FAITH (blind faith)

[water]

I think we need faith, or we're lost. Gödel will only help make practicing that faith a more "reasonable" activity, although still not quite justified.

Why this almost mad pursuit for justification?
Isn't the pursuit for justification yet another action of being "reasonable"?

 

[Jenyar]

Hmm...Yes it is. But denying the complete authority of reason nevertheless doesn't deny it's validity. Justice and morality would not work if they didn't depend on reasonable premises (i.e. everybody can *reason* it out for themselves).

Doesn't even our conclusion that reason isn't absolute, rely on reasoning? Aren't we asking people to be reasonable about their application of reason? The faculty never disappears, but it submits to something that goes beyond cold reason and into the realms of intuitition and common sense - somewhere in the parametric regions.

The pursuit of justification is an intuitive pursuit that relies on faith in reason to be reasonable. What does that say about faith? Faith in reason isn't always misplaced, but it isn't the only faith at play in the fields of the Lord.

 

[water]

I think I have it: picture yourself and your mind as an organism with many pairs of arms. One pair is for performing functions of reason, another pair for performing functions of emotions, another pair for functions of spirituality etc. etc. Depending on what you use most, that pair develops most, grows most strong, while others remain unused and shrink. Sometimes, a work can be done using one arm from one pair, and another arm from another pair.

Now, in order to be evenly well-developed, all pairs would have to be used. Someone with using just one pair of arms, has others like stumps -- what a disgusting picture.

Anyaway, this right now hasn't been an exactly dashing metaphor, but I think it gets my point across.

 

[Jenyar]

Perfectly! If the work you do only requires the use of your arms, you may grow up believing your arms is all you need. We live in a world that operates on reason, much like the world used to operate on religion. The amounts of faith people exercise is repressed, replaced by reasonable "reasons". Love is a chemical reaction, people are organisms essentially not much different from fungi. And subconsciously, the world we raise indoctrinates us. Religion is dismissed anachronistically as "old reasons" - projecting today's "reasonability" to times when reason operated on different assumptions.

And in the meanwhile people are walking on their hands and drinking through their noses, looking a foolish lot, and wondering why people don't understand each other anymore. They're speaking with their evidence and listening with their proofs (or their specially built satellite dishes). And they call faith blind...

 

[looking_forward]

First of all you mean immorality, but still I'm not confusing them, what's immoral is one thing and what is a sin is one thing. But mostly what is immoral is also a sin.

I dont know if we can make this any clearer cyperium, a sin and a moral transgression are different. When a theist sees someone kill someone for instance, they think "he committed a sin, he has gone aginst god who says thou shalt not kill" When an atheist sees someone kill someone, he thinks "he did something morally wrong." (the morals that are not passed on by belief in a doctrine but rather the morals that are part of human nature). It is based on the observer. Thiests can believe that the murderer is sinning, and an athesit will think they are being immoral (it is irrelevant whether these two things are equal). so there is no way to define whether he is sinning, unless you base it off what the murder believes, so if he is an atheist he would not be sinning then. after all, when an idol worshipper worsips an idol, you view him as sinning, even though he beleieves he is doing a great serivce to his god.
Your argument is essentially one of language. When a spanish speaking person says hello to someone they say "hola" when an english speaker says hello, they say "hello" by saying that the atheist is sinning, you are saying that the spaniard is actually saying "hello" The message or signifigance is the same as hello, but nevertheless he does not actually say "hello" he says "hola"

 

[KennyJC]

This thread was revived almost exactly 2 years after it was created. This restores my faith in God.

 

[KennyJC]

The above post was created at precisley 1:00am. This means I get into Heaven.

 

[Michael]

mis-t-highs, I tend to agree with you when talking about the modern-day and monotheisms.

But in the past it was probably a different story. Today it’s hard to imagine what life would be like 1500 years ago living in some totally uneducated backwater German village, where survival of the fittest met just that. It may be possible that life was actually better for the common person living in said village with a religion present than without. I’d argue, post-hoc, that that must have been the case.

Think about the greatest of the early civilizations. Indian, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese and Romans, as a whole, seemed to do exceptionally well under their respective polytheisms.

Religions must afford a starting point - or else it they wouldn't have been so prevalent. Perhaps that is due to our evolved propensity to make Type II errors? Regardless, early societies do seem to do better with a religion present than without. A religious society can mentally control a large enough number of people and motivate a large enough portion of these people to produce a viable economically. This then allows for the brightest among the society to have Philosophical debates, mathematical discoveries and scientific endeavor. Even in our modern day societies only a hand full of people will be so inclined to these pursuits.

So perhaps, in the past, there was a need for religions purely to get society up to the point where economic forces could then prevail. I imagine that at the turning point of going from a Religious ruled society to one based on Economic forces there will be friction and hence conflict. Obviously the people in power are in power because of some sort of religious-mandate and in the ensuing power struggles the Galileo’s are first in the firing line. That's just human nature.



Also, my personal opinion is that the philosophic approach of some religions (say Buddhism) has something to offer to modern day societies. A religion whose very heart says don’t believe a word you read here, this could all be bullshit, is sort of endearing isn’t it?

Absolutely no scientific claim made in the world is believed to be true by the scientific community, the press, and the majority of the public, including even the most rabid xians/muslims, until other respected and acknowledged scientists can repeat the experiments and come up with the same results as those who claim new discoveries.

Well... there is String Theory!


Just kidding,

Michael II

 

[Michael]

The above post was created at precisley 1:00am. This means I get into Heaven.

Actually in Australia it was 12:00 - sorry it's Hell for ya buddy

 

[lightgigantic]

mis-t-highs

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill."
H.L. Mencken

So you have faith in Mencken?

Faith:.

There has never existed in the world anything more intensely vile, contemptuous, and dangerous to freedom, peace and progress as deeply held blind faith in organized religions and holy dogmas.

So how do you establish that faithis intrinsic to religion - for instance all of the conclusions of contemporary astronomy are based are contingent to the faith that there is a uniformity of time and space. Is astronomy also evil?

The Christian dominated society of this country has painted a lovely picture of the faithful flock and how deserving faithful people are of praise and respect.

So what are trying to establish? The moment you talk of society (regardless of the absence/presence of religion) is the same moment you talk of higher and lower - even in communism they had a managing class

Beneath the Xian whitewash is the plain hard truth. If a person treated his children half as cruelly as the supposedly divine and omnibenevolent Judeo-Christian blood god has treated his children, the Christians would be out to give him the death penalty. Does belief in cruel gods create cruel people, or do cruel people simply make their gods in their own likeness?

First of al you have to establish the premises you are advocating to come to your conclusion that god is cruel - otherwise you just sound as nutso as any misinformed religious type looney

Faith is the nemesis of logic. Where there is religious faith, there can not be logic. The two are quite completely mutually exclusive. In every endeavor other than religion, if a person accepts things as being true with no quality evidence to support such beliefs, then the person is considered foolish and even contemptible by society. When acting exactly the same way regarding religion, the person is considered as perfectly normal. There is in faith an immunity to reality.

So therefore the first foundation of knowledge, particularly if one wants to examine its validity, is to come to the position of being qualified to examine the evidence - for instance if you present the "evidence" of the physics of rocket science to someone who is not qualified it also appears to be apparently bereft of "evidence" - after all it is just a bunch of squiggles and equations to the uneducated

Faith is the destroyer of science and progress.

Well the residents of hiroshima may disagree ....

Faith in gods creates a horrible aversion to change. The status quo is the rule of thumb and the "faithful" conservative Xian's morals are the worn out morals of liberals from forty or so years before him.

and the standard arguments of atheism are somehow resistant to institutionalisation?

Yet along he goes dragging his feet. "Why free the slaves? It's in the bible." The faithful Xians were enraged when Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod. "It's a sin" they screamed. "God surely controls the lightning and who are you to interfere?"

Lets unpack this argument - once upon a time, approximately 250 years ago, there was an american scientist who had a falling out with the christians in his community - this indicates that all faithful christians have ideologies that are in conflict with science

There was Galileo who was tried by the Catholic Church for sacrilege because he claimed the world was round and that the earth orbited the sun, and not the other way around as the bible says.

ditto

The Fundies are this very minute all across the country attempting to remove evolution from the science books, even though it is established as fact. The list is endless.

One thing that could help establish evolution is scientific evidence of macro-evolution - I mean according to your opening spiel we shouldn't accept things on faith

Religion and science are mutually exclusive. Christian Science is nothing but an oxymoron.

I guess the major flaw of your argument is that you are assuming that the word "christian" incorporates everything defined by the word religion - religion is a whole catergory

Faith is the slaughterer of freedom. If there is a concept more hateful to the hearts of the faithful flock than freedom, then it is unimaginable what it would be. Truly the flock pays due lip service to freedom, but their every endeavor is to control and outlaw it. To pass laws to prohibit sexual preferences in the bedroom of two adults is nothing but pure tyranny.

Still not clear how sexual liberty equals freedom - or even examples where such sexual legislations have been successfully enforced en masse

Why do these people care who you're sleeping with?

there are heaps of places in the world where religious people don't care who you are sleeping with

What business is it of there's? The faithful claim that they simply want to live life according to the rules of their god, but they want nothing short of making everyone live by those exact rules.

For a functioning society certain rules must exist - if you contend that then I guess your option is to locate yourself in scoieties that more suit your needs and concerns - for instance, to get back to the sex thing, which seems to be a big slice of your cake, you may say that you are free to do anything and everything in the name of sex, but if the results of your behaviour esablish a social result, namely unwanted progeny, then there is a basis for social legislation, or at the least social education of normative values

Everywhere you find these faithful people you will see them attempting to control the other people around them.

Everywhere? Up until now your argument has been quite provincial

They even have the audacity to claim they are persecuted, simply because people resist them and rail against their bids for totalitarian control. The faithful claim they are patriots, but they resemble old Russian Communism much more closely than capitalism.

If you ar e free to yell and rebel against them aren't they also free to do the same? Of course you may argue that in your locality that they are in power, but if you got in power it seems like you wouldn't hesitate social policies to silence them - so what's the difference, except that its the age old argument of confrontational value systems

Faith is the destructor of individuality. Everywhere the faithful are trying to enact their version of God's word into law and force the rest of society to be just like them. The faithful proudly claim the title of "Sheep". What more needs be said?

You're not trying to change other people's minds about whether they can change other people's minds ar e you?

Faith is the fountainhead of ignorance. The faithful everywhere cast off logic and science as the temptations of Satan. Any science, theory, or fact which contradicts their religion is perceived to be purely evil. This inevitably leads to the embracing of myths and ignorance and the shunning of rational thinking.

You may be judging a phenomena (religion) by its lowest stereotype (bible peddling foaming at the mouth, street corner residing chrtistians) - suppose I chose a stark raving mad lunatic who was convinced he was a genetic engineer to establish the authenticity of genetics, what do you think I would conclude?

Faith is the procreator of intolerance.

Seems you cannot tolerate people who have a convictionof the existence of god - or perhaps you can tolerate them as long as they are rezoned to someplace like the jewish ghettos of the nazi german era

Faith like nothing else strengthens intolerance and helps it breed and spread. What else would come about from people who claim as divinely inspired a book which espouses slavery, homophobia, murder, infanticide, genocide, racism, rape and kidnapping in the name of a loving god?

Hey - sounds exactly the same as MTV