I trust the Packers to go undefeated next year."
"I am confident the Packers will go undefeated next year."
They have different meanings, don't they? Faith is belief in the absence of justification. Hope is desire without necessarily any belief. Trust is an expectation about a person's behavior. And confidence is belief with (supposed) justification.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Yes, but the point is that these things work without evidence or proof. Indeed, lack of the latter is entirely the point.
So the claim that one does not operate without evidence or proof is an erroneous statement. No human being operates that way.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
So car accident probabilities derived from various sources of data can "accurately", whatever that word means in this particular case, be used to determine my chance of getting into a car accident?
That would have to assume that every possible situation is accounted for, wouldn't it?
Right, I understand that. But wouldn't you have to look at local statistics and make a determination for your chance of getting into a car accident, for example?
I mean, if you take an actual national %, then it's rather useless. The circumstances behind it could be radically different from the daily situation you're in. So obviously the more closely you specify the circumstances and the situations/what have you, the most closely you can get a % that actually applies to you.
See, the dilemma I face here is that I understand what you all mean with statistics. What I have problem dealing with is the apparent thought that the statistics apply to me. Of course it does, provided that you get one that closely matches your daily situation and circumstances, but it's much the same reason why I always run for cover when there's a thunderstorm. The actual probability of me getting struck by lightning is apparently remote, but isn't me believing that I won't get struck by lightning because said probability is remote me placing my confidence in something that I had no actual hand in creating or able to verify?
I feel like I'm talking in circles here. I do NOT believe everything will be OK. Even when the odds say I'm safe I don't assume nothing bad will happen. I honestly don't know how better I can put it.
I don't see how you can say I have faith. I'm telling you very clearly I don't have the belief that "everything works" or that "everything will be OK" unless there is a plethora of evidence, and even then there is the acknowledgment that everything might still go badly.
I hope sick people will get better. I can't say I believe anyone is going to get better until they are actually better.
I don't have believe everything will be OK to not worry about every little thing. The two things do not go hand in hand.
Nu-uh. Contradiction is fun. You're making the claim, back it up.
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
Well, it takes quite a bit of legwork (an impractical amount, actually) to get from the Born rule to car accident probabilities, but yes, that is ultimately how it works. It's "probabilities all the way down" to the fundamental level of nature.
Of course in practice, reducing everything to the Born rule could never work. The calculations involved would be far too numerous and complex. This bit about the Born rule was a response to your general claim that "statistics don't work the way you think they do," not about the particular claim about car accident statistics. I thought Tiax covered that part well.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
What human being operates without evidence or proof for any important notion with the possible exception of religion?
I believe that the New England Patriots will do well this year, but that's a combination of a fairly shallow understanding of football and a tremendous amount of cognitive bias. It's evidence-based, the evidence just isn't very good (and I'm keeping it that way, so if you want to put down the Patriots, I will happily stick my fingers in my ears and shout, "LA LA LA" at you til you stop). The fact that my evidence sucks doesn't mean that I'm not basing my beliefs on evidence.
* Tangent: I say possible because I think it's worlds more likely that religion is a misfiring of evidence-based reasoning than it is genuine faith - that is, that a religious mindset comes about by some combination of innate feelings - humans have lots of erroneous feelings about the world, we're born dualists even though dualism is virtually indefensible as a position, for example - and belief in authorities. Humans operate on evidence, but humans don't necessarily operate on statistically significant evidence, we're actually pretty bad at that, and I'm fairly certain that we're wired up to take certain kinds of things - such as the word of an authority figure - as strong evidence even though it isn't. So the short version would be that if you looked deeply enough into a religious mind, you'd find that they 'have faith' because they think, on balance of the evidence, that the thing they have faith in is true, it's just that the evidence is invalid for argumentation 'faith' operates as a way of shielding them from having to acknowledge the consequences of the fact that they think it's true based on evidence that is, on closer examination, literally not real evidence.
I digress, though. This isn't fundamental to my earlier argument, which still works even if we simply accept religion as the one exception.
We also say things like:
"I believe you're angry."
"I think you're angry."
"You look angry."
"You seem angry."
etc.
All can mean the same thing, and some people will choose different words based on their experiences, who they hang out with, their vocabulary, where they grew up, etc.
Your belief that Jesus was resurrected, and my belief that I will make it to the card shop alive and uninjured, are not the same thing. That we use the same word is more an indication of our lack of nuanced vocabulary than it is an indication of similarity.
How about faith in oneself? That seems like an apt place to start.
You are correct and I misspoke. Let me rephrase.
The thing about this outline:
is that none of these terms are meaningful if the outcome is already known. That is to say, it is meaningless to say that one has faith, hope, trust in the Packers winning if the outcome of the Packers winning. (Confidence can go one way or the other depending on how the word is used.) Therefore, these terms are defined by the absence of evidence or knowledge. Not that this requires total absence of any evidence or knowledge, but still a noteworthy absence.
You cannot argue that you never exhibit any signs of faith, hope, or trust without making the argument that you are not a human being. Thus, no, you're still making a bogus claim. And if you aren't, how very unfortunate for you.
Can you give an example where you think I have faith in myself which is not based on evidence?
Hope is not faith or a belief, it's essentially wishing that something will happen.
Yes, we all trust that people in line at the supermarket won't stab us in the back with a knife, but there's good reason to believe they won't beyond just blind faith. We're not talking about belief without evidence here.
If we're going to talk about "faith" being good, because it can be equated to trust, and we all must trust...then sure, "faith" is good. However, faith is usually not presented in such a way, and we can't label "faith" as good with it having so many different definitions. We can talk about trust being good, or religious faith being good. Simply talking about "faith", it all of its meanings, and labeling it as good or bad seems a waste of time.
Which is what I've been saying this entire time.
The problem with both the OP and Oldaughd is both of them are making blanket statements about "faith," without distinguishing the numerous different concepts attached to that word, or acknowledging just how vast those different definitions run.
That's been my primary criticism about this thread from the start. TomCat is making an obviously evangelical thread trying to conflate faith in anything with faith in a very specific religious belief system, but the problem with this is, as you say, you can't conflate them because they're not the same thing. Similarly, Oldaughd is making the same error in his attempts to argue his own position on religion, and this fails also because, again, they're not the same thing.
So the answer is I'm not trying to lump them all together. I'm saying you CAN'T take faith in all of its meanings and try to label it good or bad, and the problem comes when people try to, because they then end up making nonsensical, meaningless, and empty statements.
Glad to hear it.
In keeping with the OP, I want to revisit this question, because I believe it's important.
Everyone.
There are times in your life where you will not know the outcome, you will not know the end, you will not know the correct answer; and in these times you will have to choose whether to proceed along your course or change course, and you will not be certain what to do.
But you will have a confidence, a hope, a belief, or a faith that will direct you towards a particular course. You will not be certain, indeed all of those words are defined by the lack of certainty, but you will take that risk away.
That is faith.
You cannot tell me you do not operate on it, you cannot tell me every single human being on this earth does not have it or need it because such a statement would be absurd. It is contrary to the reality of what being a human being means.
Prove it (regarding the bolded section). You keep saying it over and over again like just saying it makes it true. Maybe for you repetition is a means for truth or evidence, but not for most of us. So once again, prove it.
To be a human being, I see no reason why one must have faith. No reason to bring hope or trust into this. Blink very well put in an earlier post that they do not all have the same meaning. For example I can hope someone gets better without having faith that they will. And I can trust a police officer without having faith that he will do his job correctly. I'd hope that the trust that I put in him isn't missplaced, but I don't have faith that it isn't.
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
If you mean faith as in hope then yeah it has some merit. If we don't believe in our dreams then what are we?
Albert Einstein
Thomas Jefferson
Already did.
They have the same root.
They're all rooted in faith.
All of them are situations in which a human being is confronted with uncertainty and must move forward. That is faith. Your denial does not constitute an argument.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Exactly.
Highroller, if you somehow proved what you claim you proved, please point it out to me. Otherwise what I see if you redefining "faith" to a meaning that is not consistant with the generally accepted definition.
Answer me this, since the debate has debased into arguing about the meaning or words, are the following tow sentances saying the same thing:
- I have faith that God will answer my prayers.
- I hope God answers my prayer.
They do NOT have the same meaning, and your attept to suggest they do is ridiculous. It's an undefendable position.
You call faith the act of moving forward into the unknown. I simply disagree with you. Faith is the act of claiming knowledge you can not possiblty hope to have. Such a claim can be made because you don't need evidence, you have FAITH!
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
Some of you are using definitions 1&2 and some of you are using definitions 3&5.
On behalf of my pounding headache I ask that you pick a single set of definitions.
EDIT:
Well--more to the point--can we just agree that all humans do 1&2 and not all humans do 3&5 and leave whether or not it's called "faith" out of the equation?
It probably would never have started if Highroller used a word that isn't as religiously charged as faith.
Anyways, I'd like to refocus this thread a little bit because I tried very hard to circumscribe what I meant by faith. My Opening to this thread even explicitly stated
By this question, I'm not talking about a religion, like a 'religious faith', or a 'person of the faith'.
I wrote in this my very opening to this thread which has been overlooked.
I'm talking about:
-believing in things you cannot prove
-believing in spite of a lack of evidence
-believing in thing that you simply because you want to believe(ex. trust)
For example, self confidence.
If self-confidence is something that required sufficient evidentiary basis to obtain,
then it cannot be derived in the face of failure. In fact, if I fail at something, i can only be more and more compelled to believe in the face of evidence that I will fail harder in the future.
There has been some speculation as to my intent in starting this thread. I think the way best way to put that to rest is to state it right now.
What I am interested in is whether or not atheists are inconsistent with the way they treat their burdens of evidence for accepting things. (or if there are any inconsistencies at all)
I picked out atheists in particular because i find that many of them hold a major objection to accepting God because it requires belief in the face of lack of evidence. I singled them out because this is the typical response I have gotten in the past:
"stupid, childish, nonsensical, and logically erroneous" <- This is how I feel about faith most of the time. --Oldaughd
What I want to find out is whether or not that is really their objection. Because it seems to me when someone says categorically I refuse to accept things based on faith(things for which there is not evidence)....that that's not really the crux of their objection at all.
Instead it's something else. Maybe is that Christians are unpopular. Maybe it's because they don't like the self-righteousness they believe Christians have.
Maybe its because they don't want to be lumped in with "those people" --fox news, westboro, the catholic church or however else they perceive christians to be.
Maybe they see the scandals in the catholic church, the hypocrisy of their pastors growing up.
Maybe they see lack of mental rigor in Christians and don't want to associate with a group like that.
Maybe they don't like the feeling of being judged or being told they will goto hell.
I'm not here to judge the merits of those above reasons. The merits of all those speculated reasons above are for another day.
But what I want do want to see if mere lack of evidentiary basis is really the reason for NOT accepting God.
Because to me, it seems there are there are many things we, atheist and nonatheist do in fact accept on faith--believing in oneself, believing in others, confidence, accepting another's goodwill, family, bonds, believing in one's dreams, believing that one will prevail despite the odds. None of these things requires or depends strictly on evidentiary basis. (though I do not deny that evidence may help.)
In other words, it's not just lack of evidence.
It's lack of evidence + something else which causes Atheists not to believe.
to expounds as a christian it is my personal belief that God exists.
Can i physically prove it? answer is no. God is not a physical essence he is a spiritual essence.
Can i tell you of the things that God has done in my life? yes.
Can i tell you the things i have seen him do in other peoples lives? yes.
Will that convince someone that there is a God? maybe maybe not.
However for me it is a statement of faith that He does exist.
The exact opposite of this is true as well. There i not one atheist out there that can claim God does not exist. If there is would like to see what proof they have. When they say God does not exist it is a statement of personal belief.
what evidence can they present that shows that God does not exist?
none
Now you can believe that God does not exist. Then again that is a statement of faith. You believe without solid proof or evidence that God does not exist.
atheism like everything requires a matter of faith to believe. belief in there not being a higher power is still a belief when you get down to it.
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You're equivocating. The phrases "belief in God" and "belief in oneself" have very different meanings, in spite of their similar forms. To "believe in God" is to hold it as a fact that God exists. To "believe in oneself" is not to hold it as a fact that oneself exists, but rather to have a positive attitude towards oneself. Your other examples are similarly positive attitudes rather than factual existence claims. And these positive attitudes are in fact predicated on implicit evidence-based factual existence claims - you can't have a positive attitude towards your family if you do not know you have a family, and you know you have a family because you have evidence in the form of your numerous and consistent interactions with them. If you were a lonely orphan on the streets of Victorian London, you would not be able to say that your family exists, and thus it would be nonsensical to say that you "believe in" them.
My second, more general response to your logic is that it assumes human beings consistently apply the same standards to everything. And you ought to know that this is not the case. Even if you find an atheist who believes in the existence of something despite the lack of evidence (which shouldn't actually be difficult; I'm sure there is no shortage of atheist ufologists), it does not follow that he must be rejecting God for some reason other than the lack of evidence. Most likely he is simply espousing a double standard. And probably something is predisposing him towards UFOs, not against God. This is regrettable for him, but it's certainly not unusual, and it's a death blow to your whole line of thought.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
well you see something that I don't see. You say that these positive attitudes, believing in yourself, are all predicated on implicit evidence.
But what I am asking is whether or not these require evidence.
I concede that evidence can certainly help to buttress them. A wife might feel more secure that you love her if you presented little acts of kindness throughout the day.
But do these 'beliefs' require your implicit evidence?
It sounds like what you're saying is at the very heart, belief in oneself, self confidence, trust in other people, goodwill; it sounds like you claim there is in fact and must be evidence for every one of these things. It sounds like what you're saying is that the evidence may not be blatant, or obvious, but they are behind the scenes--implicit---but they are there and in fact required.
I want to be sure if that is your position.
You seem to be confused as to what "evidence" is. Tiax already answered this question in what I think was a pretty good and succinct answer:
You never responded to him.
TomCat26, you keep stating the same things, but saying them in a different way as if it will suddenly "click" with us if you phrase it right. It seems to me that you're trying so hard to make us understand what you're saying, that you're not listening to what we are saying. We DO understand what you're saying; I know I get it most of the time. However, you need to understand what we're saying if you want to know why it's not "clicking." There is a reason we aren't just agreeing with you, and rephrasing your assertions will not help.
Why don't you address this post of Tiax's from page one and then we can move on again.