You cannot counter-argue faith. It's not something those who need hard evidence can accept. It's based on trust, much like we do when we accept what scientists tell us when we cannot examine the evidence ourselves, such as the universe expanding and photons having some freaky behaviour. Science needs proof, faith requires none. Someone with faith is willing to give the experience the benefit of the doubt and say, "Well, I don't know, but I felt it". And science is so restricted by what it can measure and quantify it can't allow for possibilities. I'd be much happier if both science and religion could both have the balls to say "We just don't know for sure".
Is Faith Blind?
- Thread starter Hallam Willis
- Start date
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Science does say that actually.
Then I'm more than happy with Science, I don't see much shrugging going on in religion and I think that's dangerous. Yes, we've maybe all had experiences but to label it and call it "God" is limiting those experiences. It doesn't allow for any movement of thought and set's those experiences in stone as something religious, not spiritual, or of the mind.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Ok, but what experiences exactly are you talking about ? I've had none that I would ascribe to anything remotely similar to a god.
An answered prayer perhaps, sitting among the stone circles at Calanesh and feeling something other than your usual mundane thoughts. A feeling of safety in something more powerful than yourself has got your back. Maybe that's all just me and my own mind, or maybe it's something I can't (and don't want to) explain away with a name. And it's something some never experience, and some experience regularly. I don't think faith is blind, since we all come to a faith with a wide range of experiences, like the ones I've mentioned, and many more. Then when we come to that "I haven't got a clue what that was" point some of us call it religious experience, some of us call it higher consciousness and some call it hallucination, but I think they're all in the same ballpark.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Hrm.. I really think it's just your own mind.
You missed one in the last sentence, simply, "I don't know what that was."
It could have been your own mind playing tricks on you (not necessarily hallucination), or maybe you really saw something that has not been explained yet, or perhaps you saw something completely commonplace but just couldn't place it somehow (most common imo. This could also go under the mind playing tricks on you).
Insufficient data or malprocessing seem to be common.
In any case, this mind malprocessing and trickery seems to work on a fairly regular basis, so rather than just dismiss it I tend to work with it, use it and I suppose place faith in it, regardless of its ability to be defined.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
What do you mean "it seems to work on a fairly regular basis" ?
Is it 'right' ? Or does it predict things ?
very nicely put..You mean Duff, the God of Beer??
As others have explained, colloquial "faith" has many versions - from having faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, to having faith that there is an afterlife etc. The only difference is the amount of evidence to support the faith.
But all faith has one thing in common - a bridging from evidence available (from zero to "scientific fact") to expectation of outcome.
The more evidence available, the less blind the "faith", the more rational the expectation can be (but is not guaranteed to be).
So whether one decides "faith is blind" or not is a matter of evidence.
If you admit to having no evidence, your faith is blind.
If you can freely demonstrate your evidence, then not so blind.
If your only evidence is subjective interpretation of experience(s) then while you may consider it evidence for your faith not to be blind, you should only do so once you have thought critically about your experience so that you are not irrationally attributing it to something that it isn't.
Otherwise you may not consider yourself blind, but you certainly have your eyes shut.
but again, the existance of evidence and the ability to present it are a bit different..that's why people hire lawyers..
and that's what make faith "faith"..if you can present the evidence so no one can dispute it it would become a theory or logical fact or something.
i like your definition..but i might add that in faith's situation..the evidence is strictly subjective..
just splendid..
i don't want to turn this thread into a discussion about islam, but i'll apply your test to my faith (which i did a long time ago but you worded it so nicely)..
"the falshood of mohammad pbuh lying about the quran is infinitly more amazing than this world creating itself"
two notes..
1- i said infintly..so there is no possibility (not even one to the power minus google) whatsoever that i'm wrong..so it's not a slightly bigger possibility that i'm right, nor a dominatingly bigger possibility that i'm right..but one with no doubt..one that is the true meaning of (0).
2-in order for it to be infinitly more amzing means
A:: either mohammad's pbuh (evidence) is infinite..then how did i count it?
B:: the (evidence) supporting the world creating itself is zero, which isn't true..
they have to be so so that when you divide them you get a ratio of truth to either of them..
by the logic in A&B.. i thought i would never be able to prove mohammad pbuh right 100%..and that bothered me.. i wouldn't go not with even 99.99%.. i didn't want to live on a method that can be 0.01% wrong.. i wanted to vanquish all doubt..of course a choice between even 51% and 49% is obvious..which mohammad and "atheism" passed easily, but i wanted to keep adding as much 9's to 99.99% as possible..
while doing that, it turned out that B is wrong in the "counting" part..if you run through evidence for some time..you'll see that sometimes evidence in the presence of other evidence is actually new evidence..
i hope these suffice to explain what i mean:
einstein's five house puzzle.
sudoku.
as we can see in those two examples, you start with a small+finite number of facts..and you use them as evidence for you to support your final result.
if i actually gave you the puzzle, but with more starting information than what's given, can't you prove your answer by more than one way?
if i gave you the problem with ALL the gaps filled except for one, can't you solve it in like a hundred ways?(two or three short ones, but more if you take the long ones)
when it comes to mohammad pbuh..the information or evidence given for you to start with is HUMONGOUS..but..philosophically and theoretically speaking..it is countable..you can count all the scientific, historic, logical, emotional, and all the other fields' evidence (in theory)..
the ways these pieces support and entwine with each other is (as i experienced) infinite.
It goes something along the lines of, "Oh you great and powerful universe, you are Soooooo great, and sooooo powerful and I've lost my keys. I need your help to find them" And then they turn up. Or, "Ooooohhhhh you all powerful force of something I can't see, hear, touch but feel in my heart, I'm ready to jump, stop me". And I don't. Is religion my opiate, is it the opiate of the masses? I like the drug if it is, I'll keep shooting it up until I find something that works more effectively. I think maybe people use faith to help them think their lives are not in their hands and that it's all part of a big plan. I see no all loving deity helping out all the starving children of the world, or stopping all wars, or helping millions of people with their suffering. It seems only those in the club can have salvation. Well bugger that, I am my own salvation. I don't need someone threatening me with hell in order to behave morally, I do it because I love humanity. My experiences are just that. Mine and mine alone. I could base a religion around them but minds are weak and will follow whatever they want to believe. Well, most minds in any case. What happens if your deity is wrong? What if you ask your God, or Buddha, or Eris and what comes back is wrong? There's a complete giving over of common sense in religion that is sedating the world.
And nobody's trying to here. What we can argue against is someone who claims that reason and logic will lead to faith. Lori, in this thread and others, has been trying to say exactly that. I, and others, have argued against that claim, because it simply is not true. Logic and reason do not lead to faith.
I agree. I cannot use any logic or reasoning in my own faith, because it's something that logic and reasoning cannot explain, nor I. And to fix it in one point and call it a name and think that it is accessible to everyone using the same path, or though processes is incorrect. Clearly there are those following Christianity or Islam, or Buddhism who pray and aren't happy, and tied up with guilt and fear. I'm completely willing to accept what I have experienced as some neurological defect, I'm probably wired all skew whiff or something, and my beliefs cannot, nor will not save anyone from hell, all it does is answer some questions about why I'm wired up differently to most people and all the answers I come up with are just my own mind. I think that description of God by Lori was beautiful, and aspirational but nothing more than herself, seen as an external object. But perhaps that's what Lori defines God as, herself, in which case why base a whole religion around one person's experiences? It seems illogical.
It's not that it's a defect to experience faith. Rather, It's clearly a natural human condition. While I do believe religious zealotry requires a significantly lower IQ than the average, I don't think faith requires such a thing. I think it could be as simple as a desire to have universal truth, or a desire for that truth to be beautiful and reassuring. I have noticed in my life that the most intelligent of the faithful are ones who do not strictly adhere to the dogmas of their faith; they do not hate homosexuals, or abstain from eating meat on Fridays, or whatever ridiculous little sacrifice their book requires. As was pointed out earlier in the thread, the same book that deems homosexuality a capital crime says the same thing about wearing mixed fabrics--hence, your cotton blend boxer-briefs are punishable by death!
Clearly you wouldn't adhere to this. You're not stupid. And there's nothing wrong with having faith. Don't sell yourself short because there is a faction of your bretheren who can't get out of their own way.
I'm intrigued... care to post an example of evidence for A, just so we have an idea of what sort of thing you are referring to?
Technicly, science does. Yet scientists rarely do. Which puts a ball & chain on me as I defend science to theists.
What do you mean scientists rarely do? Of course they do.
I think I assumed, like many other "religious" people that science tries to refute "God". I'm currently beginning to understand that science has a much more logical approach to spiritual experiences and neither asserts nor refutes the existence of a higher being. It's apparently clear that the external objective being who is able to create a universe through thought is not something we can place hard faith in. And I also think once people start to label their experiences as "God" they are asserting something only provable to themselves.
A lot of people have made that mistake. In fact, it's why there is a leaflet in biology books in schools in Alabama that casts unwarranted doubt on evolution. Many religious folks fear that it is meant to serve as a replacement for religion.
And maybe it will be. Perhaps in time as these evidence become more and more commonly known and understood, less people will find religion. Or perhaps there will be fewer casual believers, leaving only the zealots.
But it doesn't intened to serve as a stand-in for faith. The two aren't comparable. Science is a study, religion is philosophy--albeit a very, very, old and cheap brand of it.