All of this talk of mother's love on faith and prior evidence makes me think of this mother who just showed back up after 11 years after disappearing in Florida. You have probably seen the article. Do you think this mother loved her children? I would think the answer is extremely complex and doesn't fit nicely under either scenario. From reading the article, it seems she was a good loving mother before she left (according to her ex and kids). Abandoning them for 11 years seems to point to her lack of love. So what prior evidence do we use to determine love?
All of this talk of mother's love on faith and prior evidence makes me think of this mother who just showed back up after 11 years after disappearing in Florida. You have probably seen the article. Do you think this mother loved her children?
I would say as of now there is not enough information to accurately determine an answer.
But, people will confidently proclaim they know. And, confidence in the face of uncertainty is contagious. Sometimes you don't have to be right to get people to agree, you just have to act like you know you're right.
There is a lot of value in faith - faith can power people when by all reason they should stop. In terms of getting through hard times in your life, this is great. Charity especially is helped by that kind of faith.
The problem with faith is the same as the benefit- it keeps them going long after they should have stopped. Mindless devotion to an ideal is a very bad thing.
So ultimately, I value faith, but I also fear it. It can drive people to great deeds, but 'great' doesn't always mean 'good'.
Just to give you a little bit of my background. I used to have a few aspergers tendencies. I don't know if that led me to see things the way I did. But if the ideology that we should never accept things based on faith was the golden ideology, I'd be the guy to apply it literally to every situation possible without regards for family or friendship.
In other words, I'm the guy sitting down oddly wondering why my mom bothered to make soup for me while I was sick one day. (wondering what benefit she derives from it---whether she is fulfilling her legal duty under the state as a guardian)
I'm the guy who if you said, we cannot accept things on faith, but reason alone, I'm the only guy on earth who would actually apply
that to the intangible things a family provides.
I didn't accept God back then, but I didnt accept anything as real that could not be proven--including my own emotions. I posed this question because I want to hear about the experience of other atheists.
But in coming out of those days, I have found to the contrary there are many many things we take on faith in day to day life.
Goodwill, trust, friendship, love. Learning how to accept the better parts of humanity was a huge leap of faith for me.
For these things, if we wanted to set up a burden of proof for these elements in our lives, we most certainly could.
We could defend endless cynicism under the banner of reason.
But a life with so many barriers would be one missing much in life.
I'm going to be straight with you and say that I really don't comprehend what your argument is, or what you're trying to get at in your response. I'm going to focus on the bolded part, since there is something I can actually respond to.
I contend that we are the same, it's just that people have different standards for belief. All those things you list have elements of faith and reason to them. I simply state that I have criteria for trust (evidence), which gives me justification (reason) to believe (faith) in someone's character. Most people follow the same process.
For example: The dating process allows individuals to screen potential mates. Optimally, mates that prove untrustworthy, uncaring, unreliable, etc. are all dismissed in favor of someone which is the best fit for one's needs (evidence). Then time passes, the hypothesis is tested over and over, to verify that the evidence gathered is, in fact, true (reason). Then, if you're into monogamy, one commits to a life with that person, trusting the gathered evidence, rationale and positive feelings (faith).
Some people require evidence for their beliefs. Others drop rationality all together in favor of emotion. I can't relate to people that have relationships for a few months and then propose. Their threshold of evidence from which they rationalize their faith in that person is, in my opinion, dangerously deficient. Similarly, belief in every religion on Earth appeals to emotion while possessing no evidence. It's not cynicism, it's simply a higher standard.
And I want to say that I find the implication of your last line to be incredibly offensive. Your swipe about having "barriers" which makes me "[miss] much in life", came through loud and clear. That's a bold claim to make about my life. What makes you think I miss out on anything in life? What makes anyone who doesn't share your deity belief have a deficient life compared to yours? That's a disgusting amount of arrogance and disrespect. If you want to have a debate, act like an adult.
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?' So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." - Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
Things are taken on faith when they can't be taken on their own merits.
The problem I have with faith is that people seem to have different ideas of what faith is. I have no qualms with people who adopt beliefs about things where there is no evidence to form beliefs from, such as what happens to us after we die. What irks me are people who consistently and repeatedly lie and ignore mountains of evidence in order to maintain their beliefs...and they refer to their their blatant dishonesty as faith.
I ask the question because I want people to answer the question. If I wanted to ask "do you value religion" then i would ask that question.
If you want to answer your own question "do you value religion" then you may certainly do so. But I won't have anything to say on that topic.
Just to give you a little bit of my background. I used to have a few aspergers tendencies. I don't know if that led me to see things the way I did. But if the ideology that we should never accept things based on faith was the golden ideology, I'd be the guy to apply it literally to every situation possible without regards for family or friendship.
In other words, I'm the guy sitting down oddly wondering why my mom bothered to make soup for me while I was sick one day. (wondering what benefit she derives from it---whether she is fulfilling her legal duty under the state as a guardian)
I'm the guy who if you said, we cannot accept things on faith, but reason alone, I'm the only guy on earth who would actually apply
that to the intangible things a family provides.
I didn't accept God back then, but I didnt accept anything as real that could not be proven--including my own emotions. I posed this question because I want to hear about the experience of other atheists.
But in coming out of those days, I have found to the contrary there are many many things we take on faith in day to day life.
Goodwill, trust, friendship, love. Learning how to accept the better parts of humanity was a huge leap of faith for me.
For these things, if we wanted to set up a burden of proof for these elements in our lives, we most certainly could.
We could defend endless cynicism under the banner of reason.
But a life with so many barriers would be one missing much in life.
Are you going to now argue that this thread has nothing to do with religion?
It's clear what you're trying to do. The problem is that you can't just lump all instances of faith and trust together. The trust I have that the stone will fall towards the ground this time like it did the one thousand times previous is not the same as my faith in an overarching order guiding the universe.
I'm just that the one post TomCat26 decided to respond to in round two was the one he just wanted to say "GTFO" too...
It's because I'm always goaded by Highroller to argue something which has nothing to do with my original point. For example, now he would have me argue that my post has nothing to do with religion.
If i respond to him I am literally stuck with arguing "does TomCat's post have nothing to do with religion" which yet again was not the original question asked.
No offense to you but I wanted to clear the air there.
I get that, but this is the interesting part of the question. Yes there is ample evidence for your mom's love. But do you need that prior evidence? Is that evidence a necessary prerequisite for accepting a mother's assertions of love.
So, if a mother beat her child everyday, locking it in the basement and treating it like an animal, you would still assume she loved it just by virtue of having given birth to it? I think not.
Anyway,
Without information about the mother/child interaction we would likely side with the idea that the mother loves the child. But, we do so because the very WORD "mother" invokes prior information. If you replace the word "mother" with "stranger" suddenly the situations changes, even if we still aren't given any additional information. It changes even more if "mother" is replaced with "pedophile" instead. Suddenly we assume the child is in danger, again even if no other information is proved. That is because the words themselves convey meaning and invoke prejudice. In your example the word "mom" is providing prior information.
We all use prior information to make judgment calls. Sometimes we have more information, and sometimes we have less. However, we--general speaking--don't disregard information. I pretty sure any sain person would agree that doing so is a bad idea. Sometimes we do believe something because it makes us feel better, but to do so in the face of evidence to the contrary is delusional.
So then what's the line for you? If a friend came to you and wronged you. Would you say its delusional to give him the benefit of the doubt based on prior evidence?
In other words, whats the line, or the leap of faith, between doubting someone and giving them the benefit of the doubt.
What is the line between holding onto the past evidence of wrongs and forgiveness?
Doesn't forgiveness and benefit of the doubt inherently require leaps of faith in our day to day interactions.
What does "evidence" mean to you? As I see it, evidence is simply that which justifies belief. The definition is rather circular, but with good reason. The purpose of beliefs are to compress the sophisticated reality we live in into the mental model we keep in our head. So, as I interpret the concept of faith, it can only be undesirable; something to be minimized when possible. Why you would ever want to increase the distance between reality (whatever that may be) and your internal representation of it?
Goodwill, trust, friendship, love. Learning how to accept the better parts of humanity was a huge leap of faith for me.
There is evidence for all those things: I have first-hand experience of them all, and my interactions with others suggest they have as well. They're not faith based, they are just abstract. How is this different than religious faith (I anticipate the counterargument)? The most important distinction is that they stand alone as subjective experience. They are valuable as "psychologically emergent phenomena resulting from human interaction", or whatever you want to call it.
You can feel an omnipresent sky-daddy who loves you: religious fervor, euphoria, and belief are certainly real psychological events. But that's not enough. God needs to actually exist for the belief to be valid - unless you are skilled enough at self-deception that you can circumvent this truth in order to acquire the aforementioned euphoria, in which case, more power to you.
I don't want to veer too far off course here. I did pose the "what is the difference between subjective experience" and evidence of God in another thread at some point.
But as for faith of trust, goodwill, friendship, or even love. Do you take those on evidence? Is there ever a point where you don't necessarily have evidence (or insufficient evidence) of these things, but you take them or accept them based on faith.
For instance, forgiving someone who has wronged you a bunch of times.
To me it stands to reason that under a paradigm of evidence, that there is no room to ever forgive someone unless there is sufficient evidentiary basis to do so. (which to some extent contradicts its own conception)
Or would you ever come to believe in your own abilities even though the evidence may warrant that you yourself are incapable of doing something.
---for example, you're at a magic tournament. It's the first time you've made it to top 16. But because it is the first time, it stands to reason from the evidence that you should not expect much of your own abilities.
In fact you should very well expect to lose. Faith in yourself at this point would exceed your own evidence, and to the extent that you believe in yourself beyond what you have done, your own faith in yourself is irrational and therefore unwarranted.
I don't understand how forgiveness comes in to the conversation here. Forgiving someone doesn't require you to accept any particular proposition as true, so there's not really a question of faith there.
Or would you ever come to believe in your own abilities even though the evidence may warrant that you yourself are incapable of doing something.
---for example, you're at a magic tournament. It's the first time you've made it to top 16. But because it is the first time, it stands to reason from the evidence that you should not expect much of your own abilities.
In fact you should very well expect to lose. Faith in yourself at this point would exceed your own evidence, and to the extent that you believe in yourself beyond what you have done, your own faith in yourself is irrational and therefore unwarranted.
If you really believed in yourself in that situation, would you bet a significant sum of money on your performance? (putting aside any moral or legal issues with such a wager). I would imagine that you would consider it rather foolish, even dangerous if the amount were large enough, to place such a bet, even if someone "had faith in themselves".
I grew up in an atheist household and am one. The only faith I know is in myself and fellow human beings...so I guess I agree with your third point ("-believing in thing that you simply because you want to believe (ex. trust)" [sic]). Otherwise, I don't believe in anything that lacks evidence or can't be proven.
So then what's the line for you? If a friend came to you and wronged you. Would you say its delusional to give him the benefit of the doubt based on prior evidence? In other words, whats the line, or the leap of faith, between doubting someone and giving them the benefit of the doubt.
How could he possible both be my friend and someone I don't have information about? How could I be buddies with him without knowing something about his character?
What is the line between holding onto the past evidence of wrongs and forgiveness?
Doesn't forgiveness and benefit of the doubt inherently require leaps of faith in our day to day interactions.
I would have to evaluate his character and make a judgment call based on that.
Isn't that what you do? You weigh his good intentions--as you perceive them--to his bad, and make a choice based on that?
I thought everyone did that.....
If a buddy does one bad thing to me I'd not leave him in the ditch because to be my buddy a priori he would have to have been nice to me leading up to the event. Right? ...Honestly, I'm not sure I get what you're trying to comunicate.
For instance, forgiving someone who has wronged you a bunch of times.
To me it stands to reason that under a paradigm of evidence, that there is no room to ever forgive someone unless there is sufficient evidentiary basis to do so. (which to some extent contradicts its own conception)
This doesn't make any sense to me. Perhaps you could walk us through a hypothetical situation in which person A (who makes decisions solely on evidence) never trusts person B after person B "wrongs" them? How do you envision such a thing working?
This doesn't make any sense to me. Perhaps you could walk us through a hypothetical situation in which person A (who makes decisions solely on evidence) never trusts person B after person B "wrongs" them? How do you envision such a thing working?
Alright. Suppose you have a bully named Bruce, and you have the bullied kid Tim. Bruce picked on Tim all throughout high school.
Flash forward. It's now five years later. Tim sees Bruce at the local magic shop and can react in any number of ways.
1) Tim could hold a grudge against Bruce.
"The guy made my life a living hell. The past instances (evidence) shows the kind of guy he is"
Logically here, I could not condemn Tim. I would say Tim is right. The weight of the evidence does show Bruce to be a bad guy. Tim is logically justified in holding his grudge.
2) Tim could forgive Bruce.
"Look it's five years later, times change. People change." Tim is not holding a grudge, he's going to live life and proceed and accord Bruce with a decent respect. "Look, we were all younger back then, let's let bygones be bygones"
At this point, I'd like to say that Tim has absolutely no evidentiary basis for this holding. In fact, it flies in the face of Tim's evidence. I'm going to contend here that Tim's belief is based on faith--I'd call it wishful thinking, but still a kind of faith---a desire to want to believe that things can be better.
Now that kind of wishful thinking in my opinion is absolutely faith. It is without rational basis really. It is without evidentiary basis. But I cannot say that it is without value. Bruce, prima facie, has a second chance with Tim. Whether Bruce chooses to take that up is up to him.
But the result of the latter is that you have potential for comity between two individuals.
I mean--reactive emotional responses aside--wouldn't it just be best for Tim to withhold judgment until he learns how the last 5 years have treated Bruce?
I grew up in an atheist household and am one. The only faith I know is in myself and fellow human beings...so I guess I agree with your third point ("-believing in thing that you simply because you want to believe (ex. trust)" [sic]). Otherwise, I don't believe in anything that lacks evidence or can't be proven.
For me, I found this to be true as well. I walked the path as an atheist drawn because I was drawn to pure logic, under the thought that all belief in things not supported by evidence, all instances of taking things upon faith was irrational.
But as time went on, I had to concede that there were in fact many things I tended to take on faith. Most of these things came in the realm of personal relationships mind you, but even so, personal relationships tend to comprise a large part of our lives. (for many people)
I mean--reactive emotional responses aside--wouldn't it just be best for Tim to withhold judgment until he learns how the last 5 years have treated Bruce?
I won't deny there are a whole spectrum of mixed emotional/rational possibilities.
But I picked the two trending towards the polar opposite reactions to illustrate a point. In life...both scenarios I presented are certainly possible. We see people forgive, and we see people begrudge.
You ask, wouldn't it be best if Tim took a wait and see approach. Your suggestion is perfectly reasonable, even a little charitable to Bruce. But as for what is best?
Well that depends...
I'd wager that if Tim is truly that magnanimous with his sense of being, then the part where Tim had the greater faith is the best. It is there that there greatest potential for amiable relationships with a former enemy lies.
Insofar as this example pertains to the OP, is there value in faith?
You ask, wouldn't it be best if Tim took a wait and see approach. Your suggestion is perfectly reasonable, even a little charitable to Bruce.
But, isn't that the point? In the face of uncertainly the reasonable person tries to obtain more evidence one way or the other, and then acts based on those findings.
To the Atheists/agnostics out there, I wanted to ask: Is there value in faith?
By this question, I'm not talking about a religion, like a 'religious faith', or a 'person of the faith'.
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)
Do you see value in taking things by faith? Or is this entire paradigm of thought just stupid, childish, nonsensical, and logically erroneous?
"stupid, childish, nonsensical, and logically erroneous" <- This is how I feel about faith most of the time.
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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
"Look it's five years later, times change. People change." Tim is not holding a grudge, he's going to live life and proceed and accord Bruce with a decent respect. "Look, we were all younger back then, let's let bygones be bygones"
At this point, I'd like to say that Tim has absolutely no evidentiary basis for this holding. In fact, it flies in the face of Tim's evidence. I'm going to contend here that Tim's belief is based on faith--I'd call it wishful thinking, but still a kind of faith---a desire to want to believe that things can be better.
You just gave potential evidence for forgiveness or withholding judgement. If, in Tim's experience, people are different at 23-years-old than they were at 18-years-old, and Bruce is a person, then he has a good rational and logical reason to think that Bruce may not be the same jerk he was in high school.
As for faith in general...I do not see value in faith, if faith is defined as belief without, or in spite of, the evidence. In fact, I think it does harm.
What if Bruce was really nice, but Tim decides to take it on faith that Bruce is now a scumbag?
Yes, this is exactly it. People who would defend this kind of faith often choose their examples a little too selectively for my taste. Of course it's easy to make up a situation in which acting on an unjustified belief can have positive consequences -- but it's just as easy to do the exact opposite.
It is for the very reason that there is no way of deciding which of these propositions to have faith in that faith (of this belief-in-spite-of-evidence variety) is valueless. It would only have value if it could actually help you identify in advance which beliefs would have positive consequences.
Funnily enough, it turns out we do have a technique that can help do exactly that, and its epistemological basis consists of the repudiation of this kind of faith and an insistence upon reasoning and evidence.
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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.
"stupid, childish, nonsensical, and logically erroneous" <- This is how I feel about faith most of the time.
Really?
Do you spend every waking hour fearing that your life could end at any moment?
Or do you walk out of your door not worried about it, not because of a failure to grasp the possibility of death, but the confidence that everything's going to turn out alright?
Don't make the same mistake the OP does, which is lumping all forms of faith and confidence together.
I would say as of now there is not enough information to accurately determine an answer.
But, people will confidently proclaim they know. And, confidence in the face of uncertainty is contagious. Sometimes you don't have to be right to get people to agree, you just have to act like you know you're right.
The problem with faith is the same as the benefit- it keeps them going long after they should have stopped. Mindless devotion to an ideal is a very bad thing.
So ultimately, I value faith, but I also fear it. It can drive people to great deeds, but 'great' doesn't always mean 'good'.
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I'm going to be straight with you and say that I really don't comprehend what your argument is, or what you're trying to get at in your response. I'm going to focus on the bolded part, since there is something I can actually respond to.
I contend that we are the same, it's just that people have different standards for belief. All those things you list have elements of faith and reason to them. I simply state that I have criteria for trust (evidence), which gives me justification (reason) to believe (faith) in someone's character. Most people follow the same process.
For example: The dating process allows individuals to screen potential mates. Optimally, mates that prove untrustworthy, uncaring, unreliable, etc. are all dismissed in favor of someone which is the best fit for one's needs (evidence). Then time passes, the hypothesis is tested over and over, to verify that the evidence gathered is, in fact, true (reason). Then, if you're into monogamy, one commits to a life with that person, trusting the gathered evidence, rationale and positive feelings (faith).
Some people require evidence for their beliefs. Others drop rationality all together in favor of emotion. I can't relate to people that have relationships for a few months and then propose. Their threshold of evidence from which they rationalize their faith in that person is, in my opinion, dangerously deficient. Similarly, belief in every religion on Earth appeals to emotion while possessing no evidence. It's not cynicism, it's simply a higher standard.
And I want to say that I find the implication of your last line to be incredibly offensive. Your swipe about having "barriers" which makes me "[miss] much in life", came through loud and clear. That's a bold claim to make about my life. What makes you think I miss out on anything in life? What makes anyone who doesn't share your deity belief have a deficient life compared to yours? That's a disgusting amount of arrogance and disrespect. If you want to have a debate, act like an adult.
Understand this. We think differently.
I ask the question because I want people to answer the question. If I wanted to ask "do you value religion" then i would ask that question.
If you want to answer your own question "do you value religion" then you may certainly do so. But I won't have anything to say on that topic.
The problem I have with faith is that people seem to have different ideas of what faith is. I have no qualms with people who adopt beliefs about things where there is no evidence to form beliefs from, such as what happens to us after we die. What irks me are people who consistently and repeatedly lie and ignore mountains of evidence in order to maintain their beliefs...and they refer to their their blatant dishonesty as faith.
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My BUGWR Hermit druid BUGWR deck.
Are you going to now argue that this thread has nothing to do with religion?
It's clear what you're trying to do. The problem is that you can't just lump all instances of faith and trust together. The trust I have that the stone will fall towards the ground this time like it did the one thousand times previous is not the same as my faith in an overarching order guiding the universe.
It's because I'm always goaded by Highroller to argue something which has nothing to do with my original point. For example, now he would have me argue that my post has nothing to do with religion.
If i respond to him I am literally stuck with arguing "does TomCat's post have nothing to do with religion" which yet again was not the original question asked.
No offense to you but I wanted to clear the air there.
So then what's the line for you? If a friend came to you and wronged you. Would you say its delusional to give him the benefit of the doubt based on prior evidence?
In other words, whats the line, or the leap of faith, between doubting someone and giving them the benefit of the doubt.
What is the line between holding onto the past evidence of wrongs and forgiveness?
Doesn't forgiveness and benefit of the doubt inherently require leaps of faith in our day to day interactions.
I don't want to veer too far off course here. I did pose the "what is the difference between subjective experience" and evidence of God in another thread at some point.
But as for faith of trust, goodwill, friendship, or even love. Do you take those on evidence? Is there ever a point where you don't necessarily have evidence (or insufficient evidence) of these things, but you take them or accept them based on faith.
For instance, forgiving someone who has wronged you a bunch of times.
To me it stands to reason that under a paradigm of evidence, that there is no room to ever forgive someone unless there is sufficient evidentiary basis to do so. (which to some extent contradicts its own conception)
Or would you ever come to believe in your own abilities even though the evidence may warrant that you yourself are incapable of doing something.
---for example, you're at a magic tournament. It's the first time you've made it to top 16. But because it is the first time, it stands to reason from the evidence that you should not expect much of your own abilities.
In fact you should very well expect to lose. Faith in yourself at this point would exceed your own evidence, and to the extent that you believe in yourself beyond what you have done, your own faith in yourself is irrational and therefore unwarranted.
If you really believed in yourself in that situation, would you bet a significant sum of money on your performance? (putting aside any moral or legal issues with such a wager). I would imagine that you would consider it rather foolish, even dangerous if the amount were large enough, to place such a bet, even if someone "had faith in themselves".
This question is nonsensical to me.
I would have to evaluate his character and make a judgment call based on that.
Isn't that what you do? You weigh his good intentions--as you perceive them--to his bad, and make a choice based on that?
I thought everyone did that.....
If a buddy does one bad thing to me I'd not leave him in the ditch because to be my buddy a priori he would have to have been nice to me leading up to the event. Right? ...Honestly, I'm not sure I get what you're trying to comunicate.
This doesn't make any sense to me. Perhaps you could walk us through a hypothetical situation in which person A (who makes decisions solely on evidence) never trusts person B after person B "wrongs" them? How do you envision such a thing working?
Alright. Suppose you have a bully named Bruce, and you have the bullied kid Tim. Bruce picked on Tim all throughout high school.
Flash forward. It's now five years later. Tim sees Bruce at the local magic shop and can react in any number of ways.
1) Tim could hold a grudge against Bruce.
"The guy made my life a living hell. The past instances (evidence) shows the kind of guy he is"
Logically here, I could not condemn Tim. I would say Tim is right. The weight of the evidence does show Bruce to be a bad guy. Tim is logically justified in holding his grudge.
2) Tim could forgive Bruce.
"Look it's five years later, times change. People change." Tim is not holding a grudge, he's going to live life and proceed and accord Bruce with a decent respect. "Look, we were all younger back then, let's let bygones be bygones"
At this point, I'd like to say that Tim has absolutely no evidentiary basis for this holding. In fact, it flies in the face of Tim's evidence. I'm going to contend here that Tim's belief is based on faith--I'd call it wishful thinking, but still a kind of faith---a desire to want to believe that things can be better.
Now that kind of wishful thinking in my opinion is absolutely faith. It is without rational basis really. It is without evidentiary basis. But I cannot say that it is without value. Bruce, prima facie, has a second chance with Tim. Whether Bruce chooses to take that up is up to him.
But the result of the latter is that you have potential for comity between two individuals.
For me, I found this to be true as well. I walked the path as an atheist drawn because I was drawn to pure logic, under the thought that all belief in things not supported by evidence, all instances of taking things upon faith was irrational.
But as time went on, I had to concede that there were in fact many things I tended to take on faith. Most of these things came in the realm of personal relationships mind you, but even so, personal relationships tend to comprise a large part of our lives. (for many people)
I won't deny there are a whole spectrum of mixed emotional/rational possibilities.
But I picked the two trending towards the polar opposite reactions to illustrate a point. In life...both scenarios I presented are certainly possible. We see people forgive, and we see people begrudge.
You ask, wouldn't it be best if Tim took a wait and see approach. Your suggestion is perfectly reasonable, even a little charitable to Bruce. But as for what is best?
Well that depends...
I'd wager that if Tim is truly that magnanimous with his sense of being, then the part where Tim had the greater faith is the best. It is there that there greatest potential for amiable relationships with a former enemy lies.
Insofar as this example pertains to the OP, is there value in faith?
My belief is yes. There is value is faith.
But, isn't that the point? In the face of uncertainly the reasonable person tries to obtain more evidence one way or the other, and then acts based on those findings.
Also a good point. "Faith" can be taken any which way if we're divorcing it wholly from the empirical.
"stupid, childish, nonsensical, and logically erroneous" <- This is how I feel about faith most of the time.
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
You just gave potential evidence for forgiveness or withholding judgement. If, in Tim's experience, people are different at 23-years-old than they were at 18-years-old, and Bruce is a person, then he has a good rational and logical reason to think that Bruce may not be the same jerk he was in high school.
As for faith in general...I do not see value in faith, if faith is defined as belief without, or in spite of, the evidence. In fact, I think it does harm.
Yes, this is exactly it. People who would defend this kind of faith often choose their examples a little too selectively for my taste. Of course it's easy to make up a situation in which acting on an unjustified belief can have positive consequences -- but it's just as easy to do the exact opposite.
It is for the very reason that there is no way of deciding which of these propositions to have faith in that faith (of this belief-in-spite-of-evidence variety) is valueless. It would only have value if it could actually help you identify in advance which beliefs would have positive consequences.
Funnily enough, it turns out we do have a technique that can help do exactly that, and its epistemological basis consists of the repudiation of this kind of faith and an insistence upon reasoning and evidence.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Really?
Do you spend every waking hour fearing that your life could end at any moment?
Or do you walk out of your door not worried about it, not because of a failure to grasp the possibility of death, but the confidence that everything's going to turn out alright?
Don't make the same mistake the OP does, which is lumping all forms of faith and confidence together.