How do you intelligent people possibly choose "faith"?

[Willie Boy]

The Bible makes so many demonstrably false statements (like that insects have 4 legs, or that rabbits chew their cud, etc) that there is simply no rational basis to hold it's claim as the revelation from an all knowing deity correct.

Are these the errors you are talking about? If this is your evidence for the inaccuracy of the Bible, then you are sorely mistaken. Your above mentioned evidence is not part of the Bible. Your claims are therefore proven to be in error.

 

[hotatlboi]

Your above mentioned evidence is not part of the Bible.

Yes it is, I need to expand my thoughts on those items and add references though. I'll post another thread later.

 

[Willie Boy]

The Bible does not claim that insects have four legs. Nor does it claim that rabbits chew their cud.

Your posts are good for a laugh, though. Its very entertaining to see just how far into absurdity a person will go to try to influence others.

 

[hotatlboi]

The Bible does not claim that insects have four legs. Nor does it claim that rabbits chew their cud.

It sure does.

http://www.justusboys.com/forum/showthread.php?t=289413

Your posts are good for a laugh, though. Its very entertaining to see just how far into absurdity a person will go to try to influence others.

It's amazing how heavy the denial is from religious people once you confront them with the errors in the Bible.

 

[FirmaFan]

The Bible does not claim that insects have four legs. Nor does it claim that rabbits chew their cud.

Your posts are good for a laugh, though. Its very entertaining to see just how far into absurdity a person will go to try to influence others.

Even ignoring four legged insects, you must admit that the bible has monumental errors beyond just simple factual lapses. The entire genesis story has been thoroughly debunked. There was no Adam and Eve. They never existed. We absolutely know this as fact. There also was no global flood. Geological evidence in no way supports any such event anywhere in the world. These are not little blips of information like four-legged insects, these are large sections of the text completely denounced by scientific evidence. Nearly all who choose to rely on the scientific method as a career and at the same time maintain their faith in the judeo-christian god have no problem writing off the stories of Adam and Eve and the global flood as allegorical stories, fully understanding how evidence shows these stories not to be true. The problem I have with this is that the bible makes no distinction between the existence of Adam and Eve and the existence of God. Why is only the stories that have been debunked by science that are viewed as allegorical? Isn't it then possible that the entire text is allegorical? That none of it is actually true? Of course that is a possibility. However, those aspects of the text that are entirely unfalsifiable (meaning no amount of scientific discovery can conclusively debunk the claim) are still maintained as truth, being taken on faith alone, despite the extreme scrutiny of scientific investigation that is applied to every other claim in these people's professions. Cold fusion is a great example. It was once thought that fusion (that being the combining of atomic molecules into higher elements, hydrogen + hydrogen = helium, as an example) could only be achieved at extremely high temperatures, nearing to the temperatures akin to the surface of the sun (which is simply a big fusion reactor). Two scientists then reported to have achieved fusion at room temperature. The implication was astounding...fusion is an extreme source of energy (see the sun or a hydrogen bomb detonation to see the kinds of energy we're talking about). When the claim about cold fusion was made, did other scientists take it on faith that cold fusion was possible? Absolutely not. They immediately went out to replicate the results. In the end, cold fusion turned out to be a fraud, and is still, to this day, nonexistent. Why is this same scrutiny not applied to the existence of god? And why, when scientific scrutiny is, by nature of the claim, unable to debunk the claim, this said claim taken as faith to be true instead of being seen as allegorical as the biblical flood and the genesis story?

To refer back to you first post, your conclusion basically came down to this: I have no evidence for the existence of god, but there is no evidence he doesn't exist either, therefore, both sides of the claim are taken on as faith. This argument is not new. It is an argument that seems very very powerful on its surface, which is why so many seem taken in by it. There are an infinite number of things that meet your argumentative criteria, claims for which there is no evidence of their nonexistence. I can come up with ten right now: flying spaghetti monster, celestial teapots too small to detect orbiting Pluto, invisible faeries in my garden that leave no traces of their existence, leprechauns, unicorns, mermaids, the lost city of Atlantis, alien civilizations, ManBearPig, and the existence of The Matrix. I can go on forever. I have said this before, but I never mind repeating it: the mere fact that something can not be disproven does not elevate the probability of it being true to the probability of it being false. It does not take as much faith to not believe in god that it does to believe in him for this same reason. Skepticism to extraordinary claims is not an act of faith, it's an act of rationality. Everyday you apply are applying this rationality to claims you are presented with, no matter how big or small...with the exception of one: the existence of god. Why is the existence of god seemingly immune to people's natural inclination towards skepticism that resonates through every other extraordinary claim encountered?

 

[Kulindahr]

I think this is actually a misconception about atheism. It's generally perceived to be a kind of anti-faith. If we were to reduce it to symbols you could say that belief in God is the number 1. The misconception is that atheism is represented by -1 when, really, it's 0.

No, 0 is agnosticism, the position that neither side can be established sufficiently for a commitment to be made.

I disagree. The Holy Books themselves claim their own veracity and so the only way you could prove their validity is using their own terms and "evidence", which is just a form of circular logic that ends up defeating itself.

Not so -- if it's only circular reasoning, it's a trap.

I know people who went from atheism to agnosticism to deism because of science -- the original Intelligent Design before the young-earth Creationists stole the term. That led them to consider various scriptures -- so they didn't come from inside a circle.

The circle is typical of many people brought up in an authoritarian version of religion.

I'm saying the question of faith in that case often reduces to one of simple logic. You can't logically say "I have faith it is true" when it is demonstrably false. Faith is belief without evidence, but only a fool would "believe" in something with evidence to the contrary.

You and Dawkins and that false definition.
Go read a little book called The Dawkins Delusion. It has a very good analysis of that particular fable.

Yes they like to feel that their faith is based on something tangible. So if they can rationalize to themselves that some holy book does actually represent the words of a deity, that will often form their connection of their faith to the physical world based on reason.

If they can see the Bible or the Koran as something that plausibly could be written by a deity, they see the claim it was as not far fetched.

I had a long argument with Kulindahr on this in another thread on here. His basic claim was "if 'God' exists and he were to communicate with humanity, I find it plausible that this communication would look something like the Bible", or something to that effect.

I came the path of Intelligent Design (original version), which can be summed up nicely in the words of an old Bloom Country comic strip, in which Milo declares that the universe is just a bit too orderly to be an accident.

So, yes, having been brought by science to believe that there is/was a Creator, I looked for a rational option. The only Creation story that makes any sense is that in Genesis 1, where the orderly process is portrayed with the literary device of six days as the acts of a mighty King.

And before anyone pounces on any alleged "errors" in that account, I'll point out that the only things that can be regarded as scientific claims are that there is a sun, a moon, stars, and the earth; there is light and there is darkness; that the earth has land, and sea, and an atmosphere; that there are living plants and animals on the land and in the sea and some who fly; that creatures bring forth offspring like themselves; that there are humans; and that there is day, and night -- and that's it.

 

[Royal Heart]

No, 0 is agnosticism, the position that neither side can be established sufficiently for a commitment to be made.

It's just an analogy. In this analogy agnosticism would be similar to a qubit - a number that can have a value anywhere between -1 and +1, but isn't either. Again, though, it's just an analogy.

I know people who went from atheism to agnosticism to deism because of science -- the original Intelligent Design before the young-earth Creationists stole the term. That led them to consider various scriptures -- so they didn't come from inside a circle.

They found themselves trapped in one, though. It would be difficult to really comment on these people without knowing how they moved from one to the next and so forth until they decided deism was the answer. There could have been a colossal failure in logic, or it could have been that the desire to believe outweighed the desire to objectively seek the truth. It happens.

The circle is typical of many people brought up in an authoritarian version of religion.

How would a non-authoritarian version of one of the Big Three religions argue that suspension of critical thought for the sake of a God who never demonstrates its own existence to us be preferable?

You and Dawkins and that false definition.

It's not a false definition. That's actually how the word is defined in various dictionaries.

faith [feyth]
–noun [Middle English, from Anglo-Norman fed, from Latin fidēs; see bheidh- in Indo-European roots.]

1. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

I came the path of Intelligent Design (original version), which can be summed up nicely in the words of an old Bloom Country comic strip, in which Milo declares that the universe is just a bit too orderly to be an accident.

"Too orderly" is an incredibly weak reason to suspend critical thought and abandon reasonable inquiry. Especially since we know that chaos inevitably establishes systems of order if left alone. This can be observed in natural phenomenon such as the weather - systems of chaos that develop patterns on their own without any interference.

But this is not the topic to discuss the origins of the universe. Please keep in mind we are to discuss why or why not choosing to believe in something that is not based on logical proof or material evidence is superior or preferable.

 

[Kulindahr]

They found themselves trapped in one, though. It would be difficult to really comment on these people without knowing how they moved from one to the next and so forth until they decided deism was the answer. There could have been a colossal failure in logic, or it could have been that the desire to believe outweighed the desire to objectively seek the truth. It happens.

You're projecting that desire to believe. I didn't see it.

How would a non-authoritarian version of one of the Big Three religions argue that suspension of critical thought for the sake of a God who never demonstrates its own existence to us be preferable?

Tell a Jesuit he suspends critical thought.....

"Too orderly" is an incredibly weak reason to suspend critical thought and abandon reasonable inquiry. Especially since we know that chaos inevitably establishes systems of order if left alone. This can be observed in natural phenomenon such as the weather - systems of chaos that develop patterns on their own without any interference.

And why is chaos so orderly?
"Too orderly" means that wherever we turn, there is order in the universe. That's an awfully strong reason: orderliness is ubiquitous!

But this is not the topic to discuss the origins of the universe. Please keep in mind we are to discuss why or why not choosing to believe in something that is not based on logical proof or material evidence is superior or preferable.

I'm not convinced of the premise.

 

[hotatlboi]

And before anyone pounces on any alleged "errors" in that account, I'll point out that the only things that can be regarded as scientific claims are that there is a sun, a moon, stars, and the earth; there is light and there is darkness; that the earth has land, and sea, and an atmosphere; that there are living plants and animals on the land and in the sea and some who fly; that creatures bring forth offspring like themselves; that there are humans; and that there is day, and night -- and that's it.

yeah, naturally the only things that can be called scientifically accurate are the things the Bible gets right.

Since the Bible has no errors, anything that appears to be an error was obviously meant to mean something else.

how convenient

 

[Royal Heart]

You're projecting that desire to believe. I didn't see it.

I'm not surprised you don't see it. When I was a devout Christian I never saw it, either.

Tell a Jesuit he suspends critical thought...

That doesn't really answer my question.

And why is chaos so orderly?

We're not sure yet, but it's exciting to try to figure it out and when we finally come across the answer, I'm sure it'll be completely mind-blowing. I think it's a bit lazy to ignore this question by saying "God did it."

"Too orderly" means that wherever we turn, there is order in the universe. That's an awfully strong reason: orderliness is ubiquitous!

I would avoid the phrase "too orderly", then, as it suggests a gross misunderstanding. You're right that there is order everywhere in the universe, even when its hidden within systems of chaos. My point, however, is that order can and does arise out of chaos. It doesn't need to have a designer.

I'm not convinced of the premise.

Why do I have to convince you that this thread is about why someone would choose to suspend critical thought in favor of belief in spite of the lack of evidence or even in the face of contrary evidence? It's right there in the title of this thread.

 

[Kulindahr]

yeah, naturally the only things that can be called scientifically accurate are the things the Bible gets right.

No, those are the only things Genesis 1 says of a scientific nature, because they're the only things scientifically measurable that are asserted as facts.

Since the Bible has no errors, anything that appears to be an error was obviously meant to mean something else.

how convenient

You laugh at yourself here, because you're engaging a fable of your own devising.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm not surprised you don't see it. When I was a devout Christian I never saw it, either.

You never saw people convinced against their own inclinations? People who came to faith who had no wish to do so? That's a pretty limited experience you had.

That doesn't really answer my question.

Sure it does -- it says that your question is wrong.

We're not sure yet, but it's exciting to try to figure it out and when we finally come across the answer, I'm sure it'll be completely mind-blowing. I think it's a bit lazy to ignore this question by saying "God did it."

How is it lazy to do what most of the great scientists in the beginning of the scientific age did -- try to find out how God did something? Descartes, Newton, Mendel, and a lot more believed that since God did it, we can figure out how.

You have this really warped view of religion, like it's a refuge for the ignorant. That's a point my reference to the Jesuits was meant to get through: religion is full of scholarly, dedicated people in all kinds of fields, including science, whose faith drives them to investigate. They don't "choose to suspend critical thought", they embrace it.

I would avoid the phrase "too orderly", then, as it suggests a gross misunderstanding. You're right that there is order everywhere in the universe, even when its hidden within systems of chaos. My point, however, is that order can and does arise out of chaos. It doesn't need to have a designer.

That begs the question: why does order arise out of chaos?
I used to have a large stack of books by astronomers , physicists, biologists and other scientists who asked that question and decided there was a Creator. They didn't throw away their critical thinking, they applied it.

Why do I have to convince you that this thread is about why someone would choose to suspend critical thought in favor of belief in spite of the lack of evidence or even in the face of contrary evidence? It's right there in the title of this thread.

That's what I am talking about. You're making a massive a priori assumption in the title, and I'm disagreeing with it.

 

[Looking4Fun2009]

William James, a guy who is like the founding father of Psychology, was agnostic about whether or not God, or Gods, exist, but, he said, it's not really important whether or not there is a God or not, the search that many spiritual people go on is what is important, and that it is a part of the human psyche.

It went something like that anyway, he said it a lot better than me, but, I'm too lazy to look it up right now!.

 

[Royal Heart]

You never saw people convinced against their own inclinations? People who came to faith who had no wish to do so? That's a pretty limited experience you had.

My statement was that: The reason people believe is because they want to believe.

You said I was projecting. You don't see how that can be the case.

I said that when I believed I didn't see it, either. I didn't realize that my faith began with the desire to believe and that everything flowed from that.

Sure it does -- it says that your question is wrong.

Questions cannot be "right" or "wrong". Answers can be, but questions cannot. Questions can only be asked.

How is it lazy to do what most of the great scientists in the beginning of the scientific age did -- try to find out how God did something? Descartes, Newton, Mendel, and a lot more believed that since God did it, we can figure out how.

Just because Descartes, Newton and Mendel reached a problem sand said "God did" doesn't mean they were correct. We no longer do that. If a scientist reaches a problem they cannot solve, they put it out in the scientific community to see if anyone else can solve it. Sometimes it takes years, but no one defaults to "God did it" and leaves the problem alone.

You have this really warped view of religion, like it's a refuge for the ignorant. That's a point my reference to the Jesuits was meant to get through: religion is full of scholarly, dedicated people in all kinds of fields, including science, whose faith drives them to investigate. They don't "choose to suspend critical thought", they embrace it.

Faith, by definition, is believe in the absence of proof. They must suspend critical thought when it comes to religion. It's the cornerstone of religion.

That begs the question: why does order arise out of chaos?

I used to have a large stack of books by astronomers , physicists, biologists and other scientists who asked that question and decided there was a Creator. They didn't throw away their critical thinking, they applied it.

They "decided" there was a Creator, but they have no proof of it. They just reached a question they couldn't answer and defaulted to "God did it." The question "why does order arise out of chaos" has not been answered and those who just throw their hands in the air and declare "God did it" are, essentially, giving up. They haven't reached an actual answer.

That's what I am talking about. You're making a massive a priori assumption in the title, and I'm disagreeing with it.

Can you explain how the question "How do you intelligent people possibly choose faith?" is a question you can agree or disagree with? I wasn't aware that you can disagree with a question.

 

[Kulindahr]

My statement was that: The reason people believe is because they want to believe.

You said I was projecting. You don't see how that can be the case.

I said that when I believed I didn't see it, either. I didn't realize that my faith began with the desire to believe and that everything flowed from that.

You attributed everything to having family, friedns, etc. who want you to believe. I said that is not the case: there are people who had no desire to believe, and did so in spite of family and social pressure the other way.

Questions cannot be "right" or "wrong". Answers can be, but questions cannot. Questions can only be asked.

Not so. If a question contains an internal contradiction, the question is wrong; if it contains false premises, the question is wrong. When a question is wrong, there are no answers.

Just because Descartes, Newton and Mendel reached a problem sand said "God did" doesn't mean they were correct. We no longer do that. If a scientist reaches a problem they cannot solve, they put it out in the scientific community to see if anyone else can solve it. Sometimes it takes years, but no one defaults to "God did it" and leaves the problem alone.

Who said anything about problems they couldn't solve? None of the scientists I referenced did, and neither did I. That's a fallacious view of faith.

What they did was say that God did it, therefore let's investigate it. In other words, faith led to science. They didn't abandon problems "because God did it", they tackled problems because "God did it".

Faith, by definition, is believe in the absence of proof. They must suspend critical thought when it comes to religion. It's the cornerstone of religion.

That's not the Christian definition. Read the little book The Dawkins Delusion.
Christianity at least demands critical thought -- so does Judaism. Islam has, from time to time; that's where the flourishing of sciences came, as belief in a rational, orderly God led them to investigate how the world worked.

They "decided" there was a Creator, but they have no proof of it. They just reached a question they couldn't answer and defaulted to "God did it." The question "why does order arise out of chaos" has not been answered and those who just throw their hands in the air and declare "God did it" are, essentially, giving up. They haven't reached an actual answer.

You're again projecting a fallacious view onto others. It wasn't a matter of reaching any problems they couldn't deal with, it was their conclusion from huge masses of evidence, Nor have any of them thrown up their hands.

Really what you're doing here is assuming that because the house is orderly, no one built it. That's a step of faith. They're assuming that since the house is orderly, someone did build it. That also involves faith, but it does not require any abandonment of critical thinking. It can be looked at as a hypothesis, and it's as valid as the talk of "branes" and such: both, in a sense, are metaphysics.

Can you explain how the question "How do you intelligent people possibly choose faith?" is a question you can agree or disagree with? I wasn't aware that you can disagree with a question.

The way you define faith makes the question wrong. Faith is not belief in the absence of evidence, it's belief extrapolated from evidence.

I've sat on a jury three times, and can tell you that as a jury we never abandoned critical thinking (well, some never got to that point....). We had to employ critical thinking, and in two of those cases we had to do so on the basis of incomplete evidence. I'm proud that in one case we decided that just because there wasn't enough evidence to satisfy our questions, we said "Not Guilty." But in the other, we had to commit to a belief -- a verdict -- without sufficient belief.

And that's what goes in in lawsuits: the standard there is "the preponderance of evidence." It isn't "proof"; rarely is there "proof" in a lawsuit. Nevertheless, there is critical thinking involved.

Coming back to science, we did that a lot in chemistry: projected on the basis of limited data. And that's what faith is, in the Christian definition.

 

[hotatlboi]

No, those are the only things Genesis 1 says of a scientific nature

And that's where you are completely wrong and fail to see the forest for the trees.

You pick out certain parts that are correct and you want to treat those scientifically but then ignore the other parts (which are just as matter of factly describing elements of the observable world) and want to claim they are some kind of made up fable.

 

[WillMc88]

Really what you're doing here is assuming that because the house is orderly, no one built it. That's a step of faith. They're assuming that since the house is orderly, someone did build it. That also involves faith, but it does not require any abandonment of critical thinking. It can be looked at as a hypothesis, and it's as valid as the talk of "branes" and such: both, in a sense, are metaphysics.

Which definition of 'faith' are you using here? If you are using the definition of 'belief that is not based on proof,' then the only thing mentioned that would involve that kind of faith would be the second thing you mentioned.

If one does not believe in something because there is NOT sufficient evidence to justify that belief, that is not the type of faith described above.

 

[Kulindahr]

And that's where you are completely wrong and fail to see the forest for the trees.

You pick out certain parts that are correct and you want to treat those scientifically but then ignore the other parts (which are just as matter of factly describing elements of the observable world) and want to claim they are some kind of made up fable.

You should learn to read what's in front of you.

Genesis 1 makes no claims about chronology or time span, which are the only things left to you. The only way to get scientific errors in Genesis 1 is to act like an ignorant fundamentalist and read it literally -- which is foolishness especially because no one read the Bible literally until about the eighteenth century.

There is no "matter of factly" about a royal chronicle.


Now until you start doing some scholarship instead of acting like a graduate of the Fred Phelps School of Interpretation, I'm not going to waste any more effort. I've tried to educate you, but you insist on cramming everything into a narrow, ignorant worldview.

 

[Críostóir]

Kulindahr...have I told you lately that I love you?

As for me, I don't see faith as a choice. I see it as a gift--one I don't have. That doesn't mean I don't have spiritual needs. What IS a choice is whether to be religious, whether to perform acts of worship, etc.

I choose to do those things, without faith of any kind, because they help fulfill my spiritual needs. I say a puja every morning before an image of Ganesha. When I walk out of the house, I say "I come forth by day into the brightness of the morning; I come forth by day into the world which you have made new, o Ra." When I have need of healing, I chant "Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Svaha" over and over.

Faith is not a prerequisite for acts of worship. I think it's entirely possible that people who also lack faith, but are comfortable with Christian ritual, perform those rituals in the same way I do those Hindu, vaguely Egyptian, and Buddhist ones.

I know there are perfectly rational people who also have faith, but I don't know that from inside, so I won't try to speak to it.

 

[StlKj]

I'm reading Lee Strobel's The Case for A Creator. He was an atheist journalist who always based his atheism on the science he learned growing up. Then he began talking to scientists in his adulthood and found that much of what science said was fact is now not considered true anymore. He begins to talk to scientists who even have faith themselves due to what they've learned about the universe's "design." It's an interesting book to read about how a man of science begins to reconcile that with a growing sense of faith.