Faith vs Reason

[Doreen]

This is inductive reasoning that all people exercise most of the time, we could not funtion effectively without doing this.

Sure, never said otherwise.

Like everyone else I use inductive reasoning in most of my life activities. When I go to sit in a chair I do not expect it to collapse, but I know with all such choices there is a small statistical probability that at times I may be wrong. In essence there is substantial evidence that the oft repeated activity has a high probability of reprodicibility.

OK

In the case of quality inductive decisions there is substantial evidence that the event will be repeatable, i.e. the sun is highly likely to rise again tomorrow. But as I explained in my earlier message "faith" based decisions (i.e. of the religious style) have no previous evidence to support them.

Well it depends what the assertion is. If someone says you will feel closer to God if you do this or that and you do this or that and you feel closer to God or more peaceful or less grief or stronger or more clear, then you have experience that supports what they have said. Very few religious people, whatever they may say, rely totally on faith. To some degree or other they experience their religion as working. Some decide to believe things not related to their experiences (that the world is 5 thousand years old, for example) but this does not change the fact that most religious belief is at least partially experience/empirically based.

In this case religious faith does not qualify as inductive or deductive reasoning, and without such evidence there is absolutely no justification in making a decision rather than abstaining.[/b]

But no one does this in life. I wish people would actually look at the way they decide things. Often in life we make decisions without being able to support something with significant evidence. We make gut or intuitive decisions all over the place. Take ethical decisions. Most people, including atheists, believe and act like they believe in right and wrong. Despite there being no evidence there really are such things.

Here's another angle:

when you evauate an argument or some form of evidence, at a certain point you decide you have evaluated the argument long enough. You decide that you have directly or indirectly drawn correct conclusions about the semantic scope of the words in the argument, that you are spent enough time analyzing the logic or lack of it present in the argument, etc.

And you stop.

This decision to stop is based on intuition. It is based on a 'I have looked at this enough qualia'.

Everyone does this despite never having one's felt sense tested objectively by others. There are numerous studies out there showing that people regularly overestimate their rational decision making skills. Nevertheless people have faith in their intuition about when they have done enough looking at an argument.

Politics is another realm where people make decisions not based on objective criteria. Reasonable arguments mixing inductive and deductive evidence are amassed on both sides - thinking here of American politics and the Republicans and Democrats. Instead, however, of thinking of it is a kind of taste issue, most people on either side think they are actually choosing the better candidate - or less terrible one - and you can tell this because they argue the point as if it were objective. As if one could really resolve it objectively.

This is another place where I see people - regardless of what they SAY about decision making processes - trusting their intuitions.

As for your other suggestion that one must do their own empirical testing to be certain: But this is just another case of inductive reasoning. For example scientists make dicoveries and have their work peer reviewed and must undergo signficant re-testing and replication of their results before tentative acceptance that the theory is useful. The inductive reasoning here is that such a methodology has substantial evidence that it works very well and that such decisions are inductively sound.

They do inductive work, you decide according to your intuition about how thorough these processes out there are.

Each day at work and in our personal lives we make decisions based on intuition, all of us. And these decisions have real life effects.

Think of all the platitudes - and we all believe in platitudes of some sort.

Think positively.
Look before you leap.
He who hesitates is lost. (just to show the mixed messages)
Prioritize education not romance.
Certain emotions should not be expressed.

as a few off the top of my head. The last is an excellent example because most people have drawn conclusions about emotions and their potential expression without ever studying relevent scientific studies - which are not conclusive anyway. Nevertheless they 1) choose a way of living themselves and 2) tend to talk to friends and family as if their choice of ideas on the matter are objectively correct.

Somehow this realm is repeatedly denied by people who want to say that the problem with religious people is that they make decisions based on 'too little' evidence. (or no evidence)

In my experience EVERYONE does this. And the truth is we should do this. Our brains are set up to force us to make intuitive decisions. Emotions are mixed in with the intellectual processes in the brain for a reason. The works of the neuroscientist Damasion make a strong case for this, pointing out that people who have damaged areas of the brain related to emotions cannot reason well and live this out clearly. He also comes at the issue via the structure of the brain.

But really, all people need to do is examine how they make decisions about what is real and what to do on a day to day basis. Look at what they say to others. Notice how they IN FACT make decisions every day. They will find many decisions including ones that affect other people based on intuition, on ideas handed down from parents or one's circle. Or based on a few experiences one has had - think about one's consciousn and unconscious ideas about the opposite sex. Sure, one can wax rational, but in relationships sooner or later we show our real assumptions about the opposite sex. Assumptions probably partially based on experience - iow empirically based - but not on experiences organized in the way scientific research is organized. Poor sampling, statistical analysis, etc.

Nevertheless, despite the 'poor science' everyone lives as if their conclusions were objective, including rationalists.

One very common belief, held by most people even most rigorous abstainers from beliefs, is that the self persists through time. That 'they' at 40 are the same experiencer as the child of 12. Despite the radical differences between these two entities. Despite the full replacement of matter in the body.

Despite at the very least challenging evidence to the contrary very few non-Buddists abstain from believing in this persistent self. More than that they tend not to think of this as religious.

I am going to leave the discussion here. My parting suggestion would be to actually look at what you say is true to people around you and then see if you truly reached this 'knowledge' via anything remotely scientific. Likewise view your actions - which are all based on decisions - and look for the way you reached these decisions.

I think too often people confuse what they think officially with who they are - forgetting their actions - and also confusing their official thoughts with themselves. In crisis we often see what people really believe and it is rarely based on science. And people rarely are abstainers. Here we are, in the world, and we do decide.

 

[kurros]

But no one does this in life. I wish people would actually look at the way they decide things. Often in life we make decisions without being able to support something with significant evidence. We make gut or intuitive decisions all over the place. Take ethical decisions. Most people, including atheists, believe and act like they believe in right and wrong. Despite there being no evidence there really are such things.

Ahh. At this stage it is important to think about what gut or intuitive decisions actually are. If you are in your car and have a mechanic in the back seat and a child, and you all hear some noise (say it is vague enough that the mechanic can't tell what it is straight away), whose gut instinct about whether it is a problem or not do you trust? Say you only give the mechanic or the child half a second to decide, so the mechanic doesn't have time to think consciously about the problem. Of course you will still trust the mechanic over the child, because the mechanics 'gut instinct' has been highly trained over many years to evaluate these kinds of problems while the childs has not. The mechanic's unconscious mind has access to a wealth of data concerning the problem which it can and will use to help it make a decision.
Actually there is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, 'Blink' where he discusses these things, it is actually very good. I think I agreed with most of what he says in there, but it's been a while since I read it.

So the point is, we should definitely not be trusting our gut instincts on things unless we have trained our instincts to be trustworthy. Our unconscious mind performs inductive reasoning just the same as our conscious mind, it just does it without us knowing what exact reasoning process has taken place. There are good arguments that our brains must work this way, because inductive reasoning is based on probability theory which is undeniably an accurate method of decision making when sufficient data is available. All brains which do not make use of it will be heavily naturally selected against.
But remember, unless our brains have sufficient data (from past experiences) the inferences it makes unconsciously will be no better than the ones it makes consciously (probably much worse in fact).

Here's another angle:

when you evauate an argument or some form of evidence, at a certain point you decide you have evaluated the argument long enough. You decide that you have directly or indirectly drawn correct conclusions about the semantic scope of the words in the argument, that you are spent enough time analyzing the logic or lack of it present in the argument, etc.

And you stop.

This decision to stop is based on intuition. It is based on a 'I have looked at this enough qualia'.

Everyone does this despite never having one's felt sense tested objectively by others. There are numerous studies out there showing that people regularly overestimate their rational decision making skills. Nevertheless people have faith in their intuition about when they have done enough looking at an argument.

The answer here follows directly from above. If you have trained your intuition in the task or type of argument (perhaps you have done it many times before), then quite likely your intuition will be correct and you are probably justified in trusting it. If not, then it is just a wild guess and not in any way trustworthy. Of course people do this anyway but that doesn't make it the correct or wise thing to do.

Politics is another realm where people make decisions not based on objective criteria. Reasonable arguments mixing inductive and deductive evidence are amassed on both sides - thinking here of American politics and the Republicans and Democrats. Instead, however, of thinking of it is a kind of taste issue, most people on either side think they are actually choosing the better candidate - or less terrible one - and you can tell this because they argue the point as if it were objective. As if one could really resolve it objectively.

This is another place where I see people - regardless of what they SAY about decision making processes - trusting their intuitions.

Yes well in this instance most peoples intuition is not at all well trained and they shouldn't be trusting it. It is probably highly destructive for society that politics is influences by their crappy intuition in this way. At best their intuition is only trained by how their particular circumstances have correlated with one party or another being in power, and by the media and news and conversations with people, all of which may be highly untrustworthy sources of information to train ones intuition with. Unlike the mechanic and his direct experience with cars.

They do inductive work, you decide according to your intuition about how thorough these processes out there are.

Each day at work and in our personal lives we make decisions based on intuition, all of us. And these decisions have real life effects.

Yes, and in many cases our intuition can be quite trustworthy, especially in circumstances with which we have a lot of experience (like our work and personal lives). It is when this same intuition is turned onto things which we do NOT have a lot of experience (or for which the information gathered by our unconscious mind may be untrustworthy) that we should definitely not be 'going with our gut'.

Think of all the platitudes - and we all believe in platitudes of some sort.

Think positively.
Look before you leap.
He who hesitates is lost. (just to show the mixed messages)
Prioritize education not romance.
Certain emotions should not be expressed.

Well some of these things are taught to us by our parents, some our intuitions pick up on their own through life experience, but again they are things that should be critically assessed once one is old enough to think for themselves, and should be reassessed when new situations arise for which they are perhaps not applicable (we should not extrapolate our intuition too far!).

as a few off the top of my head. The last is an excellent example because most people have drawn conclusions about emotions and their potential expression without ever studying relevent scientific studies - which are not conclusive anyway. Nevertheless they 1) choose a way of living themselves and 2) tend to talk to friends and family as if their choice of ideas on the matter are objectively correct.

That doesn't make it a smart thing to do. Again, perhaps it will work fine in ones own little corner of the world where one has direct experience and everyone agrees with them, but if one were to go and live amongst a totally different culture then one would be quite stupid to continue to act entirely from their intuition about such matters.

Somehow this realm is repeatedly denied by people who want to say that the problem with religious people is that they make decisions based on 'too little' evidence. (or no evidence)

In my experience EVERYONE does this. And the truth is we should do this. Our brains are set up to force us to make intuitive decisions. Emotions are mixed in with the intellectual processes in the brain for a reason. The works of the neuroscientist Damasion make a strong case for this, pointing out that people who have damaged areas of the brain related to emotions cannot reason well and live this out clearly. He also comes at the issue via the structure of the brain.

But really, all people need to do is examine how they make decisions about what is real and what to do on a day to day basis. Look at what they say to others. Notice how they IN FACT make decisions every day. They will find many decisions including ones that affect other people based on intuition, on ideas handed down from parents or one's circle. Or based on a few experiences one has had - think about one's consciousn and unconscious ideas about the opposite sex. Sure, one can wax rational, but in relationships sooner or later we show our real assumptions about the opposite sex. Assumptions probably partially based on experience - iow empirically based - but not on experiences organized in the way scientific research is organized. Poor sampling, statistical analysis, etc.

Nevertheless, despite the 'poor science' everyone lives as if their conclusions were objective, including rationalists.

One very common belief, held by most people even most rigorous abstainers from beliefs, is that the self persists through time. That 'they' at 40 are the same experiencer as the child of 12. Despite the radical differences between these two entities. Despite the full replacement of matter in the body.

Despite at the very least challenging evidence to the contrary very few non-Buddists abstain from believing in this persistent self. More than that they tend not to think of this as religious.

I am going to leave the discussion here. My parting suggestion would be to actually look at what you say is true to people around you and then see if you truly reached this 'knowledge' via anything remotely scientific. Likewise view your actions - which are all based on decisions - and look for the way you reached these decisions.

I think too often people confuse what they think officially with who they are - forgetting their actions - and also confusing their official thoughts with themselves. In crisis we often see what people really believe and it is rarely based on science. And people rarely are abstainers. Here we are, in the world, and we do decide.

This is getting long, but I think I have said enough to make it clear how a more thorough understanding of how intuition works can help one understand when it should and should not be trusted. I would only be saying basically the same thing again if I bothered to deconstruct that whole argument. But if you would like then I can.

 

[Lori_7]

lori,

That is not strictly "faith", that is "reason". You have knowledge of that person's past deeds, that's why you trust them, i.e. evidence of their trustworthiness exists. This is a reasonable position. Reason is based on evidence.

The term "faith" has two very distinct meanings, one is the example above, and the other is in the religious context where it means conviction of truth despite absence of any evidence. In that scenario faith is quite irrational.

Religionists are forced to accept that their beliefs are based on faith (zero evidence) but they don't want to be accurately labeled as irrational so they continue to give the alternate example for the meaning of "faith" and erroneously claim the meanings are the same.

you're wrong. there is no difference in the meaning. there is evidence. it's been presented by god, through the spirit, to me, personally. and like any other relationship, where you grow to trust someone based upon knowledge of them, i trust god.

my knowledge didn't come from a book, or from a preacher; it came from a real spiritual interaction.

i'm very sure that there are religious people who really don't know, and maybe wish they did...maybe not, but they claim to believe anyway. i don't see how a belief such as this is possible.

 

[Cris]

lori,

you're wrong. there is no difference in the meaning. there is evidence. it's been presented by god, through the spirit, to me, personally. and like any other relationship, where you grow to trust someone based upon knowledge of them, i trust god.

my knowledge didn't come from a book, or from a preacher; it came from a real spiritual interaction.

Yes I well understand your position on this and I have met others like you who appear equally convinced.

What you and they appear to have in common is a wonderful and colorful emotional imagination, that has been corrupted by extremely powerful religious propaganda such that you can no longer distinguish between reality and your own internally created fantasy. Of course it feels extremely real to you since the entire phenomenon is derived from the emotional centers in your brain. Any ability to reason you might have had is simply not emotionally attractive compared to your overwhelming fantasy world and will likely never surface until some other major real world emotional event shakes you out of your delusional state.

I wish you well in the meantime.

 

[Lori_7]

lori,

Yes I well understand your position on this and I have met others like you who appear equally convinced.

What you and they appear to have in common is a wonderful and colorful emotional imagination, that has been corrupted by extremely powerful religious propaganda such that you can no longer distinguish between reality and your own internally created fantasy. Of course it feels extremely real to you since the entire phenomenon is derived from the emotional centers in your brain. Any ability to reason you might have had is simply not emotionally attractive compared to your overwhelming fantasy world and will likely never surface until some other major real world emotional event shakes you out of your delusional state.

I wish you well in the meantime.

Fact is, I've never had a colorful emotional imagination and I've always been turned off by religion. Fact is, you don't know much about me, or these other people at all, you simply believe what you want about us, whether its true or not, despite any proof or facts, because its what you want to believe.

 

[spidergoat]

No? What about the mice?

 

[Lori_7]

No? What about the mice?

lol. not sure about the mice, but it might be fun if they were still around. and if they were imagination, then that was beaten out of me at a very young age. that's why i grew up to be an accountant. bleh.

 

[spidergoat]

What about the desire for a special friend that only you could see? One could argue that your fantasies just became more mature.

 

[Lori_7]

What about the desire for a special friend that only you could see? One could argue that your fantasies just became more mature.

i told you about joey spagota? did i tell you that during the weirdness in 2005 that god told me he was a real live person who has a different name today and it scared me? and i gave a nonsensical response, "he wasn't even born then", and the answer i got was "there is no time here."

so strange.

 

[spidergoat]

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

 

[Cris]

Yup that's colorful emotional imagination at its finest.

 

[jayleew]

Why do we doubt the power of our mind's imagination, much less the power of our minds? Lori, why can't it just be you? I've experienced a few doosies too, and one I could say was a spirit, but I don't believe in the paranormal....although there was one episode out of thousands of Ghost Hunters that was compelling. Very clearly a picture frame turned, which was either wires or a spirit. It is a shame if they finally succumbed to lying.

 

[Lori_7]

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

well gosh guys, if i had known i was on trial i would have plead the fifth.

i looked up the definition of imagination just to be sure, and what i've experienced doesn't apply. if i'm not mistaken, an imagination is a willful endeavor.

 

[Lori_7]

Why do we doubt the power of our mind's imagination, much less the power of our minds? Lori, why can't it just be you? I've experienced a few doosies too, and one I could say was a spirit, but I don't believe in the paranormal....although there was one episode out of thousands of Ghost Hunters that was compelling. Very clearly a picture frame turned, which was either wires or a spirit. It is a shame if they finally succumbed to lying.

i don't doubt the power of imagination or the mind, but after living in this body of mine for 43 years, i'm aware of what it's capable of, and i couldn't have dreamed up the stuff that's happened to me in a million years. i'm just not that intelligent or creative. i am self-aware though.

and how can you make a statement like "but i don't believe in the paranormal"? beyond what's normal and scientifically explained. you think abnormal things don't ever happen and that science has come to a screeching halt?

 

[spidergoat]

well gosh guys, if i had known i was on trial i would have plead the fifth.

i looked up the definition of imagination just to be sure, and what i've experienced doesn't apply. if i'm not mistaken, an imagination is a willful endeavor.

The joey spagota comment was hilarious. I never heard that before. You must acknowledge that your experiences do challenge your credibility as a witness. Didn't mean to make it personal, you're just naturally funny, and it brings out the comical in me. The scientifically minded might call your encounter a symptom of schizotypal personality disorder.

 

[Medicine*Woman]

i told you about joey spagota? did i tell you that during the weirdness in 2005 that god told me he was a real live person who has a different name today and it scared me? and i gave a nonsensical response, "he wasn't even born then", and the answer i got was "there is no time here."

so strange.

*************
M*W: Lori, have you considered a career in writing or film-making? I think you could come up with something more creative than the crap they're putting in movie theatres today.

 

[Lori_7]

The joey spagota comment was hilarious. I never heard that before. You must acknowledge that your experiences do challenge your credibility as a witness. Didn't mean to make it personal, you're just naturally funny, and it brings out the comical in me. The scientifically minded might call your encounter a symptom of schizotypal personality disorder.

Oh you know they do, and yet I am not. Then again, no one knows what schizophrenia is now do they? Haha.

I don't care how people judge me. I am accountable to something that could and has fucked me and my life all up, for my own good, and I believe for the good of others as well. I am honest.

I'm glad you think I'm funny. I like to make people laugh.

 

[Lori_7]

*************
M*W: Lori, have you considered a career in writing or film-making? I think you could come up with something more creative than the crap they're putting in movie theatres today.

I was just telling my husband that the other day. Our story would make an awesome movie.