Faith and how much we depend on it.

DogmaHunter said:

No. That's exactly the thing. There is no such track record. The idea that there is, is something that is believed on (religious) faith.

The track record of my own abilities is nothing like that. My past efforts and success/failure thereof are demonstrable.

I have my degree in software engineering.
I worked on countless projects that succeeded.
There's a real track record of those successes that need not be taken on "faith" that it occured.

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There are two different issues here: believing that the track record is accurate and faith based upon that track record that you will be trustworthy in the future. The Bible makes claims about what God has done and you have made claims about what you have done. It contains accounts of people who were there about what happened and your coworkers are people who were there who could give accounts of what happened. People can be untruthful or have wrong impressions about what happened and evidence such software engineering degrees can be forged, but whether other people don't believe that track record is factual is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the person who has faith that you will be trustworthy in the future does so because they believe that your track record of being trustworthy in the past is accurate, just as the person who has faith in God does so because they believe that the Bible is accurate. We can disagree about whether the Bible is accurate, but it is not the case that someone has faith that God does so without thinking that God has a track record of being trustworthy, so "faith" has the same meaning.

That's demonstrably not true.

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Feel free to demonstrate it.

People believe all kinds of things for all kinds of (bad) reasons.
And you know that.

What is the track record of astrology? Mediums? Fortune tellers? Snake oil salesmen? Healing crystals?

These things are all believe on "faith" alone. No track record. Only misguided gullibility.

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"Baseless" means "without a base", but having what you consider to be bad reasons doesn't mean that their reasons don't count as a base for their belief. If they had no reasons for their belief then they would not have formed their belief in the first place and their reasons for trusting in those things consist of being a track record.

DogmaHunter said:

Exactly. But what is this confidence based on? Answer: on their (religious) faith that the bible is accurate. Not on an actual track record, but on a claimed track record that is to just be "believed".

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Again, you claimed to have a successful track record and it is something to be believed.

People also give testimonials about being abducted by aliens, seeing big foot, the loch ness monster, seeing Elvis alive and well, ....

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Again, you're mixing the issue of thinking that something is an accurate account with thinking that someone of something is trustworthy. As I said, you're free to not think that a particular testimony is trustworthy, but the person who believes the testimony about what God has done increases their faith because they see it as being part of God's track record.

Again, this is not true.
The track record is not a tangible one that everyone can go ahead and verify. Instead, it is a claimed record that is to just be "believed".

Thats the difference.

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The Bible contains many things that can and have been verified.

That's not true either.

I have good reasons to accept that gravity is real. I see no purpose in using the word "faith" in context of gravity. And neither do you.
I never see anyone say that they have "faith" that if they jump from the eiffel tower, they will plummeth to their deaths. No, instead, that is called knowledge. And one doesn't require faith to accept that knowledge. Because we have evidence.

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No one knows the future, but we can have reason to think that the future will be like the past and make decisions accordingly. Gravity has a very consistent track record, so we can have faith or be very confident that it will continue to behave in the same manner in the future.

Archaeopteryx said:

Again, you're denying that it's possible for someone to be unjustifiably confident in some claim.

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Again, you have so far failed to demonstrate how that would be possible. If someone didn't think that they were justified at being at their confidence level, then they wouldn't be at their confidence level in the first place.

That's assuming the person in question is referring to 'faith' as confidence in general, which may or may not be justified to varying degrees. Often they add an important caveat that bears emphasising: they say that they would continue to believe just as strongly even if overwhelming contrary evidence were presented. That changes the nature of the discussion quite a bit, since then we are left to wonder about the reasonableness of holding such dogmatic commitments.

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You have no problem rejecting their claim that Christianity is true, so why do you accept their claim that they would continue to believe hook, line, and sinker? It's at least possible for Christianity to be true, but the second claim is pure bravado and not even logically possible. If they considered contrary evidence to be overwhelming, then they would no longer believe, but if they continue to believe, then it is precisely because they don't consider the contrary evidence to be overwhelming.

Soyeong said:

Again, you have so far failed to demonstrate how that would be possible. If someone didn't think that they were justified at being at their confidence level, then they wouldn't be at their confidence level in the first place.

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I already addressed this. See the previous thread on this topic.

Soyeong said:

You have no problem rejecting their claim that Christianity is true, so why do you accept their claim that they would continue to believe hook, line, and sinker? It's at least possible for Christianity to be true, but the second claim is pure bravado and not even logically possible. If they considered contrary evidence to be overwhelming, then they would no longer believe, but if they continue to believe, then it is precisely because they don't consider the contrary evidence to be overwhelming.

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Why isn't it logically possible? Why do I believe them when they say that they would continue to be dogmatic? Because they usually continue to be dogmatic, just as they said they would.

Soyeong said:

"Baseless" means "without a base", but having what you consider to be bad reasons doesn't mean that their reasons don't count as a base for their belief. If they had no reasons for their belief then they would not have formed their belief in the first place and their reasons for trusting in those things consist of being a track record.

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You're nitpicking. In most usages, "baseless" is shorthand for "based on poor reasoning."

Archaeopteryx said:

I already addressed this. See the previous thread on this topic.

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They think their belief is justified and someone else's opinion about whether or not their belief is justified has no relevance, so that in no way addresses what I've said.

Why isn't it logically possible? Why do I believe them when they say that they would continue to be dogmatic? Because they usually continue to be dogmatic, just as they said they would.

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Beliefs don't appear and disappear uncaused, but rather they appear because we have been given sufficient reason and they disappear because we have been given sufficiently stronger reason to believe something else that is mutually exclusive. Someone saying that they would continue to believe in spite of being given sufficient contrary evidence is like saying that you can have a cause without its effect. Being dogmatic does not allow them to continue to believe something even when they consider there to be sufficiently stronger reasons to believe something else, but rather it prevents them from considering something else in the first place. You might think that you have offered overwhelming contrary evidence and they can either agree with you and dismiss their belief or disagree with you and maintain their belief, but they can't agree with you and maintain their belief.

You're nitpicking. In most usages, "baseless" is shorthand for "based on poor reasoning."

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I regularly run across people who claim like that there is no evidence for Christianity, which is very different from saying that they find that the evidence for Christianity is insufficient to form their own belief, so I think it is an important distinction. Just in the last thread someone claimed that you had to suspend your use of reason in order to believe religion, which again is very different from saying that in their opinion believing religion involves using poor reasoning. Being of a different opinion about how good the reasoning is for trusting someone does not make faith into something else.

Soyeong said:

They think their belief is justified and someone else's opinion about whether or not their belief is justified has no relevance, so that in no way addresses what I've said.

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I'm not talking about someone else's opinion. I'm talking about whether it is actually justified by the evidence given in support of it.

Soyeong said:

Beliefs don't appear and disappear uncaused,

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I never said that they did.

Soyeong said:

but rather they appear because we have been given sufficient reason and they disappear because we have been given sufficiently stronger reason to believe something else that is mutually exclusive.

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That's assuming everyone is perfectly rational all of the time, which we know isn't the case.

Soyeong said:

Someone saying that they would continue to believe in spite of being given sufficient contrary evidence is like saying that you can have a cause without its effect. Being dogmatic does not allow them to continue to believe something even when they consider there to be sufficiently stronger reasons to believe something else, but rather it prevents them from considering something else in the first place. You might think that you have offered overwhelming contrary evidence and they can either agree with you and dismiss their belief or disagree with you and maintain their belief, but they can't agree with you and maintain their belief.

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Whoever said anything about them agreeing? Obviously they will dismiss it out of hand. They have to if they want to maintain belief.

Archaeopteryx said:

I'm not talking about someone else's opinion. I'm talking about whether it is actually justified by the evidence given in support of it.

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Whether they are justified by the evidence given in support of it is up to opinion. If it's not up to opinion, then who is to say whether or not they are actually justified? And if no one can say whether or not they are justified, then why is that even relevant?

I never said that they did.

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There is no reason for someone to maintain a belief when they think they have sufficiently better reason not to maintain it, so if it were possible to do so, then their belief would be maintained uncaused.

That's assuming everyone is perfectly rational all of the time, which we know isn't the case.

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If someone were not acting perfectly rationally, then it would affect their ability to weight which position was most strongly supported by the evidence, but it would not take the form of believing something is true and false at the same time.

Whoever said anything about them agreeing? Obviously they will dismiss it out of hand. They have to if they want to maintain belief.

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Sure, they could dismiss it out of hand before getting a chance to disagree with it, but either way, they aren't agreeing with you while maintaining their belief.

Soyeong said:

There are two different issues here: believing that the track record is accurate

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I can show you my diploma and my report cards. You can go to the university of antwerp and double check that I didn't forge it.

You can go to all the companies I worked at and ask them to show me the code as well as the software that was written by the team that I was leading. You an ask them about my performances.

You don't need to believe me. You can verify it for yourself.

and faith based upon that track record that you will be trustworthy in the future.

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In the sense of "confidence and trust" based on a verifiable track record, yes.
It's not "faith" as in religious faith. Rather, it's a reasonable expectation based on evidence that I will be trustworthy going forward with new projects.

The Bible makes claims about what God has done and you have made claims about what you have done.

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My claims are verifiable. You don't need to "just believe" me. You can go to my school and the companies on my resumé and ask them directly as well as look at the code that I've actually written.

Thanks to things like subversion (a source control code repository), you can actually see line by line which was done by me and which wasn't.

Again, there's no need to "just believe me".
The bible? Not so much. Not even remotely.

It contains accounts of people who were there about what happened and your coworkers are people who were there who could give accounts of what happened.

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1. you can actually talk to my former coworkers, my clients, my project managers, my teachers

2. you can actually read my code - you don't need to depend on testimony

3. as for the bible, no... you need, again, to "just believe" that it was actually written by the people that were there AND that their testimonials were accurate. Funnily enough, we actually know that this wasn't the case.

What is relevant is that the person who has faith that you will be trustworthy in the future does so because they believe that your track record of being trustworthy in the past is accurate, just as the person who has faith in God does so because they believe that the Bible is accurate.

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Once more, my trackrecord as a programmer is objectively verifiable. All my code is out there. You don't need to rely on people's opinions and testimonies.
Having said that... even if you could only rely on people, you can actually go and talk to these people - you don't need to rely on books that are copies of copies of translations of copies that are claimed to be originally told by so-called witnesses. None of that can be verified. My work can be verified.

Next to that, you can also actually TEST my programmer skills by giving me an assignment. So regardless of my track record and the verifiability thereof, you can directly test me as well.

To say that this is the same as the claims of the bible is beyond ridiculous.

We can disagree about whether the Bible is accurate, but it is not the case that someone has faith that God does so without thinking that God has a track record of being trustworthy, so "faith" has the same meaning.

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No. It really, really hasn't.

Feel free to demonstrate it.

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You want me to demonstrate to you that people are perfectly able to hold baseless beliefs? Really? I hope you are joking.

"Baseless" means "without a base", but having what you consider to be bad reasons doesn't mean that their reasons don't count as a base for their belief.

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I count them as such. Astrology, homeopathy, alien abductions, annunaki reptilians, scientology... all baseless beliefs.

If they had no reasons for their belief then they would not have formed their belief in the first place and their reasons for trusting in those things consist of being a track record.

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No. For example, a gullible person might believe that some medium is talking to a loved one that died. Not because of any kind of track record, but for purely emotional reasons.

Soyeong said:

Again, you claimed to have a successful track record and it is something to be believed.

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No. It's something that can be verified.

Again, you're mixing the issue of thinking that something is an accurate account with thinking that someone of something is trustworthy.

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They are tied together. Something becomes trustworthy based on its verifiable trackrecord.

Absent that, the word "trustworhty" is completely meaningless.

As I said, you're free to not think that a particular testimony is trustworthy, but the person who believes the testimony about what God has done increases their faith because they see it as being part of God's track record.

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But it's not verifiable... which means it is "just believed". And that's when we get into the realm of religious faith.

The Bible contains many things that can and have been verified.

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And none of what can actually be verified adds any kind of credibility to all the supernatural bits that cannot be verified.

New York exists and most likely several "Peter Parker"s live there, but that doesn't make Spiderman real.

No one knows the future, but we can have reason to think that the future will be like the past and make decisions accordingly. Gravity has a very consistent track record, so we can have faith or be very confident that it will continue to behave in the same manner in the future.

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Yes. Which makes it different from religious faith. One doesn't have to take ones "word" for it that gravity does what it does. Nore does anyone have to just "believe" whatever some book says about it.

Gravity can be independently verified.

Soyeong said:

Whether they are justified by the evidence given in support of it is up to opinion. If it's not up to opinion, then who is to say whether or not they are actually justified? And if no one can say whether or not they are justified, then why is that even relevant?

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It's not up to opinion; it's up to the evidence. On examination, is there sufficient reason to justify that level of confidence in the claim?

Soyeong said:

There is no reason for someone to maintain a belief when they think they have sufficiently better reason not to maintain it, so if it were possible to do so, then their belief would be maintained uncaused.

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Not if they dismiss reasons against it out of hand.

Soyeong said:

If someone were not acting perfectly rationally, then it would affect their ability to weight which position was most strongly supported by the evidence,

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Bingo.

Soyeong said:

but it would not take the form of believing something is true and false at the same time.

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I never implied this.

Soyeong said:

Sure, they could dismiss it out of hand before getting a chance to disagree with it, but either way, they aren't agreeing with you while maintaining their belief.

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I don't think I ever implied that they were agreeing with me.

DogmaHunter said:

No, it's not and I explained why in other posts.

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You were wrong. There is no difference. Religious faith is based upon the exact same sort of trust through experience as any other faith is. If you wish to discount the experiences of others and only credit the experiences of those that are like minded to yourself you can do so, but do not expect the rest of humanity to be dictated to in that way. You have no authority to insist upon that.

grasping the after wind said:

You were wrong. There is no difference. Religious faith is based upon the exact same sort of trust through experience as any other faith is.

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No, it's not.

Religious faith is based on "experience" taken on faith / face value.
It's not an experience that is objectively verifiable by third parties.

I can trust that a plane will take me safely to my destination. I do not require to believe testimonies of other people's experience on planes, because I have access to countless flight records and statistics that aren't simply based on people's words.

I can trust that the sun will come up tomorrow. I do not require to believe testimonies of other people's experience of the sun coming up in the past, because I have access to countless measurements and actual knowledge of physics of how the earth rotates on its own access and I can independently verify these things.

This is entirely different from "religious" faith in the "personal" experience of other people.

If you wish to discount the experiences of others and only credit the experiences of those that are like minded to yourself you can do so

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No, that is not at all what I'm saying.

What I *am* saying is that there is a difference between having to simply believe people's testimonies on the one hand and being able to objectively, independently verify certain experiences on the other.

At the foundation of "religious faith", it always comes down to having to simply "believe" what people say / claim. Verifiability is NOT part of it.

That was my point. And it still is. And you haven't said anything to show otherwise.

You have no authority to insist upon that.

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Nore do I need to, as it is not what I am saying.

grasping the after wind said:

You were wrong. There is no difference. Religious faith is based upon the exact same sort of trust through experience as any other faith is.

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If one examines religious claims closely enough and considers how the religious support and defend those claims, one finds that this simply isn't the case. Faith, in the religious sense, demands that you believe regardless of how well supported the claim is. It demands your assent even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Archaeopteryx said:

If one examines religious claims closely enough and considers how the religious support and defend those claims, one finds that this simply isn't the case. Faith, in the religious sense, demands that you believe regardless of how well supported the claim is. It demands your assent even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

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That is what faith demands whether religious or not. I am not saying religion is scientific. I am saying faith is faith. If one has faith in something one believes it without direct evidence. Just as a religious believer takes the word of those he/she has trust on so does anyone with faith in any other thing. Faith in scientific inquiry demands you believe in the validity of the basic assumptions that scientific inquiry are founded on. One cannot prove that a basic assumption is true one must simply believe it to be so. That is faith. I find that many material minded people assume that their basic assumptions are more valid than other people's basic assumptions because they assume their basic assumptions are somehow provable but they are not. Their faith in their basic beliefs about the nature of reality is so strong they cannot see that it is faith and not something that can be independently verified.

grasping the after wind said:

That is what faith demands whether religious or not. I am not saying religion is scientific. I am saying faith is faith. If one has faith in something one believes it without direct evidence. Just as a religious believer takes the word of those he/she has trust on so does anyone with faith in any other thing. Faith in scientific inquiry demands you believe in the validity of the basic assumptions that scientific inquiry are founded on. One cannot prove that a basic assumption is true one must simply believe it to be so. That is faith. I find that many material minded people assume that their basic assumptions are more valid than other people's basic assumptions because they assume their basic assumptions are somehow provable but they are not. Their faith in their basic beliefs about the nature of reality is so strong they cannot see that it is faith and not something that can be independently verified.

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You seem to be conflating assumptions that we must make in order to be able to reason about claims, including the claims of religion, with religious claims themselves, which we don't need to assume in order to be able to reason. In sum, I think you're making a category mistake.

Archaeopteryx said:

You seem to be conflating assumptions that we must make in order to be able to reason about claims, including the claims of religion, with religious claims themselves, which we don't need to assume in order to be able to reason. In sum, I think you're making a category mistake.

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No I am not doing that at all. I am simply pointing out that faith is faith. The original point I was disputing was that religious faith was somehow a different thing than faith in other things because faith in other things was based upon experience. My contention is that faith in religion is based upon experience as well. I do not insist that religious claims must be accepted by anyone as basic assumptions any more than I would insist that any other POVs about the nature of reality need to be accepted as basic assumptions. I do note however the tendency of some to insist that their own POV about the nature of reality be accepted as the only valid basic assumptions. So you have the Bible believers arguing that since the Bible says so it must be true and the material minded arguing that since something cannot be verified by the physical evidence it ought not be considered valid. Rather than arguing the cases on the merits of logic within some universe of a particular POV what is being argued is which opinion of what the individuals involved believe is the correct one to hold. So logical thought is replaced with prejudiced opinion.

grasping the after wind said:

That is what faith demands whether religious or not. I am not saying religion is scientific. I am saying faith is faith.

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To say that, one has to completely ignore the fact that words can have different connotations in different contexts.

It's like saying "theory is theory" - while ignoring that the word means something very specific in a scientific context.

Just like faith means something very specific in a religious context.

If one has faith in something one believes it without direct evidence.

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Which is exactly where the difference lies....
When I say that I have faith that the plane will get me to my destination, or that I have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow - then I'm not saying this without evidence.

Just as a religious believer takes the word of those he/she has trust on so does anyone with faith in any other thing.

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Right, the religious believer has to take the words of someone.
Not so much when one deals with "faith" in other contexts, as the example above with planes or the sun coming up.

Faith in scientific inquiry demands you believe in the validity of the basic assumptions that scientific inquiry are founded on. One cannot prove that a basic assumption is true one must simply believe it to be so. That is faith

Now, you are really stretching it.
I don't require "faith", in the religious sense, that my pc will boot up when I hit the power button.

I find that many material minded people assume that their basic assumptions are more valid than other people's basic assumptions because they assume their basic assumptions are somehow provable but they are not.

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Are you know talking about these basal assumptions:
- reality is real
- reality is consistent enough so that we can learn about it (ie, gravity won't stop working tomorrow)
- models with predictive capabilities are better then those without

Those assumptions?
Do you really think that these assumptions are of the same nature as the assumptions made by the religious? Seriously?

Their faith in their basic beliefs about the nature of reality is so strong they cannot see that it is faith and not something that can be independently verified.

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It seems to me that you are desperatly trying to make it seem as if science is like some kind of religion, or in the same league as a religion.

I shouldn't have to point out how absurd that is.

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grasping the after wind said:

No I am not doing that at all. I am simply pointing out that faith is faith. The original point I was disputing was that religious faith was somehow a different thing than faith in other things because faith in other things was based upon experience. My contention is that faith in religion is based upon experience as well.

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But what you fail to acknowledge is what this experience at bottom is...

The experience of, for example, gravity is in an entirely different league then the experience of, for example, the effect or praying.

One can be independently verified. The other must be "just believed".

grasping the after wind said:

No I am not doing that at all. I am simply pointing out that faith is faith. The original point I was disputing was that religious faith was somehow a different thing than faith in other things because faith in other things was based upon experience. My contention is that faith in religion is based upon experience as well. I do not insist that religious claims must be accepted by anyone as basic assumptions any more than I would insist that any other POVs about the nature of reality need to be accepted as basic assumptions. I do note however the tendency of some to insist that their own POV about the nature of reality be accepted as the only valid basic assumptions. So you have the Bible believers arguing that since the Bible says so it must be true and the material minded arguing that since something cannot be verified by the physical evidence it ought not be considered valid. Rather than arguing the cases on the merits of logic within some universe of a particular POV what is being argued is which opinion of what the individuals involved believe is the correct one to hold. So logical thought is replaced with prejudiced opinion.

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If you're talking about "basic assumptions" then you aren't talking about faith. I need to assume the rules of logic, for example, if I am to be logical. I accept these rules simply because I must if I am to think logically (that is, to form logically coherent thoughts). And I need to be able to do that if I am to examine claims logically, including the claims of your religion.