I’m not saying we don’t make decisions based on how our brains evolved to view the natural world. We certainly do. I think this is qualitatively different from rational and accurate statitsical analysis, though. Prejudices and fears are heuristically useful, especially when no better source of information is available, but they are often statistically inaccurate, that’s my point.
[quote author="erasmusinfinity"]Not faith. Empathy and compassion coupled with a recognition of the need for human cooperation as a means toward mutual fulfillment. Informed by a rational and scientific approach to the world.
[quote author="Baloo"]Maybe you could walk us through the rational you use to base your belief in one of these?
I’m not really sure what you mean in reference to my “belief,” but I thought that my response about “faith” was rather complete. I feel empathy and compassion toward others and I recognize that humans need to cooperate in order to achieve shared fulfillment. I feel better about myself and my place in society and the world when I live up to my feelings and fulfill my pragmatic intentions. What more needs be said?
Perhaps you could clarify what faith has to do with this. I don’t think that you have really demonstrated a connection between faith and good ethical decision making. I’m not even sure what you mean by “faith,” because the way you used it in reference to your rhetorical questions seems at odds with the way that religious faith is generally described. Do you really not feel empathy or compassion toward others without placing a deliberate emotional investment somewhere? Do you really not see usefulness in working cooperatively with others?
Hi Erasmus,
First and foremost, yes, I like to believe that I have some sort of empathy and compassion toward others. I also think there are a number of situations that humans benefit from cooperation, in fact the vast majority of economics is based on division of labor.
That said, the basic topic of the thread was a based on Paul Davies article, “TAKING SCIENCE ON FAITH”. The general forum was a bit twisted, asking if science was a ‘form of faith’. Clearly I don’t think anyone here believes that science is a religion. But, I don’t think that is entirely what the article was about. Rather, it also talked about how, scientist, yest even people of science, ‘take some things on faith’.
Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms published by the Cambridge University Press, defines “take someone/something on faith” as “to believe someone or something without proof”.
As such, I think there is an empirical question that can be asked, and answered in a place like this forum, basically, ‘Are there someones or somethings that scientifically inclined people believe without proof?’
While I could ask ‘is there anything that anyone believes without proof’, you could also ask a question about what is very commonly held belief, like the belief in ‘Free Speech’ and see how many people believe this and with what quality of proof.
As I mentioned above, there are a number of things that I believe that I do so with very little more than very personal observation and on rare occasion, through the eyes of others.
Your response is the type of response that I think we would expect from many people when asked to respond about something they strongly believe in, mainly an appeal to internal emotions.
“I feelempathy and compassion toward others and I recognize that humans need to cooperate in order to achieve shared fulfillment. I feel better about myself and my place in society and the world when I live up to my feelings and fulfill my pragmatic intentions. What more needs be said?”
What more needs to be said? Nothing.
That said, I wonder what would have happened if someone had given this verbatim response as the reason they go to church every Sunday, or why they read the bible to their children, or why they decided to go on a 2 year mission for the mormon church. Would we have accepted the clearly heartfelt emotional appeal as proper justification for the classification of these actions as rational? My guess is that a few people would not consider these heartfelt emotions sufficient ‘proof’.
So, what do you think Erasmus? Do scientifically inclined people “believe someones and somethings without proof”? And, if so, why are we so quick to oppose the Davies article?
I think Nathan Myhrvold does a good job of explaining the difference between ‘Faith’ and ‘faith’, and even concedes that science includes trust like faith in a number of areas.
I don’t see Myhrvold making that distinction in the quote you provide. And I disagree with his take on the “elements of faith” in physics. The results of physics give us reason to believe that there are laws of nature. These reasons to believe are defeasible; they are inferences to the best explanation of the phenomena we see around us. I’ve already answered the rest of what he said here ...
Hi Doug,
I would agree that there are few “elements of faith” in the science of physics, that said, belief happens at a much more personal level, and I think we are making an assumption that if enough people claim to believe the same physics principle that they the principle is therefore true. While the reasons to believe in these physics principles may be defensible to other people, they are not defensible to me, simply because I don’t have the intellectual capital to do the mathematical calculations involved to truly understand these principles. In fact, I could sit with a team of the best physicists for several years, but if I was ever asked to testify in court that I ‘knew’ the theory of relativity, I would have to say ‘no’ as knowledge needs to be proceeded by understanding and the mathematical principles would take more than a few years to learn.
The same would be true of the multiverse theory that Davies brings up. While there is possibly some observable data that leads a few people to believe in this train of thought, I’m left to read what is clearly a very watered-down version of the whole thing, and hope that enough sticks to make 5-8 mins of conversation if it ever comes up at work.
So, what do I believe, well, I think I believe that there are enough very smart people in the world, that enjoy debunking other people’s pet theories, that if something was false enough, that they would spend the time needed to debunk a bad theory. Why do I believe this, well, because I did a phd in cognitive psychology, wait, nope.....so, why do I believe this, well I believe this because its convenient to believe, and because the risk of not really knowing is extremely low. So, 100 years from now we find out that Einstein was off, and its really e=mc3, not sure this will really be that big a deal, much like when Newtonian gravity was debunked, it really didn’t effect Newton much and it was his theory.
That said, can I really say what I believe is much more than ‘belief in someone or something without proof’? What proof do I really have of the validity of what science has ‘proved’? As such, my belief is in someones and something for which I have no proof. ie, I take these things on faith. My guess is that as Davies points out, I’m probably not the only one that does so.
dougsmith - 04 December 2007 07:37 AM
Baloo - 03 December 2007 10:22 PM
So, help me out, how is Blind Moral Belief better than Blind Faith? And, how is this not an argument from personal conviction?
Who ever said that moral belief was “blind”?
MSN’s Encarta Dictionary includes the following in its definitions of blind.
2. unable to recognize: unwilling or unable to understand something
blind to the consequences
4. unquestioning: not based on fact and usually total and unquestioning
blind prejudice
While, blind faith is probably closer to the second, I don’t think its too much to say that much of what we, as a society, would define as moral belief is in many ways Blind in the first way, ie ‘blind to the consequences’. I don’t think we totally understand all of the consequences of our social norms, and I think could be said that society is in a constant state of flux as we adjust and find out.
Also, I think we, as a society, used what any logician would call fairly faulty logic to come to many of the social norms that we have today. Why do we believe in Free Speech? I think it may be because we ‘disbelieve’ in censured speech. And, having proof that censured speech doesn’t work, isn’t the same as having proof that Free Speech does work. As such, I don’t think its too much to say that, we, as a society, believe things that we have no proof of. And, as such, we believe in something that we have no proof of. I might even say the same about the set of ‘discriminations’ listed above, ie, I think we came to the conclusion that non-discrimination was moral because discrimination was immoral. Again, fairly faulty logic, but we’ll try it our for a century or two and see how it works, after which we’ll have the proof to say that we have proof. In the meantime, we’ll all have to take it on faith that we are accumulating the right set of experiences.
dougsmith - 04 December 2007 07:37 AM
Baloo - 03 December 2007 10:22 PM
Second, how is the cognitive process of ‘deriving’ something from utilitarian, Kantian, Aristotelian beliefs, different from cognitive process of ‘deriving’ them from Moses, Paul or Joseph Smith, or some mixture of the these and many other sources? How does one escape from the ‘turtles stacked upon turtles’ rational when using moral philosophy to derive moral philosophy?
Well, there are two issues here. When we are dealing with factual claims, the distinction is quite clear. Moses, Paul and Joseph Smith were factually in error about much of what they claimed. Or at the very least we have no reason to believe a large part of their stories. (Indeed, we have no reason to believe Moses wrote much of what is attributed to him, and much reason for believing Joseph Smith was a liar about the creation of his so called holy books).
So, because the facts are in error, anything they said about principles of morality are also false? And, in the case of Moses, the writings are mis-attributed, therefore the substance is without merit?
dougsmith - 04 December 2007 07:37 AM
The problem with faith (or “Faith") when it comes to factual claims is that more often than not it is used to sweep aside evidence that shows those beliefs to be in error. And this is just an example of willful ignorance of the truth. As such it should be condemned.
Could you share the set of empirical data set that you are using to say that faith ‘more often than not’ sweeps aside evidence. Hope this isn’t being too skeptical of the claim.... Surely with all that it out there, someone has empirical data to share with us.
dougsmith - 04 December 2007 07:37 AM
As to questions about ethical claims, you are asking about “metaethics”: where is the ground of our ethical beliefs? Clearly they cannot be grounded in commands. The mere fact that someone—even someone very powerful, like God—claims that it’s OK to do X and bad to do Y is of no relevance whatever. We have known this since Plato’s Euthyphro argument. That means that insofar as ethics can be grounded on anything, it must be grounded on something quite different from someone’s say-so.
The further question, then, is what this other ground could be for our ethical claims. This is a very interesting question to ask, but it’s one that comes up just as much for the theist and religious believer as it does for the non-religious or atheistic person.
But if you want to get into a lengthy digression about metaethics, I’m not sure this is the thread to do it in.
Simply because someone else has used a poor argument, hardly acts as sufficient proof to support ones own claims.
Again, to restate my position, which you are welcome to oppose, much of our moral beliefs, and/or our ethical beliefs are not something for which we have sufficient observable empirical data for. Therefore, as you note, they are understood main through discussions like those in meteethics, a system that is hardly on par with true science, and as such, unable to provide valid proofs to support many parts of our moral and ethical beliefs.
Is this not totally in line which the statement that even scientifically inclined people ‘take things on faith’? Surely, we can not claim to have proof of that for which the necessary data to create such a proof has not been collected.
Again I’m not sure how scientifically we came to the concussion that discrimination was immoral.
Baloo,
I think we decided that discrimination was immoral because it’s more convenient for us. Science cannot tell us what is moral or immoral. Science does tell us though, that people are different; perhaps this is the reason why we should not discriminate against each other: because we are all different! (Read the quote by Pinker I included in my previous response to Brennen.)
Hi George,
Gotta love Pinker. His new book is also very good, and if you really want an hour of very interesting entertainment, I highly recommend the video of his presentation at Google.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU
I also agree that we do so ‘because it’s more convenient’. Regardless if you believe that religion and science are “non-overlapping magisteria”, I think we have to come to the conclusion that science doesn’t cover all the topics that are important to humanity. Topics that we need to understand to make some of the most important decisions that we have to make.
The Viennese philosopher Otto Neurath once used the lines “We are like sailors on a ship forever at sea, obliged to repair our vessel and to improve its operation as best we can without the advantages of drydock.” to explain the responsibilities that Science has as it emerges and takes effect on society. In the analogy he explains that we need to be careful as to how quickly we tear the boat apart as we endeavor to replace the rotten wooden planks.
Personally, I think we are pretty good at tearing apart the moral arguments that are in place, and not nearly as proficient at the much more difficult tasks of crafting and replacing what we tear out. As such, I wonder if the current keepers of the ‘dead wood’ aren’t at least partially accurate in their presumptions of what happens when you remove that for which we have very little to fill the hole with.
Stephen Hawking once said, “the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” I wonder if ‘the greatest enemy to humanity is not religion, but if it is the illusion of humanity’. And, if we currently don’t believe that ‘the illusion of humanity is better than religion’, which may or may not be so.
Baloo,
You are demonstrating my point by showing how questioning, when it happens, is dangerous to religion and generally taboo because a religion cannot withstand it without splintering. Questioning, however, is the essence of science and the method requires and thrives on it. So while not all believers are unquestioning in their faith, faith as applied to religion is the valuing of unquestioning belief and the proscription of questioning. This is not what science does, so I think the use of the word is misleading.
Hi Brennen,
So, let’s start with, yes, questioning is the essence of modern-day science, though I’m not sure how far back the practice goes.
Also, I would agree that ‘faith’ can often be used in the context on ‘unquestioning’, but as noted above, I think it can also be used in the context of ‘unknowing’. That said, I don’t think that questions are necessarily ‘dangerous’ to religion, as much as they are dangerousness to existing sects within religion. More questions than ever before have been asked of religion, and more questions than ever have been replied to by religion. We may or may not like the replies, but I don’t think that the questions go unasked, or that they go unresponded to, or that they have had much impact as to the total number of believers in religion. There have been tremendous advances made in the sciences, and the basic science that went into the questions asked to make these advances as well as the answers derived for these questions, and I think there is a fair amount of data that religion didn’t show an equal and opposite effect of this all. As such, I’m inclined to think they they are not opposing forces.
In economics, anything that is dependent on something else is also dependent on everything that that object is dependent upon. In a similar way, if science is dependent on questions, then I think that anything that is dependent on science is also dependent on those same questions. Personally, I believe that science is important to me because its my best hope to live ‘an examined life’, and as such, I’m dependent on science, as well as the questions that science asks.
That said, I don’t think that I have any right to tell someone else that (since I’ve come to the conclusion that the examined life is my best hope at a meaningful life) that they should now be dependent on science, as well as the questions of science. What gives me this right? What would give anyone this right? Does not the freedom we enjoy allow us to choose the path we want, then why not allow others to choose their own path? How do we know that their evolutionary instincts are taking them in the wrong path, and how are we even defining the wrong path?
But, thats neither here nor there, I guess.
Back to the nature of religion, I don’t think that the reluctances towards questions is an attitude unique to religion, but rather a trait that may be part of our nature. Go back in evolution all of 100 years, or 200 years. Now let’s find all the places where questions where readily accepted. In Business/Industry? In Politics and Government? In religion? In Families? In Worker Guilds? In the Arts? In Literature? In Universities? In Science? I’m not a history buff, but I don’t think we have to go to far back to find an utter lack of desire to answer questions. And, yes, I think it goes pretty deep into our psyche as you can almost always guarantee a laugh from kids and parents alike in the classic kid comedy where the 3 year old keeps asking Dad, ‘Why’, ‘Why’, ‘Why’, ‘Why’, ‘Why’, ‘Why’, until Dad runs out of good answers… My guess is its funny because there are emotions that many people have felt when in this situation, emotions that are less then comfortable.
All, in all, I think that the value of questioning is a very recent discovery, and many organizations, even today, including many religious organizations, have yet to fully keep pace with this chapter in the human story, but I would predict that very few of the above societal species die out but rather the ones that best survive in the current climates gain advantages that push them forward in our modern-day cultural environment.
mckenzievmd - 04 December 2007 09:56 AM
While I don’t think faith as used in a religious context means primarily “belief in something not totally understood” or “provisional belief based on the currently best available evidence,” as you imply. I think it means belief, and the effort made to believe, in that which is either undemonstrable in any way or knowable only through revelation rather than evidence. Again, qualitatively different from the use of the word in science.
So, what parts of the Multiverse Theory are demonstrable, understandable and knowable by the everyday person? What parts of the theory of relativity? Of, string theory? Or, how a car’s transmission works, or how a DVD works? Either most people don’t believe in how these work, or they believe what they do believe ‘on faith’. But, clearly understanding and knowledge are out of the question for the vast majority of people.
I’m not saying that Science doesn’t use questions as its key driver of advancement, but underived belief at the personal level is clearly present.
As for religion, I’m sure there is a wide variety of context in how the word faith is used, but for simplicities sake, lets say that it only gets used in the single context of ‘unquestioning’, well, then clearly the word faith is being used outside of religion for a wide variety of uses as any good dictionary will also include use cases outside that of ‘unquestioning’. If, the word is predominantly used within religions, then I would expect to find the other use cases within the religious context. What I wouldn’t expect, is that the word only has a single, narrowly defined usage, within a very specific field, and no outside usage, and then have a number of use cases listed in the dictionary.
That said, can I really say what I believe is much more than ‘belief in someone or something without proof’? What proof do I really have of the validity of what science has ‘proved’? As such, my belief is in someones and something for which I have no proof. ie, I take these things on faith. My guess is that as Davies points out, I’m probably not the only one that does so.
Hello Baloo,
Again, what you’re doing here is changing the subject. It is physically impossible for anyone to completely justify everything one believes. ("Proof", by the way, is the wrong word to use when discussing empirical phenomena. One can only “prove” mathematical and logical claims). But that does not mean that one is “taking them on faith” in the relevant sense of faith. One is trusting to the experts. If you like to use “faith” and “Faith” to distinguish that difference, obviously you will find some people who agree with your usage. But the problem with it simply is that it is liable to confusion in precisely the way you yourself are getting confused: people will end up saying that they amount to the same thing, when they don’t.
One is not expected to have faith in the resurrection and the blood of Christ in the same way that one trusts in one’s plumber to line the piping up correctly. Faith in the first sense is a doctrinal matter, lack of which can get you an eternity in hell. Lack in the second will simply get you a different plumber. Faith in the first need not rest on further justification. Trust in the second relies on plenty of justification, or at least it could if you were to investigate further, and you always should investigate at least a little bit about your plumber.
Baloo - 04 December 2007 10:32 PM
So, because the facts are in error, anything they said about principles of morality are also false? And, in the case of Moses, the writings are mis-attributed, therefore the substance is without merit?
Well, if you note, I was talking specifically about their factual rather than their moral claims. The fact that they are in error (or outright lying) means at the very least that we have no reason to believe that their moral insights stem from a morally perfect being. That is, they are just as worthy of merit as the moral claims of any other human being. No more, no less.
Baloo - 04 December 2007 10:32 PM
dougsmith - 04 December 2007 07:37 AM
The problem with faith (or “Faith") when it comes to factual claims is that more often than not it is used to sweep aside evidence that shows those beliefs to be in error. And this is just an example of willful ignorance of the truth. As such it should be condemned.
Could you share the set of empirical data set that you are using to say that faith ‘more often than not’ sweeps aside evidence. Hope this isn’t being too skeptical of the claim.... Surely with all that it out there, someone has empirical data to share with us.
I should really have said that Faith is always used to sweep aside evidence that those beliefs are in error. When in debates with religious people, when reading books from religious apologists, one universally encounters claims of the form, “Yes, the evidence is that XYZ is untrue, unlikely, without merit, etc., but we have (F)aith in it nonetheless.”
... and no, I haven’t counted the precise usages of this while reading religious apologia, but let’s at least be honest enough to realize that this is an absolutely standard move for the believer.
What do you think your fellow Mormons would say about the existence of this powerful alien who monitors Earth’s goings-on? They certainly have no direct evidence of its existence. The Books of Mormon are clearly fraudulent. So what are they going to say? Either they are going to dissemble about the veracity of this stuff, or they are going to cling to “Faith”. And no, that’s not the same trust one has in one’s banker to do the divisions correctly. The first sort of faith is non-falsifiable. The second can be falsified by checking the figures.
Baloo - 04 December 2007 10:32 PM
Again, to restate my position, which you are welcome to oppose, much of our moral beliefs, and/or our ethical beliefs are not something for which we have sufficient observable empirical data for. Therefore, as you note, they are understood main through discussions like those in meteethics, a system that is hardly on par with true science, and as such, unable to provide valid proofs to support many parts of our moral and ethical beliefs.
But of course we don’t have enough empirical data to justify our ethical beliefs. What would it be to justify—and I mean really justify—moral beliefs by empirical data? There is a gap between “is” and “ought”. One can describe the empirical world down to the last jot and tittle and not say a single thing about what is right and wrong. So whatever moral justification we have cannot simply come from empirical data. And if all one can use to justify something is empirical data, then morality will never be truly justified.
But once again this has nothing to do with faith, it has to do with the simple logic of justification.
If moral beliefs are to be justified they must at least partly be so on their own terms. Those terms, of course, may be argued for (and perhaps justified) by reference to metaethical principles. But hey, the claim that we can justify our factual beliefs based on empirical data is itself a metaphysical principle, so these are on all fours.
feel empathy and compassion toward others and I recognize that humans need to cooperate in order to achieve shared fulfillment. I feel better about myself and my place in society and the world when I live up to my feelings and fulfill my pragmatic intentions. What more needs be said?”
[quote author="Baloo" date="1196844455">That said, I wonder what would have happened if someone had given this verbatim response as the reason they go to church every Sunday, or why they read the bible to their children, or why they decided to go on a 2 year mission for the mormon church. Would we have accepted the clearly heartfelt emotional appeal as proper justification for the classification of these actions as rational? My guess is that a few people would not consider these heartfelt emotions sufficient ‘proof’.
So, what do you think Erasmus? Do scientifically inclined people “believe someones and somethings without proof”? And, if so, why are we so quick to oppose the Davies article?
You are confusing action without thinking and belief without thinking. Of course, there are many things that people do without thinking. I just noticed my foot tapping and hadn’t been aware of it. But this twitch was not motivated out of a belief of any kind. So the answer is no, it would not be scientific to “believe someones and somethings without proof.” More so, it would be particularly unscientific to believe “someones and somethings” despite evidence to the contrary.
Personally, I think we are pretty good at tearing apart the moral arguments that are in place, and not nearly as proficient at the much more difficult tasks of crafting and replacing what we tear out.
What kind of moral arguments are we tearing apart?
There have been tremendous advances made in the sciences, and the basic science that went into the questions asked to make these advances as well as the answers derived for these questions, and I think there is a fair amount of data that religion didn’t show an equal and opposite effect of this all. As such, I’m inclined to think they they are not opposing forces.
Well, science and religion are not always opposed, certainly. But there are plenty of cases in which the questions science wishes to ask, about human evolution, sexuality, the possible neural basis for religious faith itself, etc, are forbidden to the religious because their faith requires they accept the revealed truth and don’t ask whether it might be wrong. So these folks oppose the very asking of these questions. Now science may provide information which challenges the dogma of religion, but it doesn’t forbid the asking of questions about the natural of reality. It may denigrate questions it sees as stupid or meaningless, and this isn’t always fair or correct, but I still see a fundamental difference between how science approaches knowledge and how religion does that make your equation of the two as both invoving a similar kind of “faith” misleading.
I don’t think that I have any right to tell someone else that (since I’ve come to the conclusion that the examined life is my best hope at a meaningful life) that they should now be dependent on science, as well as the questions of science. What gives me this right? What would give anyone this right? Does not the freedom we enjoy allow us to choose the path we want, then why not allow others to choose their own path? How do we know that their evolutionary instincts are taking them in the wrong path, and how are we even defining the wrong path?
Well, i’m free tod efine what seems to me the “wrong path,” and I would include religious belief in this, but I absolutely agree I’ve no right to enforce that belief on anyone else. Now everyone has the right to tell others how they see the world, and to try to convince people of the rightness of this view. But frankly, it is most often the religious who wish to enforce their point of view by law or social sanction or physical force, rather than the scientist. So while I agree that we should all be free to follow our own understanding, I don’t see that has much to do with the point we’re discussing, about the difference between faith and provisional belief, and I certainly never implied I have any right to force others to hold my beliefs.
So, what parts of the Multiverse Theory are demonstrable, understandable and knowable by the everyday person? What parts of the theory of relativity? Of, string theory? Or, how a car’s transmission works, or how a DVD works? Either most people don’t believe in how these work, or they believe what they do believe ‘on faith’. But, clearly understanding and knowledge are out of the question for the vast majority of people.
I’m not saying that Science doesn’t use questions as its key driver of advancement, but underived belief at the personal level is clearly present.
Here ios the core of our disagreement, I think. Ultimately, as Doug has said quite clearly, the absence of individual direct experimental confirmation of every possible scientific fact is not an argument that science relies on the same kind of faith or on belief in the unknown in a way analagous to that of religious faith. Provisional acceptance of previously well-demonstrated facts that appear to be clearly functional in practical terms (as in the working of one’s DVD player or transmission) is different from acceptance of revealed truth in scripture or in personal prayer. The truth of a scientific nature are demonstrable, and have been demonstrated, and can be demonstrated again in reliable and objective ways. The truths of revelation cannot. They can only be communicated and sanctified, not demonstrated. So faith in these revealed truths requires an acceptance not only that one doesn’t have evidence directly before one, but that the only possible evidence is testimony and personal internal experience. And that only those who believe can see the “proof” because it requires faith to see it. “Jesus Christ is my personal savior without whom I cannot achieve salvation” cannot be demonstrated in the way that “a laser beam playing across a reflective material can encode digital information translatable into sound waves” can be. So the belief that the first statement is true is qualitatively different from the belief that the second its true.
Yes, I get your point. No, scientists do not go through life believing nothing for which there is not incontrovertable evidence they have seen with their own eyes. But this does not mean that “faith” as used in the context of religion is appropriately applicable to the way scoentists accept previously demonstrated knowledge.
As for theories that have not, and perhaps cannot be demonstrated (multiverse, string theory), they are great starting points for scioence, but they will die if proven false or if not useful for prediction and empirical testing. If science were fundamentally liek religion, they would stand forever as revealed truths regardless of whether they are demosntrable in any empirical sense.
That said, can I really say what I believe is much more than ‘belief in someone or something without proof’? What proof do I really have of the validity of what science has ‘proved’? As such, my belief is in someones and something for which I have no proof. ie, I take these things on faith. My guess is that as Davies points out, I’m probably not the only one that does so.
Hello Baloo,
Again, what you’re doing here is changing the subject. It is physically impossible for anyone to completely justify everything one believes. ("Proof", by the way, is the wrong word to use when discussing empirical phenomena. One can only “prove” mathematical and logical claims). But that does not mean that one is “taking them on faith” in the relevant sense of faith. One is trusting to the experts. If you like to use “faith” and “Faith” to distinguish that difference, obviously you will find some people who agree with your usage. But the problem with it simply is that it is liable to confusion in precisely the way you yourself are getting confused: people will end up saying that they amount to the same thing, when they don’t.
One is not expected to have faith in the resurrection and the blood of Christ in the same way that one trusts in one’s plumber to line the piping up correctly. Faith in the first sense is a doctrinal matter, lack of which can get you an eternity in hell. Lack in the second will simply get you a different plumber. Faith in the first need not rest on further justification. Trust in the second relies on plenty of justification, or at least it could if you were to investigate further, and you always should investigate at least a little bit about your plumber.
Hi Doug,
I think the core question here, is does the word ‘faith’ get used outside the “faith in the resurrection and the blood of Christ” use of the word by either people in science or by people in religion, I think so, but I’m open to discussion here.
Examples follow;
Faith in Science
http://brahms.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~rknop/blog/?p=55
There is another aspect of “faith” in science, but a better word is “trust”. There are no authorities in science. Nobody gets to decree doctrine. Everything is based on the evidence from the natural world. Now, science has become far too big for any one person to go and look at all of the evidence, and all of the methodology of analyzing that evidence, to completely and totally reproduce the chain of reasoning for everything we’ve come to understand in science. In principle, yes, anybody can do that– this is the fundamental difference between science and faith-based things like religion. But, in practice, you can’t.
You may then ask, am I not then taking many of the results of science as faith, since I didn’t check all of the experimental results and subsequent analysis myself? Answer: yes and no. It is a lowercase-f “faith”, in that I trust the scientists who did the work to have known what they were doing and to have honestly and reasonably done the work. I have also trusted the others in their sub-field to keep them honest, by reproducing the experiments independently and critically reading their work. This is very, very different from the big-F “Faith” on which religion is based.
From Dharaweb; The Role of Faith in Science and Buddhism
http://www.dharmaweb.org/index.php/The_Role_of_Faith_in_Science_and_Buddhism_by_Bhikkhu_P._A._Payutto
The second kind of faith is a positive influence, an incentive for learning. It also gives a point of focus for that learning. Energies are motivated in whatever direction faith inclines. A scientist, for example, having the faith in a particular hypothesis, will direct his enquiry specifically in that direction, and will not be distracted by irrelevant data.
These two kinds of faith must be clearly distinguished. The faith that functions in Buddhism is the faith which leads to wisdom, and as such is secondary to wisdom. Buddhism is a religion free of dogma.
The second kind of faith is found in both Buddhism and science. It has three important functions in relation to wisdom:
1. It gives rise to interest and is the incentive to begin learning.
2. It provides the energy needed in the pursuit of that learning.
3. It gives direction or focus to that energy.
An article suggesting that some people have “blind faith in science”
Blind faith in Science is just as bad as blind faith in Religion
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=813167
“Oh, and btw, I know people who actually do have a blind faith in science, so your point is certainly valid.”
So, because the facts are in error, anything they said about principles of morality are also false? And, in the case of Moses, the writings are mis-attributed, therefore the substance is without merit?
Well, if you note, I was talking specifically about their factual rather than their moral claims. The fact that they are in error (or outright lying) means at the very least that we have no reason to believe that their moral insights stem from a morally perfect being. That is, they are just as worthy of merit as the moral claims of any other human being. No more, no less.
So if there “just as worthy of merit as the moral claims of any other human being. No more, no less.” then going back to the orginal question:
Second, how is the cognitive process of ‘deriving’ something from utilitarian, Kantian, Aristotelian beliefs, different from cognitive process of ‘deriving’ them from Moses, Paul or Joseph Smith, or some mixture of the these and many other sources?
Would you say that deriving principles of morality from the writings attributed to Moses/Paul/Joseph just as valid a method as deriving principles of morality from
utilitarian, Kantian, Aristotelian beliefs?
dougsmith - 05 December 2007 05:45 AM
Baloo - 04 December 2007 10:32 PM
dougsmith - 04 December 2007 07:37 AM
The problem with faith (or “Faith") when it comes to factual claims is that more often than not it is used to sweep aside evidence that shows those beliefs to be in error. And this is just an example of willful ignorance of the truth. As such it should be condemned.
Could you share the set of empirical data set that you are using to say that faith ‘more often than not’ sweeps aside evidence. Hope this isn’t being too skeptical of the claim.... Surely with all that it out there, someone has empirical data to share with us.
I should really have said that Faith is always used to sweep aside evidence that those beliefs are in error. When in debates with religious people, when reading books from religious apologists, one universally encounters claims of the form, “Yes, the evidence is that XYZ is untrue, unlikely, without merit, etc., but we have (F)aith in it nonetheless.”
... and no, I haven’t counted the precise usages of this while reading religious apologia, but let’s at least be honest enough to realize that this is an absolutely standard move for the believer.
What do you think your fellow Mormons would say about the existence of this powerful alien who monitors Earth’s goings-on? They certainly have no direct evidence of its existence. The Books of Mormon are clearly fraudulent. So what are they going to say? Either they are going to dissemble about the veracity of this stuff, or they are going to cling to “Faith”. And no, that’s not the same trust one has in one’s banker to do the divisions correctly. The first sort of faith is non-falsifiable. The second can be falsified by checking the figures.
Well, I’ll let you judge for yourself, the following is a core reference on ‘mormon faith’
Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge.
But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.
Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge.
But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow.
And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own alikeness.
Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.
And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.
And now, behold, is your knowledge perfect? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith is dormant; and this because you know, for ye know that the word hath swelled your souls, and ye also know that it hath sprouted up, that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your mind doth begin to expand.
The way I was taught was that faith was the next step in the desire to know something. Once you had faith, you ran an experiment. Once you run the experiment, you learn something. Once you learn something you lose your faith. Not sure this is the same and the ‘unquestioning faith’ of other sects.
Again, to restate my position, which you are welcome to oppose, much of our moral beliefs, and/or our ethical beliefs are not something for which we have sufficient observable empirical data for. Therefore, as you note, they are understood main through discussions like those in meteethics, a system that is hardly on par with true science, and as such, unable to provide valid proofs to support many parts of our moral and ethical beliefs.
But of course we don’t have enough empirical data to justify our ethical beliefs. What would it be to justify—and I mean really justify—moral beliefs by empirical data? There is a gap between “is” and “ought”. One can describe the empirical world down to the last jot and tittle and not say a single thing about what is right and wrong. So whatever moral justification we have cannot simply come from empirical data. And if all one can use to justify something is empirical data, then morality will never be truly justified.
But once again this has nothing to do with faith, it has to do with the simple logic of justification.
If moral beliefs are to be justified they must at least partly be so on their own terms. Those terms, of course, may be argued for (and perhaps justified) by reference to metaethical principles. But hey, the claim that we can justify our factual beliefs based on empirical data is itself a metaphysical principle, so these are on all fours.
Hi Doug,
Really? There is no way to say that ‘Free Speech’ is justified, or that laws against discrimination based on gender/age/ethnicity/sexual orientation are justified? And, you don’t think there are at least a few people that would say that they ‘have faith’ that these laws will be for the betterment of society? These beliefs seem too ingrained in our society to say that they are not widely accepted, and I think we would have a hard time finding too many people that could derive them. And, personally, I just ‘have faith’ that they will work.
I guess we could do a survey and see, outside that, I think we perhaps have different uses of the word, perhaps from how we grew up using the word.
feel empathy and compassion toward others and I recognize that humans need to cooperate in order to achieve shared fulfillment. I feel better about myself and my place in society and the world when I live up to my feelings and fulfill my pragmatic intentions. What more needs be said?”
[quote author="Baloo" date="1196844455">That said, I wonder what would have happened if someone had given this verbatim response as the reason they go to church every Sunday, or why they read the bible to their children, or why they decided to go on a 2 year mission for the mormon church. Would we have accepted the clearly heartfelt emotional appeal as proper justification for the classification of these actions as rational? My guess is that a few people would not consider these heartfelt emotions sufficient ‘proof’.
So, what do you think Erasmus? Do scientifically inclined people “believe someones and somethings without proof”? And, if so, why are we so quick to oppose the Davies article?
You are confusing action without thinking and belief without thinking. Of course, there are many things that people do without thinking. I just noticed my foot tapping and hadn’t been aware of it. But this twitch was not motivated out of a belief of any kind. So the answer is no, it would not be scientific to “believe someones and somethings without proof.” More so, it would be particularly unscientific to believe “someones and somethings” despite evidence to the contrary.
Hi Erasmus,
We all have to act, and make moral decisions. Anyone who has voted in an election has had to deal with the unknown consequences of their vote. Any parent has had to deal with the unknown consequences of their parenting. Any businessperson has had to deal with the unknown consequences of their efforts. Any consumer has had to deal the the unknown consequences of their actions. Any tax-payer has had to deal with the unknown consequences of their taxes. Any teacher has had to deal with the unknown consequences of their efforts. This goes on and on for a very long list. If you know more than you have had to act upon, I would say that you are not acting enough.
Also, I would agree that to believe “someones and somethings” despite evidence to the contrary is unscientific, the question really is, what is it when there is no evidence and you have a limited window to take moral action, and do.
