Long Term Doubt vs Strong Belief - what is more honest?

BigV said:

Then why don't you believe that I can answer prayers?

How do you distinguish between truth and fiction?

Click to expand...

Like I said, I'm not a fideist. I don't accept things purely on account of faith, and I do expect some sort of rational presentation. But I'm just postmodern enough to be a bit skeptical of the possibility of having anything besides a variation of different fictions if we're entirely on our own here. Everything we think we know is just too culturally contexted.

BigV said:

Well, you disagreed with me, when I said that faith is the least reliable method to obtain the truth, and now seem to be coming around to expecting some sort of rational presentation.

If you don't accept things purely on account of faith, then why the disagreement in post #59?

Click to expand...

Well, your ultimate question here is about honesty. I ran across a Young Earth Creationist here a while back who said that they understood evolution, understood the reasons for accepting it, but rejected it anyway because they felt that the biblical account as they understood it had to supercede. There were no games, no attempts to make that decision look more rational than it was. I thought that was very honest. That doesn't mean I would sign up for Young Earth Creationism.

Beyond that, you've created a false dilemma between faith and reason. I don't believe in pure faith, but I also don't believe in pure reason. I don't think either is reliable beyond a certain point, though too much focus on scientific knowledge alone is particularly problematic, since it just leads to conceptual confusion.

Searching for truth promotes spiritual growth in a person. It is better to be a spirit in such motion than a "believer" that fails to question the tenants of their faith. The Master taught us to "Seek and Ye shall find". Unquestioning faith is "blind faith". While this is indeed faith, it is the weakest kind. To accept a tower of principles as fact--without question, runs the great risk that if just one of those tenants is later proved false, the entire tower may crumble to dust. Those who are dedicated to the eternal search for truth possess a "logical faith". This faith never fears to find errors. This faith never fears new revelations. Instead, such individuals rejoice at the wonderful new understandings and revelations of our loving Father.

BigV said:

I see your point and I think definitions are in order, otherwise, we are going off assumptions.

I agree with you that we all use faith. When I sit in the car, I have faith that it's going to start, otherwise, I would have been calling a tow truck or doing something else to get it rolling, so there is faith, but it's also reason and experience. I 've used my car in the past and have confirmed its reliability and ability to get me where I'm going.

The second example of faith is a human person believing they can fly if they step off a tall building, without any special equipment. This second example of faith is based on pure belief and no evidence.

Religious faith, in my view, is mostly that second example, which the faithful twist and sell as it's similar to the first example. When I say that faith is unreliable means to get to the truth, I'm using faith in the sense of the second example.

Click to expand...

This is an odd sort of non sequitur, since I said nothing whatsoever about faith being based on experience. If you want to parrot pre-packaged arguments at people, knock yourself out, but make sure they at least make sense in the context of the conversation. I was leaning in a dangerously postmodern direction, not saying that we all use faith.

Anyway, I'm not going to have time to continue with this thread, so I suppose it doesn't really matter. Good night, and have a nice evening.

Silmarien said:

Well, your ultimate question here is about honesty. I ran across a Young Earth Creationist here a while back who said that they understood evolution, understood the reasons for accepting it, but rejected it anyway because they felt that the biblical account as they understood it had to supercede. There were no games, no attempts to make that decision look more rational than it was. I thought that was very honest.

Click to expand...

It seems that it depends on what the person meant by "supercede".

For example, the person might have witnessed numerous miraculous events in a church that taught a rigidly literal understanding of Genesis. So the person might have been weighing events he/she personally witnessed against the scientific consensus on evolution. As long as there was even the tiniest dissent in the consensus on evolution it might have seemed best to also dissent. That is very honest, because the person truly believes that God created the universe in 6 days despite the scientific consensus on evolution.

However, the person might have simply feared that accepting evolution would lead to him/her losing faith entirely. So maybe the person refused to confront the evidence out of fear. That seems less honest to me. Essentially the person in that scenario was deceiving himself/herself.

BigV said:

What is more honest, an assurance based on unverifiable, unfalsifiable or otherwise fallacious suppositions, or a search for truth and remaining in doubt until a verifiable, falsifiable and/or otherwise scientifically sound answer is obtained?

Click to expand...

It's not a matter of honesty. Different people are convinced by different things. I've always been fascinated by what people come to believe, and how. A dishonest approach would be to publicly follow a belief system while having serious doubts about it. But if one is actually convinced, then it doesn't really matter how one becomes convinced, it's an honest conviction.

BigV said:

Wow, just wow. I guess you just love to disagree with people. I agreed with you that we all use faith, and merely provided one example where we use faith. I did not claim that you said it. But whatever. I too, suppose it doesn't really matter. Take it easy.

Click to expand...

You are agreeing with things I never said, since I didn't say that we all use faith.

cloudyday2 said:

It seems that it depends on what the person meant by "supercede".

For example, the person might have witnessed numerous miraculous events in a church that taught a rigidly literal understanding of Genesis. So the person might have been weighing events he/she personally witnessed against the scientific consensus on evolution. As long as there was even the tiniest dissent in the consensus on evolution it might have seemed best to also dissent. That is very honest, because the person truly believes that God created the universe in 6 days despite the scientific consensus on evolution.

However, the person might have simply feared that accepting evolution would lead to him/her losing faith entirely. So maybe the person refused to confront the evidence out of fear. That seems less honest to me. Essentially the person in that scenario was deceiving himself/herself.

Click to expand...

This was a while ago, so I don't remember exactly what the person in question said. I vaguely recall that they didn't see evolution as a threat to their faith, but had decided to reject it anyway because of their understanding of Genesis.

Though I don't necessarily see anything dishonest about intentionally avoiding anything that you think might cause you to stumble, as long as you're honest in admitting that this is what you're doing. There's that famous Dostoevsky quote: "If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not the truth." As long as you're really upfront about it, I think it's extremely honest rather than extremely dishonest.

BigV said:

Again, you just come across as someone who likes to nitpick for no reason. You avoid clearly defining what you mean by the use of your terms and then argue and disagree when you feel misrepresented.

You said you don't believe in pure faith but also don't believe in pure reason. What does this mean if you don't agree that we all use faith? If you don't use faith, don't you have a pure reason, which you say you don't believe in?

I don't understand what you are trying to achieve with your posts. Do you want to make clear points or to make vague generalizations and then disagree and argue with people?

Click to expand...

I meant that I didn't think that either an approach based purely on faith or an approach based purely on reason was ideal. We were discussing which of the two is more reliable, and my answer would be that neither really is.

It was the initial question of intellectual honesty that I was interested in, though. Not the rest of this.

Yttrium said:

It's not a matter of honesty. Different people are convinced by different things. I've always been fascinated by what people come to believe, and how. A dishonest approach would be to publicly follow a belief system while having serious doubts about it. But if one is actually convinced, then it doesn't really matter how one becomes convinced, it's an honest conviction.

Well, I don't.​

Click to expand...

You might have to define better what you mean by "follow a belief system," since where Pascal is concerned, it's not so clear here, in the context of this thread, that he was ...... "dishonest."

BigV said:

"I can feel nothing but compassion for those who sincerely lament their doubt, who regard it as the ultimate misfortune, and who, sparing no effort to escape from it, make their search their principal and most serious business."
(Blaise Pascal)

I have not verified whether Blaise Pascal's quote in 2PhiloVoid's signature is rightly attributed, but assuming it is, I'd like to pose a question.

What is more honest, an assurance based on unverifiable, unfalsifiable or otherwise fallacious suppositions, or a search for truth and remaining in doubt until a verifiable, falsifiable and/or otherwise scientifically sound answer is obtained?

Click to expand...

I'm coming back to your OP and starting again since you seem to not be coming to any new realization about the weakness of your position here, BigV.

First of all, you said you cared about some concept called "honesty," whatever that actually is in REALITY and whatever that means for you. And being that you've thus far stated here that you highly prize the act of 'verification,' whatever that supposedly amounts to in your estimation, I would have thought that you'd have wanted to follow through and make good on your expressed affinity for honesty by showing me, or the rest of us, that you most definitely verified that your interpretation and evaluation of the text in question (i.e. again, Pascal's quote) has been done in an even-handed and "honest" way. But, I beg your pardon, as far as I'm concerned, that hasn't been done!

No, all that has happened so far in this thread is that you've merely claimed that you value honesty and that we should assume that you do and that you actually maintain this in the process of your inquiry and challenge. You also seem to imply that all of this is somehow (self-evidently?) obvious and should be seen as such by the rest of us.

You've then proceeded to critique this, that and whatever about Pascal's form of Christian faith at your leisure, but all the while in doing so, you've left me waiting to see that you've actually noticed and addressed Pascal's central focus in what I call Pascal's A.A.S.S. (or Argument Against Sociopathic Skepticism) which essentially hones in upon the question of whether or not someone actually even cares about his own impending fate in death and the potential for Eternal Life afterward in a way that is sane, healthy, and of moral significance.

In all of this, you've merely skirted your own claim that verification is important, but it seems that according to you, it doesn't have to actually be implemented if........................one instead is "honest." Honesty for you appears to displace the need for verification in all circumstances, all of which sounds very intriguing but leaves me to think you haven't really thought out your own ethics in all of this, nor have you really comprehended what Pascal is getting at, especially since you really haven't thought about Pascal's A.A.S.S.

BigV said:

Well, as I've stated previously, Pascal came up with a Wager, whereby he concluded it's better to believe and avoid a very terrible eternal fate than not believe and risk that terrible eternal fate. In logic fallacy is called argumentum ad baculum. However, I don't doubt the honesty of the one deciding to roll with Christianity or any other Hell teaching religion based on same reasons.

Argumentum ad baculum - Wikipedia

Click to expand...

And I doubt the honesty of one who hasn't actually read the Pensees in full and then dares with audacity to "call out" Christians like Pascal in the attempt, like a marauding bear, to overcome what he thinks are the impotencies of the existential and spiritual decisions made by and acted upon by his neighbors. And despite what you think, I have a few words for you. So, maybe chaw on the following vid for a while [says the Fox] as you further contemplate and further mull over how you've come short in your understanding of Pascal:

BigV said:

"I can feel nothing but compassion for those who sincerely lament their doubt, who regard it as the ultimate misfortune, and who, sparing no effort to escape from it, make their search their principal and most serious business."
(Blaise Pascal)

I have not verified whether Blaise Pascal's quote in 2PhiloVoid's signature is rightly attributed, but assuming it is, I'd like to pose a question.

What is more honest, an assurance based on unverifiable, unfalsifiable or otherwise fallacious suppositions, or a search for truth and remaining in doubt until a verifiable, falsifiable and/or otherwise scientifically sound answer is obtained?

Click to expand...

Your statement presumes God is terrestrial observable form of life than can be manipulated and controlled/subjected to the same processes terrestrial life is. This is contrary to everything written about God or how he describes himself.

Not to mention this statement ignores the facts he himself allows and has provided for us.

Meaning if you want 'proof' of God then you must meet God on His terms and stop pretending you have a catchall pathology that will identify and categorize any and all observable life.

If God could be subject to science then the catch 22 is he would cease being God As currently described by scripture. But again, He has provided a way for us to individually to be set before him on a one on one basis without the need of anyone else or anything else beside a measure of faith and humility to ask for him Seek him and and continue this process till you finally understand or can see he has been there probably the whole time.

Strong belief is not based on want or will like most of you guys suppose, but by a life lived with God and from his direct support.