Dan's comments (member since Nov 23, 2008)

Dan's comments from the Faith and Spirituality group.

the rest is pure unearned income, money they make doing absolutely nothing useful in the world, not even "entertaining" people.

Hey, they get you drunk! That's useful! Right? Right?

rgb,

I thought about power failures, which are actually common where I live, but remembered that I have a gas stove that will continue cooking during a power failure, so long as the pilot light is lit. I didn't consider the PETA attack, but I live in a pretty remote place on a mountain, so attacking me would be unnecessarily difficult and lacking in the potential for PETA's much craved publicity, especially when the Las Vegas strip is so near. But you're right, I didn't consider the possibility of meteor strike, and, frankly, don't know enough about astronomy to make this calculation. My bad! ;^)

Also, as for roulette, you can, in fact, bet on 0 and 00. So only almost nobody wins when the ball lands there. But that pessimist who's $600 in the hole just won thirty-two bucks!

Moving along, your "very high probability" is not a proof - which I am sure you are aware. ... Faith has, or is, considered to be a belief that is not based on proof. There is no proof that you will see Thanksgiving, however, you do believe that you will enjoy the holiday with friends and family.

This is, again, an equivocation in terms. The term "faith" is somewhat plastic. You have "faith" (as in "trust") in your friends, for example. But faith in the sense of "believing something to be true" is belief without evidence. What you do here is swap out the word "evidence" for the word "proof" in the definition of "faith," and then declare that "evidence" leading to probabilistic assumptions about the future does not count as "proof," since the future is not known.

This is a disingenuous tactic, and is one with which I'm familiar. People (often religious people, in my experience) use a variety of tactics to lump anything that can be defined as "faith" under one umbrella, so that if any one act of "faith" is reasonable, then all acts of faith are reasonable. This is simply not true, and is dishonest. And, outside of attempts to make this equivocation and justify religious faith, I have never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever heard someone describe an act such as buying birthday presents for a party of whose future occurrence we have no "proof" as an "act of faith." This line of reasoning is simply a dishonest bait and switch.

So, what's the difference between "evidence" and "proof"? We can't "prove" anything about the future, but if we're going to be so nit-picky, then we should also note that we can't "prove" anything about the past or present either, outside of our own minds. Are you really sitting at your computer, or are you dreaming? Did you really enjoy that movie you saw last week, or is this a flawed memory, as the subjectivity of memory is well documented? So, in answer to my own question, for all intents and purposes, "evidence" and "proof" are the same thing; they are repeatable, confirmable, mutually reinforcing observations that contribute to our confidence in an assumption, whether it be about past, present and future.

To pretend that you don't know the difference between faith in the existence of a supernatural being and "faith" in a common, everyday fact is simply dishonest. On the one hand, there is not a single piece of evidence for the existence of any supernatural being; furthermore, these beings often are defined as possessing characteristics that are in direct violation of our knowledge of the universe. Creation, for example, is not only without a shred of evidence, but also is (as far as we know) a physical impossibility.

On the other hand, the "faith" that when I put some chicken in my oven later tonight it will, after some time, become edible and tasty, is supported by a mountain of evidence. Of course, I can't "prove" that this will happen. Even after it has happened, I can't "prove" that it has actually happened: someone may have swapped out my raw chicken for cooked chicken; I may be hallucinating that the chicken is cooked while eating raw chicken, or something else entirely; the entire event may be a dream, and I will awake to find that I am still at work, with my head on my desk, and hungry.

But come on, let's be reasonable people. I am going to cook chicken in a little bit, in the kitchen down the hall; I'll preheat the oven, put the chicken in, wait a while, and take it out later; it will be cooked, and I will enjoy eating it. This will happen. I am not 100% certain of this, but I am 99.99999999...% certain, a certainty that is for all intents and purposes 100%. This 99.99999999999999% certain "belief" does not relate at all to faith in a supernatural being.

The question was, "Is faith stupid?", which we can rephrase as "Is faith rational or irrational?" Or, "When is a belief rational and when is it not?" The answer should be obvious: belief in things for which there is a strong body of evidence, for which there is a high probability, is rational. Belief in things for which there is little or no evidence, for which there is a low probability, is irrational. Now, what does the probability have to be? 50%? 80%? 10%? I don't know. Well, not 10% ;^). But faith is defined as belief in things for which there is no evidence. This is irrational.

As one example of why this is irrational, consider this: There is literally an infinite number of things in which one could have faith and for which these is zero evidence. You can just invent them out of thin air. There are leprechauns living in the center of one of Saturn's moons, for example. There's simply no evidence for or against this, so long as you define the characteristics right (pressure-controlled chamber, etc.). So if faith is rational, there needs to be some mechanism for winnowing down this infinite list of possibilities. Why believe in some but not others? Evidence (by definition) doesn't come into play, so that can't help us choose between baseless beliefs. In fact, such a mechanism would probably be impossible, since not only is there an infinite number of baseless possibilities, but there is an infinite number of infinite sets of possibilities that all contradict each other. And absent this mechanism, we're left with the conclusion that belief in all of these infinite possibilities is equally rational, and we're left with no choice but to believe in them all, since arbitrarily accepting some baseless claims and rejecting others would be irrational.

Additionally, I am not saying that it is irrational for you to pack for your trip, but it could be considered irrational to guarantee the trip from a probability standpoint - whether or not that probability is high or low.

This is irrelevant. I've never said there's a 100% "guarantee" that this trip will happen; I've conceded that the probability is only very high. That it's not 100% certain has nothing to do with anything. Lack of certain probability does not nullify very high probability.

So if there is no proof then there is left only probability, and if there is only probability - or possibility - then herein is where belief or hope or faith (whichever you prefer) seeps into the gaps of possible probabilities.

This is simply not true. We don't use "faith" to paint over the gaps between high and certain probability; we acknowledge the small possibility that expectations will not be met. But we generally dismiss or ignore these tiny probabilities, because doing so is reasonable. It's reasonable to assume my oven will still cook my chicken, that gravity will not suddenly reverse direction, that my car will be capable of getting me to work in about thirty minutes. We hold these things as contingent truths: because they are supported by a large body of evidence, we decide that 99.99999% sure is, for all intents and purposes, as good as 100%, until some information comes along to convince us otherwise. This contingent "faith" in things with large bodies of evidence and high probabilities is not the same as faith in things with no evidence to support them. The two types of belief aren't even remotely similar; to pretend otherwise is dishonest.

Regarding an after-life, while no one may have proven an after-life, no one has disproved an after-life either...so the jury is still out on that one if not hung.

Most concepts of an afterlife can be reasonably dismissed. Everything that makes you you - your personality, memory, perceptions, etc. - are understood (via a large body of evidence) to be functions of the brain, and it is demonstrable that brain function ceases upon death. So we can demonstrate that at death your body, your organs, and your brain and all its functions do not "live on" beyond death. The jury is hardly "hung." To believe in life after death requires first the postulation of something like a soul, for which there is no evidence, and furthermore the postulation of its functions, for which there is no evidence, and furthermore the postulation that this soul can exist independent of the body, and, furthermore, often the additional postulation that there exists some plane of existence where these souls can have some type of experience involving, say, the eating of raisins. Belief in an afterlife is completely without basis, and requires not one but a series of leaps of faith in completely unsupported claims.

In conclusion, regarding whether or not there is an afterlife -- as you mentioned earlier the Boy Scout saying -- what would be wrong with one wanting to "be prepared?"

As rgb mentioned, there are a number of problems with Pascal's wager. To begin, preparedness takes effort, which detracts from your life; the probability of an event must be weighed against the cost of preparation. Furthermore, how does one prepare for an afterlife. Being a good person? Okay, fine. Go to church? Which church? Many world religions are mutually exclusive, and forbid worshiping false gods, to say nothing of hypothetical religions. Preparing for one possible afterlife ensures your damnation in a number of other possible afterlives. So there's one example of the harm.

Faith is a strange mental phenomena because while its actions can be viewed as irrational by those who are observing another operating by faith, those same actions are viewed as rational by the one who is operating under the guise of "faith."

Well, yes, and people with mental illnesses can think that all manner of behaviors are "rational." Any behavior or belief could be held as rational by some person, but this says nothing about the actual rationality of the behavior or belief. If I start killing all the neighborhood cats because my toaster told me to, the fact that it makes perfect sense to me doesn't at all excuse the behavior, or make it any less irrational than it obviously is.

For example, for one to make plans for the future exercises faith to a degree that he or she believes (without any guaranteed evidence) that he or she will experience the future event.

No it doesn't. To begin, faith is belief without evidence, not without "guaranteed" evidence, a little caveat that you have added to make your claim seem true. We can have mountains of evidence that there is a high probability we will experience this future event. I'm flying home for Thanksgiving later this week. My age, good health, safe driving record and the safety record of air travel, etc., indicate that there is a very high probabiltiy that I will not die before this happens. It is not irrational for me to pack for the trip, arrange for transportation to the airport, etc.

Furthermore, planning for a future event doesn't require much evidence or faith, depending on the cost of planning and the potential cost of not planning. As the Boy Scouts say, "Be prepared." Even if I am terminally ill, it is not irrational for me to continue grocery shopping. I may not live to see the end of the week, but there's very little harm in buying the full gallon of milk instead of the pint. There will be a little less money to leave to my family, and so on, but I'll have food to eat if I don't die in my sleep. However, to construct a temple and fill it with treasures to pay my way into the afterlife would be irrational, considering the complete lack of evidence for even the possibility of an afterlife, let alone one with a vibrant commodity-based economy.

So, in short, you cannot simply equivocate all forms of belief, assumption or estimation about the future as "faith," and then declare that since some "faith" is rational, all faith is rational.

I would state that faith is not stupid, but rather a positive outcome for any given circumstance

How is faith itself a "positive outcome"? I don't know what you mean here.

Alex,

There is nothing ridiculous about this.

Collins is a Christian. Collins claims that his faith and science can coexist in harmony. If this is true, then he must be doing one of two things:

1. He's arbitrarily ignoring huge chunks of Christianity wholesale. The Bible makes a number of claims that are soundly rejected by science, such as the age of the Earth, the creation of life (or anything), the sun going around the Earth, the moon glowing, etc. So if Collins's faith doesn't conflict with science, then his faith isn't Christianity, but some new religion that he invented which resembles Christianity in some ways but is radically different in others. To invent your own religion out of thin air and then think that it somehow holds any truth is pretty ridiculous.

2. He's arbitrarily ignoring huge chunks of science wholesale. He truly believes the Earth is 6,000 years old, believes the sun goes around the Earth, believes the stars are suspended from the firmament, whatever that is, and believes that a few thousand years ago there was a global flood that wiped out all living things, except for the specimens a 900-year-old man managed to squeeze into a magical boat. He simply ignores the parts of science (like the laws of thermodynamics) that would contradict these aspects of his faith. For anyone, and especially a scientist, to ignore such basic scientific principles as evolution, geology, thermodynamics and, you know, basic common sense is pretty ridiculous.

So, as I said, science and religion are only compatible if religion interminably rewrites itself to accommodate human knowledge. For God's perfect and divine Truth to be so ill-equipped to weather the steady (and God-foreseen) march of time seems a little bit, wait for it, ridiculous.

I'll ask again, if science and religion are so compatible, then why has religion been fighting against science for so long? Or is that a True Scotsman I hear coming 'round the bend?

Newton published more papers on the Bible then he did on scientific subjects.

This is meaningless. You may as well say that Newton wrote more recipes than scientific papers, therefore his science is derived from his cooking. There's a difference between a scientist who is religious and deriving your science from your religion. The Bible surely didn't tell Newton anything about physics; he only discovered what he did because he looked elsewhere for answers. Certainly religion is not necessary to lead one to look somewhere other than religion.

My point was not that religion leads to scientific discovery but that the two are two seperate fields. And can clearly exist in harmony.

I agree that they're two separate fields. But I'm not sure that they can coexist. Or, rather, they can only coexist if religion radically rewrites itself and abandons much of its doctrine, or if science censors itself.

However religion is necessary in some cases to shed light onto the ethical questions that arise in some scientific research. Otherwise there would be no limit to what some scientists will do in their research.

This is untrue. Ethics do not derive from religion. This is easy to demonstrate: we are able to, for example, judge the Bible to determine which parts are ethical and which parts are not, so we obviously have a sense of ethics that does not derive from the Bible. Religion is only necessary to answer questions posed by religion to the religious.

I have nothing against religious people who try to live in harmony with the scientific worldview (although I think their ad hoc rewriting of their religion is pretty ridiculous), but this doesn't change the fact that religion is the only force in the world actively fighting against science, fighting to suppress knowledge.

Many of the greatest scientist throughout history and up to the present have been people of Christian faith.

Overwhelmingly, scientists are atheists. But that's missing the point. Many of the greatest scientists throughout history have had brown hair; many of them have been Americans; many of them have had type AB-positive blood. What does it matter? The point is that their scientific discovery doesn't derive from their religion, but in spite of it. Even if there are a lot of religious scientists, they have succeeded only because they have rejected the religious notion that everything you need to know you can find in a centuries-old book written by goat herders who thought that stars were balls of light hung from the "firmament."

Religion is the biggest impediment to scientific progress in the world. Religion is the only force in the world actively working against scientific progress. To point out that some scientists still believe in God is meaningless unless you can draw some causal line from their religion to their discoveries; you may as well point out that a lot of master chefs are religious, and infer that religion, therefore, makes food taste better.

Properly discerned, the Bible shouldn't and can't contradict science.

[Emphasis added:]

It's only the attitude that the Bible can't contradict science that leads to the conclusion that it doesn't.

I'm late to the action on this thread, but let me throw in my two cents.

I may use the internet to promote my "nonsense" but at least I don't use it to promote hate. You keep blaming Christians for acts committed by insane people that couldn't possibly be following the faith or they wouldn't have committed those acts.

I've been chatting with RC for a while on this site, and I've never known him to promote hate. I've certainly never seen him advocate or command murder, as opposed to, say, God, who does it all the time.

As for your abridged history of Israel, it doesn't matter whether what you've written is accurate or not, honest or not, complete or not, biased or not, etc., because you tip your hand right in the middle of it when you say this:

As history has shown, this small ragtag army of Jews defeated the league of Arab armies to establish Israel again after nearly 2,500 years, just as God had predicted. The Jews had finally returned home. This is not to say that there were no acts of terrorism by the Jews or that the Jews did no wrong, some did, but they occupy no land but their own, and it isn't even all the land that God gave them to possess.

Your entire post can be abridged to: "Israel deserves such-and-such land because God gave it to them." If that's the case, then why bother with the rest of the history? If God gave Israel the land, and this is the justification for Israel's incursions into the West Bank, etc., then what does it matter who was there first? What does it matter whose army beat whose? What does it matter who has been more just, who has suffered more persecution, who is instrumental to regional stability? The history could read: "Jews are made out of marshmallows and used to live on the moon and love macrame. God promised them Israel, therefore they shall have it." Why bother trying to build an historical justification out of Popsicle sticks if you've god God's commands on your side, and you (expect others to) take these commands seriously. If you don't take them seriously, if you think historical justification is needed, then why mention God at all?

Of course, as RC and RGB have already pointed out, God's mandate is a horrible justification for anything of the sort. Try explaining to the Muslims who live in the Palestinian territories, or who used to live in what is now Israel, that they're losing their homes because God commands it. What a stupid, hypocritical position. I'm sure there's a tribe of people somewhere in the Amazon who believe their god has promised them everything under the sun, including the state of California. I doubt you would think this is a valid argument, even if it is written down in an old book.

What is "inner knowing" anyway? It sounds like a fancy way of saying "believing." Are there different types of knowing? The modifier "inner" implies that the thing you "know" isn't something you could know outwardly, based on observation, but is instead something you "know" inwardly, based on feeling. This isn't knowing at all.

That book, though, was beneficial and impactful for millions of readers - his claim fulfilled itself because God is the source of such beneficial guidance and wisdom.

That a book is beneficial to readers doesn't prove that it's from God. I don't doubt that these books are helpful to many people. Good advice is good advice, and should be self-evident, regardless of who's giving it.

I think people writing books like these are either lying or have had some sort of strange experience or inspiration. Maybe he wrote the book while stoned/drunk/sleep-deprived. Of course, that's all irrelevant if the book's advice is helpful, but the book's advice being helpful certainly doesn't prove that the author really was channeling God.

Personally, I'd rather channel Kafka than God while writing, but then my book would probably be a lot less inspirational.

Like Megan, my religious views were shaped by Greek mythology. As a child, I fell in love with the stories of Zeus, Poseidon, etc., and I began to realize that the only difference between their gods of the gaps and ours (I was a Catholic) was that we still believed in ours.

Both No Logo and The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein have helped to shape my views on economics and politics. Noam Chomsky's books have also been influential.

Well said, rgb. This reminds me of a question someone else on one of these boards posed, which I repeat whenever I get the opportunity:

Why doesn't God ever reveal himself to someone who hasn't already heard of him?

I'm going to steal this religion bazaar story. I've yet to hear a convincing argument for how one could choose any specific religion as the religion when approaching the choice objectively.

On the other hand, if there is no infinite being, what is the context that gives existence purpose?

This is my point. There is no law that existence must have purpose. Also, simply claiming that God is infinite doesn't account for God's purposelessness. Infinite or not, if there is nothing greater than God, then God exists without context and has meaning only to himself. I could just as easily declare that God doesn't exist and that my life, although finite, has meaning to me. This doesn't give it any larger purpose. Saying that God does not require context in order to have purpose because he's "infinite" (whatever that means) seems like a dolled-up way of saying, "The rules don't apply to God, because he's God."

I was pointing to the objective truth that outside of God, existence has no ethical value whatsoever.

You're creating a false dichotomy: either God exists or life is meaningless. There could be an infinite number of alternative belief systems that don't view God the way you do, but don't view the universe as devoid of meaning.

Your arguments presuppose that "ethical" means "what God considers right," and then you go on to say that if there is no God then nothing has any ethical value. Well, within that carefully constructed framework I suppose you're right, but it's a meaningless, disingenuous framework.

Coyle,

To steal from my old prof once more, "science can tell us everything we need to know about how to swing a hammer, but it can't tell us a darn thing about why there is a hammer at all, or whether the hammer ought to be used to pound a nail or to smash someone's skull in." Which is where religion and philosophy become our tools to ascertain truth.

It's certainly true that science can't tell you why the hammer exists, or if it should be swung, but in your argument you presuppose that there even is a reason for the hammer to exist or be swung. It's possible that the hammer just exists.

Purpose can't exist with out context. Things can't simply have meaning; they must mean something to someone. If you argue that God is necessary to give meaning to life, then something larger than God is necessary to give meaning to God, and then something larger than that, and something larger than that. You will never reach the ultimate end because there must always be a higher level to give the lower level meaning. No matter how many levels of meta-gods there are, your hammer will always ultimately be meaningless because its purpose can be traced back to the ultimate, purposeless being.

On the other hand, if there is a loving God who not only creates but upholds creation in being, who is intimately involved in the affairs of the world, who cares about what we do and who we are, then life and death alike have structure (note how I avoided using "order" :) and value.

All this means is that one should choose to believe in God because it makes life more comfortable. It certainly doesn't speak to the truth of God.

not only has God made himself known, but he has gone to great pains (indeed, the greatest pains) to enter into a personal relationship with any who would embrace the salvation he offers through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

If God is omnipotent, how can he go to pains, let alone the "greatest" pains? Let's stop giving an omnipotent being credit for all the sacrifices he has supposedly made.

Which was not, as you suggest, a "pointless death in an ocean... of pointless deaths," but rather the one death that paid for the horrendous cause of all death.

Again, in order for Christ's death to have not been pointless, God must not be omnipotent. There is no way around this. God sent Jesus to die to pay for man's sins? To pay whom? Couldn't God just let people into heaven without sacrificing his son/self? God seems to be so impotent that he has a hard time getting around rules that he himself has created.

Coyle,

I don't know much about Alexander the Great, but if it's true that our understanding of his life is based on few and dubious sources, then this doesn't make the bible more credible, it makes accounts Alexander the Great less credible.

The bible makes a number of claims that call its factuality into question. For example, biblical events occur during the rule of both Herod and Quirinius, but these two periods do not overlap. These inaccuracies call into question the bible's reliability.

There is also the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If Jesus was just a carpenter who did some noteworthy woodworking in his time, a single account like the bible might seem sufficient to establish the details of his life. But since Jesus is supposed to be (the son of) God, we should expect more evidence outside of the biblical account.

Also, errors in the bible (rabbits chew their cud, the sun goes around the earth) are often explained as the best available knowledge of primitive people. But the bible is supposed to be the divine word of an all-knowing god. Therefore, we should expect from it a higher level of factual accuracy than from other ancient texts. It would be reasonable to expect God to include something in the bible that people of the day would not have known (e.g. the Earth is round), but he did not.

As people try to reconcile biblical inconsistencies and errors with modern understanding of the world, they regularly exclude or explain away the incompatible parts. The more we're going to be selective in our reading of the bible as evidence of something, the more we're going to need additional evidence to support the claims we choose to keep. If we're going to take the bible alone at its word, then, at the very least, it needs to be historically and factually unassailable.

If Jesus Christ did live and die in the way and for the reason the Bible claims, then not believing it would be irrational. If, however, he did not and the book was just made up, then believing it would be irrational.

This isn't necessarily true. The bible's basic claims could be true just by coincidence. If there is no evidence to corroborate the bible, and there are indications that the bible is not historically accurate, then it is not rational to believe it, even if it turns out to be true. If I tell you that your house will be struck by lightning in three weeks, but can produce no evidence for this outrageous claim, then it would be illogical to believe me, even if, three weeks later, your house does in fact get struck by lightning.

Similarly, if these is a preponderance of evidence for a certain claim, you are perfectly justified in believing it, even if at some future date you discover that the evidence was flawed or incomplete, and the claim isn't really true.

Claims supported by evidence - not a single, dubious account like the bible, but sufficient evidence - can be rationally believed. Other claims cannot. The logic of believing something isn't determined retroactively after the truth has been discovered. Two thousand years ago, believing that the sun revolved around the Earth would have been perfectly rational: all the available evidence supported this claim. Believing the same claim today, however, is irrational.

Mother Teresa ring any bells?

Nate didn't dodge this question, he answered it.

"Faith by definition is believing in something for which one has no evidence. Isn't doing such a thing wrong and silly?"

It kind of depends on the personal manifestation of the faith doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. If someone believes something for no reason, with no evidence, but happens to do something good as a result of that belief, how is that not still silly? The fact that someone can be faithful and good at the same time is nothing more than a coincidence. You imply that lies are preferable to truth as long as they're pleasant lies. This is, at best, a ridiculous proposition. This logic also convinces people there is some inherent link between goodness and faith, which absolves people like Mother Teresa from the proper level of scrutiny.

John,

You should research and see which of these theories has the largest and most reliable body of evidence to support it. Your own personal observation is not the only form of evidence. You can assume that either thousands of scientists working independently for centuries are correct, or you can assume that they are all wrong and that the account contained exclusively in the bible, a book that also claims the sun revolves around the earth, is correct.

Kipahni,

We will know what is good or not the same way we do now: we will use our brains. Religion may offer us a moral guideline, but it's not the one we use. There are many things supported by the bible - slavery, stoning of adulterers, execution of false prophets, etc. - that are clearly immoral and that we as a global society have no problem condemning. Yet, we have been able to decide that these things are immoral without the help of religion; we have done so in spite of religion.

It is illogical to claim that religion provides us with our moral code, which we then use to evaluate which aspects of a religion are moral and which are not. In fact, the idea of an external moral code, regardless of the source, is illogical, because in order to value this moral code we must judge it on some basis; we cannot use it to judge itself, so we must have some other, innate sense of right and wrong. Without religion, we will still know right from wrong. We just won't have any more excuses for calling unjustifiable wrongs right.