Faith v reason

I'd say this is probably the central dichotomy on which this group hangs and we got round to discussing it very quickly under the heading of 'A motto for the group'. It's definitely too important a subject not to get its own heading though so if anyone would like to continue the discussion, here is the place to do it.

When talking about faith I usually get hung up on definitions. To expedite this process, I'll identify three different ways in which I might rely on faith over reason:

- Things which I believe without sufficient evidence. This covers a whole host of beliefs about the permanence and reliability of the world around me: chairs won't break if I sit on them, friends act in my best interest, food is not poisonous. All of those have turned out to be false on occasion. It also covers a whole host of unexamined beliefs; I'm not sure those count as "faith".

- Things which I choose to believe despite lack of sufficient evidence. I find this a difficult category because many people seem to assume that all belief is a choice (at least, I'm often accused of having chosen atheism), and I find it almost impossible to choose to believe something. Belief is normally something that just happens when I'm convinced of something; it's not a decision either way. However, I've identified a couple of things in this category: most people mean well; democracy is good; humanity will survive to the end of the century.

- Things which I don't believe, but I choose to act as if they're true. Examples: I can choose to trust someone even if I don't really trust them, just to give them a chance. I can decide to act out rituals that are supposed to keep me safe, even if I don't believe in they have any effect. I can take a doctor's advice because I no longer trust my own reasoning.

I've never figured out which of these is the "faith" that religious believers speak of. Pascal's Wager suggests it's the third, but I've never met anyone who takes it seriously.

I define faith as a firm believe in something which can not be proved and which will never be proved. I would love to have faith in the afterlife - it must be incredibly comforting to think that something wonderful lies ahead - but I'm not holding my breath ...

I cannot assume, I can not even begin to assume, that there is a god. But I do believe that a god is necessary to some people as the person to blame when things go wrong.

You proved that it is possible for a chair to break when you sat on it; that is not faith in my book, but hope, or an assumption based on past experience.

I don't walk under ladders, not because I think that it is bad luck but because of the chancy nature of unstable triangles - and I own two black cats.

What about acting as if there were such a thing as free will even though the evidence at this point suggests that there isn't.

>4 jjwilson61: What about acting as if there were such a thing as free will even though the evidence at this point suggests that there isn't.

I'm not sure that's a matter of belief so much as an adoption of a relativist, pragmatic position.

#4/5 And I'm not sure this is a group where you can talk about evidence without citing which particular evidence you're referring to ;-)

#6 Booksloth. Citation, please.

;)

This conceptualization works for me:


|-----------------------|
0 1
Faith Belief Certainty

Certainty - arrived at by deductive reasoning, in this state additional
information is superflous b/c all other possibilites have been eliminated

Belief - the "normal" state where new information can potentially increase or
decrease the strength of the belief (i.e. Bayesian learning)

Faith - outwardly the same as certainty since new information is ignored, but
lacking the deductive aspect that allows certainty


Each of the three is appropriate in the right context. Conditions that favor a faith-based approach: limited information and/or computation, there is a
low expectation that new information would provide greater understanding, and
the cost of a mistake is low. Faith is a cheap strategy allowing one to
focus resources elsewhere, but it should always yield to evidence-based approaches
when they can be implemented. In this sense, theist are not wrong because
they have faith (we all employ it), but rather for their misuse of it:
they've made a virtue out of using the lazy fallback strategy.

#4 Many years ago I was sent to a seminar at which the lecturer, Lew Tice, said that we may do anything we want to do - as long as we are prepared to accept the consequences.

That statement has given me a lot of food for thought over the years. Yes - we do have free will but if we behave in an anti-social manner we should expect and be prepared for a backlash.

#8 MartyBrandon

Marty, I can see your reasoning, but I would like your views regarding your point on certainty. You say additional information is superfluos because all other possibilities have been eliminated. Surely this would only apply for absolute certainty, which we may not know we have reached. For example, at one stage people were fairly certain the Earth was flat until new information was available. Likewise Newtonian physics was considered certain until Einstein started getting relative. Would you put a flat Earth and Newtonian physics into the category of belief?

#6 Citation for my own uncertainty? That would be me, I guess. ;-)

#9 If I have a motto in life generally it would have to be 'Take what you want and pay for it'. Many people seem only to hear the first part of that and deduce that it is all about selfishness but that's quite the opposite of its real meaning - that, as you point out, you must understand that your actions have consequences and you must be prepared to face them. That one, plus 'treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself' seem to cover most things (well, those and 'Remember you're a womble').

#10 Good point pgmcc. The scenarios amenable to deductive reasoning are more often found in a computer program or a detective story (i.e. the maid didn't do it, the cook didn't do it, so it had to be the butler). Outside of a few contrived realms, most of our understanding is best characterized as a belief. And that's not the only problem. We still need a learning strategy. Does each new piece of data increase or decrease the strength of our belief and by how much? One would hope for a straight march toward truth, but they're luck to get something more resembling a drunken man staggering home from the pub.

>8 MartyBrandon: Certainty - arrived at by deductive reasoning, in this state additional information is superfluous b/c all other possibilities have been eliminated

Belief - the "normal" state where new information can potentially increase or decrease the strength of the belief (i.e. Bayesian learning)

Although I realize it's a valid word to describe a state of accumulating knowledge, I find myself avoiding the word "belief" to describe the way I adhere to or accept certain ideas about reality--probably because I live in a culture that is heavily and unquestioningly religious, so the word "belief" is impossible to disentangle from its religious undertones. I do not "believe" in evolution, for example, in the same way that my neighbor "believes" in God. When he says he believes in God and Jesus Christ as our Saviour, he means that he has an unshakable faith that this is so. Where as when I say that I "believe" in evolution, I mean that I am relatively certain it is the best explanation for species development that accounts for all the available evidence.

There is a big gap between the two ways the word is being used in those two scenarios-- but they are often conflated as if they were equivalent positions, at least in the United States, which is why far to the right religious people can insist that evolution and creationism or intelligent design are somehow equally competing concepts instead of the oranges and apples that they truly are.

As far as I can tell, the main distinction between the kind of belief one has because one has faith in god, and the kind of belief one has when one accepts a hypothesis as probabilistically true lies in what occurs when something happens to prove your theory (or your faith) is wrong.

The person who "believes" in evolution has their theory either advanced or restructured. Because in a rational world new evidence can only expand our knowledge, not destroy it. Rationalists learn as much from being wrong as from being right.

But the person of faith? He or she must either deny the evidence or lose the faith. His world is not illuminated, it is shattered.

#13 Excellent points. I do agree with you that the word 'believe' is frequently misinterpreted (as is the word 'theory' - many people thinking the two are synonymous and equally valid). Hopefully, within this group, we all know what we mean but it does make conversation difficult with non-sceptics.

#14 we all know what we mean but it does make conversation difficult with non-sceptics.

Which parts of this are belief, which theory and which hypothesis?

(Hey, you complained that I didn't wind you up earlier. Be thankful I didn't get started on assumptions. smiley face implied)

>14 Booksloth: Hopefully, within this group, we all know what we mean but it does make conversation difficult with non-sceptics.

One of the reasons I've been active on the Let's Talk Religion thread even though I'm an atheist is because that's been the only forum where these issues were really explored. Granted, from a starting position that religion is good and true and real. There are a lot of complaints about atheists hijacking the conversation and being mean and dismissive (I try not to be either).

I'll be interested to see if religious people come to this group for the same kinds of conversations grounded in the opposite point of view. But I am, well, skeptical that this will happen.

#16 But I am, well, skeptical that this will happen.

That's the spirit.

#15 I had that coming. :-P

#16 I'll be interested to see if religious people come to this group for the same kinds of conversations grounded in the opposite point of view. But I am, well, skeptical that this will happen. Like any good sceptic, I too have my doubts about that one but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

>13 southernbooklady:: this is exactly the problem I always see when the religious and non-religious have discussions in which words like "believe" start flying about. And one can easily be accused of derailing the "real" discussion if one starts picking at semantics.

#3 I would love to have faith in the afterlife - it must be incredibly comforting to think that something wonderful lies ahead

Indeed it must. Blissful ignorance. Here lies the key to why so many believe in nonsense. In many cases the irrational belief supports something beneficial to the believer.

#13 Having been raised in a conservative family just north of Atlanta, I can relate. I'm using the word belief in a fairly standard math/engineering sense, but I think that it's still a good description for theist, though they might be offended at the suggestion that their belief has an associated strength. Psychologists do all sorts of experiments where they bias responses by priming (e.g. having the subjects read either a funny or sad story), and religiosity is one of the things they are able to perturb. Moreover, everyone here knows that religious belief can sometimes flip. I might add (no smugness intended) that while theist struggle with faith, me and my co-workers implement it on a daily basis. We have a different word for it, some engineering jargon, like "default value" or "always on state", but it describes exactly what theist are wanting to emulate.

>21 MartyBrandon: I might add (no smugness intended) that while theist struggle with faith, me and my co-workers implement it on a daily basis.

A religious person might say that the struggle is a measure of the strength of one's faith. That we are all constantly "tested."

But I'm afraid all that means to me is that you prove your faith ("god is good," "life has meaning," "Jesus died for your sins") in your ability to hold it in the face of ever-increasing challenges--both material and metaphysical. And what looks like a virtue to the believer looks like stubbornness or willful ignorance or even an abdication of personal responsibility to me.

#22 A religious person might say that the struggle is a measure of the strength of one's faith.

I wonder if this particular phenomenon would be as strong if no-one had ever been martyred for their faith? There seems to me to be something pseudo-noble/heroic about belief in the face of all evidence to the contrary (I'm not saying that I find it heroic but I suspect that many believers do - no, I have no evidence for this, I'm just speculating now). The Bible and history are both filled with stories of people who have been persecuted for believing in a god* and I can't help thinking this idea of martyrdom may well be as attractive to some people as any idea of their god/s.

Do people who continue to believe against all the odds nourish that belief by seeing themselves as special and worthy of special treatment simply because of this denial of the facts?

I know someone will now (quite rightly) bring up Galileo, who was martyred for his beliefs, and question whether sceptics might also feel they are being a bit heroic but I'm not sure that is really the same thing when his beliefs were based of knowledge rather than its opposite. While scientists admire him for his stand, many also admire him for having the pragmatism to save his own life by recanting in public while continuing to believe and pursue the evidence in private.

I know I'm putting this badly but I am fascinated by the psychology of faith and the reasons why people continue to believe in the face of reason. Here are a few of my 'suspects' so far (in no particular order) and I'd be very happy if others would care to add to them (or, of course, argue with them):

1 Upbringing and indoctrination - not questioning what has been taught.

2 Seeing a continued belief as a kind of loyalty to one's parents ('Mum and dad would be so upset if I didn't share their beliefs').

3 Fear of retribution - if I don't believe, god will punish me.

4 Fear of death - if I don't believe I wil get eaten by worms when I die.

5 Pascal's wager ie. covering all bases - if I believe, I have nothing to lose; whereas, if I don't believe I could find myself in big trouble if I turn out to be wrong.

6 Liking the idea of being a martyr (see above).

7 Loneliness - if you believe in god you always have an (invisible) friend.

8 Laziness - a desire not to have to think for oneself; asking questions and listening to evidence takes time and energy. It's often easier to take the quickest route and just believe what you've been told.

9 Admiration of another person leading to uncritical acceptance of their faith ('My dad believes and he is a clever and wonderful guy, therefore there must be a god').

10 Need to be part of a group.

11 Need to convince themselves that life will (eventually) be fair and even things out between rich and poor; good and evil etc. (the good will be rewarded and the bad will be punished).

* In fact, nobody in the history of the world has ever been persecuted for believing in a god. Belief is about what goes in in your head and the thought police haven't caught up with that yet. People who have been persecuted are those who have refused to obey the laws of their country because of their belief (I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing) or have chosen to speak up about what they think (again, never a bad thing). Plenty of people have continued to believe (and disbelieve) in their own hearts and haven't felt the need to be martyred about it.

Ed for typo

Booksloth, I am itching to respond to your post but will have to wait for the weekend. Pesky work is getting in the way of my LT time.

#24 I can wait. Work is the curse of the reading classes.

#23

In fact, nobody in the history of the world has ever been persecuted for believing in a god

Plenty of people have been persecuted for believing in the wrong god, though.

Re. martyrs, have you ever read about St Augustine of Antioc (sp?). His greatest desire was to be eaten by lions. Quite, quite mad.

These days we have "suicide by police"

#23 Booksloth, it is the weekend. I have produced some comments relating to your post.

Your list of reasons had me thinking of my own experience of growing up in Northern Ireland as a Catholic and of how I abandoned all belief in Christianity and other faiths. I believe my experience has given me an insight regarding some of the questions you have raised. It may take a few posts to give a full response, but I hope my words will be of use and will perhaps feed further debate.

In relation to your questions about whether believers believe martyrdom is heroic or not. I cannot speak for all religions, but both Christianity and Islam have it written in their holy books. Their religious leaders will praise the acts of martyrs and the holy books have statements such as the following:

The bible, Matthew 5:11 & 12 (from the sermon on the mount) has Christ saying, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against your falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
John 15:13 & 14 “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

And the Koran: "And say not of those who are slain in the way of Allah: 'They are dead.' Nay, they are living, though ye perceive (it) not. (The Noble Quran, 2:154)"
"Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord. They rejoice in the Bounty provided by Allah: And with regard to those left behind, who have not yet joined them (in their bliss), the (Martyrs) glory in the fact that on them is no fear, nor have they (cause to) grieve. They glory in the Grace and Bounty from Allah, and in the fact that Allah suffereth not the reward of the faithful to be lost (in the least). (The Noble Quran, 3:169-171)"

It has been written in the holy books that martyrdom will reap great rewards. Some people would see persecution and even martyrdom as a fast track to the eternal salvation they believe they will have in heaven.

Martyrdom is not only praised, but its value is presented in the words of their holy scripture.

#23 Booksloth

Do people who continue to believe against all the odds nourish that belief by seeing themselves as special and worthy of special treatment simply because of this denial of the facts?

For Christians this is certainly true. In John 20:29 when Christ appears to the apostles and Thomas after the resurrection, ‘Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”’

I think this is a great catch-all phrase and it gives the believer a great "out" from any rational argument. They can also take solace from this that their adversaries are not blessed, hence great smugness can be gleaned from blind faith.

#23

1 Upbringing and indoctrination - not questioning what has been taught.

This is a big initiating factor, but I think it has to be put in a social context which links in with you point 10.

In my own case I grew up in a deeply divided community in which Catholics were discriminated against. Catholic areas had unemployment levels between 20 and 30 percent while Protestant areas had full employment.

In such an environment the majority of Catholics did not question their faith because it was their social identifier. Under attack any grouping will cling together against the attackers. To question the group’s fundamental identity does not occur to many people. Without their core defining identity what would someone be? What would they do? Abandoning their faith would be leave them with no community to belong to.

10 Need to be part of a group.

I believe this is a biggy and is tied up with what is acceptable in a society. I know in Ireland (all over Northern Ireland and particularly in rural areas of the Republic) when I was growing up it would be very unusual for people not to attend Mass on Sunday. If they missed it questions would be asked. It could become a topic of discussion. Families could be shamed.

2 Seeing a continued belief as a kind of loyalty to one's parents ('Mum and dad would be so upset if I didn't share their beliefs').

In the environment I grew up in it would be totally unheard off for people to abandon their faith, or would be considered unusual and problematic.

I'd like to add:

12. The belief that religion is the sole source of morality, and that abandoning it would be evil or lead to evil.

This is not just the province of the creepy "Well, of course we would all like to go around murdering and stealing, but..." people. It's more that they see religious belief as a virtue in itself.

#26 Yes and no - my point was meant to be that nobody gets persecuted for their beliefs because a belief is something that goes on inside the head and nobody else has to know about it. It's the expression of those beliefs that lead to persecution (well, no, in fact, it's unreasoning reactions to the expression of those beliefs - I'm trying to be very careful in thise group to qualify everything I say and I can already see that might become very complicated :-) ). I'm not criticising anyone for choosing to express their beliefs - in fact I'm all for standing up to be counted - just being a bit pedantic.

#27 You post (and those that follow) requires a longer response than I have time for at the moment - will be back after harp practice, taking down Xmas decorations, making dog biscuits and several other fairly mundane jobs.

A common reason for at least some degree of religious belief is an inability to accept that human existence has no purpose. Some extend this to include a rejection of evolution as a complete explanation for the immense complexity of life on earth. Religion also conveniently explains why the universe exists.

I know several people with no obvious religious affiliation who have sited at least one of these reasons for remaining agnostic.

#27 (Sorry I didn't come back yesterday - visitors turned up.)

I think you're in a very interesting position, pgmcc, having spent your childhood in Northern Ireland during the height of the troubles. Not that I think anyone needs a reason to be an atheist but I wonder whether you feel that your own atheisn ever started out as a simple reaction against something you could see was causing a lot of misery around you? I'm not saying you haven't thought it through a great deal since then, you clearly have, but I'm interested in the effects of that kind of situation upon children and I just ask that as a throw-away question without any real grounds for asking.

Thank you for saving me the trouble of finding those quotes. As you point out, martyrdom is enshrined in many faiths and I would simplify this (probably far too much) by referring back to my own, far less interesting, childhood. I grew up in the days of The Monkees and, like almost every other 12-year old girl at the time, I had plans to marry Davy Jones. I do remember very clearly feeling rather heroic if other kids claimed they were a ruibbish group and I longed for the chance to somehow 'prove' my devotion to Mr Jones. It seems to me that there is a great deal of subversive satisfaction to be derived from this kind of self-sacrifice and that many people don't grow out of it but continue to feel that continuing to support a person or point of view unconditionally gives them a sizeable chunk of the moral high-ground. It's not so much anything about that person or belief, but about their own devotion to a cause. I see this as one of the very clever ways in which those responsible for what we read in these 'holy' booksknew what kind of psychology they were up against and what kind of thing might lead some people to support them uncritically.

#28 I'm sure (in fact, I hope) others will correct me if I'm wrong here but I can't think of a single other circumstance in which it is considered more worthy to believe without evidence than to seek out that evidence and have some proper grounds for that belief. It's a most peculiar situation. It also links closely with that other question about god - why, if s/he exists, would s/he choose to be so secretive? What on earth is to be gained by hiding away, covering all one's traces and deliberately ensuring therew is no evidence whatsoever of one's existence? Making blind faith the central tenet of a belief system seems absolutely crazy when a being and their followers claim to have all the answers. Why not produce evidence of that being's existence and solve the world's problems there and then? If anyone, believer or otherwise, can come up with a sensible reason for this I will burn all my atheist/sceptic books and promise to reread The Shack.

#29 Here in good old agnostic England, it's sometimes hard to imagine what it must be like to be part of that kind of community. I've never lived in any place where the church had a strong influence on the locals (not the locals in general anyway, just a few individuals) and the stories of many Americans on LT leave me aghast. A society where a person feels ostracised for not believing seems weirdly alien to me. In Northern Ireland, belonging to the 'wrong' community could get you killed - there's probably no stronger reason for wanting to belong.

As for the point about not wanting to upset the parents, this is one where I feel some real difficulty. Both my parents and all my grandparents are now dead but the one who particularly gives me pause on this subject was my grandfather whom I worshipped and saw as my guiding star as far as morals, behaviour etc were concerned. He was a Methodist and, while not the strictest kind, certainly a very sincere one. Even allowing for the fact that he grew up in an age where religion was rarely doubted, he was an extremely intelligent man and I still often wonder how such a clever and thoughtful person could so take for granted the existence of an 'invisible friend'. It was the only subject on which I can ever remember him simply taking someone else's word, rather than looking out the evidence for himself. I know times were very different then but I still wonder how clever people can fall for these things.

#30 This is such an interesting and central point that I'm going to open up a new thread for us to discuss it. (http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?group=13299)

#32 I'd have to add 'conveniently (and inaccurately)' but yes, point taken completely. This was meant to be included in my point #4 'fear pf death'. Mankind needs explanations and religion certainly provides a lazy way of getting these. It is much easier and less time-consuming to simply believe what you are told than it is to look out some more rational answers and start demanding evidence. There is no doubt that many people just like to get an answer and, having got one, don't expend a great deal of energy on wondering whether it is the true one.

32> Except that "Because God made it so" is no more a reason than "The Big Bang happened."

Less of one, actually.

#35 Well, both positions rest upon whether the person making the claim can offer any evidence. In the case of 'God made it so' there doesn't appear to be any attempt at evidence - the only 'proof' required is faith. As far as the Big Bang goes, there is a considerable amount of scientific evidence that led to this being the 'best guess' position until recently. Now, of course, scientists are beginning to question the validity of the Big Bang theory and are looking beyond that in the hopes of improving upon the theory. That's okay because science is all about progression and one explanation imporving upon the last whereas, in religion, belief is a fixed point and the only ways in which those beliefs change over time is in the ways people create an easier life for themselves by adapting their beliefs to suit their lifestyle. For example, the basic tenets of the Christian religion have remained the same for around 2000 years: Jesus Christ was the son of god born to a virgin mother, was crucified and rose from the dead after 3 days; while the expectations upon believers are being constantly adapted to suit those believers - many churches now accept divorce, women vicars etc while very few believers now fear they will go to hell for their 'sins' but have invested their 'god' with an understanding and forgiveness that doesn't exist in the Bible