How does one know anything via faith?

[paulm50]

My reply kept in mind the OP, how faith would be involved in knowledge. I provided an answer. You need to have faith (ex. trust in an idea) in something in order to know it, since knowledge, as I understand, is justified true belief.
If a claim is justified and true, yet a person doesn't believe it (have faith in it), he doesn't have knowledge.

When speaking of faith, you're using a narrow understanding focused on the negativity associated with certain organizations. I'm just referring to a mental state of confidence in something. I'm not even referring to religious faith.

Whether or not some organization is evil because of "faith" has nothing to do with the OP. You can make a new thread for those topics if you wish.

So give counter examples of Religious Faith being used for positive things.

As for knowledge Religions have fought hard to limit it beyond what the hierarchy order. So how does one know anything via faith. When the faithful are told what to believe?

You're told the World is 6,000 years old. Wrong.
You're told the sons of the first people were farmers. Wrong.
You're told the World was flooded. Wrong.

And the list goes on. Today I can say these are wrong. Not so long ago, it would of got me burned at the stake for questioning it. Or for asking that the bible be in a language the ordinary people could speak. And that is what the OP is discussing.

"If you hold on faith that a particular god exists, and I hold on faith that your particular god does not exist, how do we determine which one of us is right? We cannot both be right; one of us must be wrong. But how, using faith, can we determine which of the two of us is in the wrong?."

With all the different religions, their major sub sects, then the medium ones, then the minor ones. How can you all be right? He wrongly limits it to two. The Facts and Stats on "33,000 Denominations"

Number of different religions.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

What about ideas like "faith in inductive arguments, faith in logic" etc. People sometimes claim to have knowledge after a leap of faith there. Maybe, they may say, because these things work for us.

So why not faith in God?

When does pragmatism lose its prestige? On the shoreline of a beach somewhere?

 

[paulm50]

What about ideas like "faith in inductive arguments, faith in logic" etc. People sometimes claim to have knowledge after a leap of faith there. Maybe, they may say, because these things work for us.

So why not faith in God?

When does pragmatism lose its prestige? On the shoreline of a beach somewhere?

No doubt there is the "these things work for us" element. But when does that become these things work for us, so I'm going to force it on everyone else?

There are parts of the bible that work for me, mostly in Jesus's teachings about loving thy fellow man, doing unto others, etc. But what gives a church the right to tell others how to live their lives, gays, sexual, women, marriage, tax, donations, Sunday, Saturday Trading, etc?

It should be, these things work for us, and I will let others make their choice. And going back to the OP. How does anyone know anything. When someone else is telling us what to think and learn.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

My reply kept in mind the OP, how faith would be involved in knowledge. I provided an answer. You need to have faith (ex. trust in an idea) in something in order to know it, since knowledge, as I understand, is justified true belief.
If a claim is justified and true, yet a person doesn't believe it (have faith in it), he doesn't have knowledge.

When speaking of faith, you're using a narrow understanding focused on the negativity associated with certain organizations. I'm just referring to a mental state of confidence in something. I'm not even referring to religious faith.

Whether or not some organization is evil because of "faith" has nothing to do with the OP. You can make a new thread for those topics if you wish.

Yes, we're using a narrow definition - faith in the religious sense.

 

[KCfromNC]

What about ideas like "faith in inductive arguments, faith in logic" etc. People sometimes claim to have knowledge after a leap of faith there. Maybe, they may say, because these things work for us.

So why not faith in God?

When does pragmatism lose its prestige?

When the people who agree that it "works" for them can't agree among themselves on the results.

 

[quatona]

Yes, we're using a narrow definition - faith in the religious sense.

Basically the same definition that religious people use it in when praising it as a particular virtue required by their doctrines.

 

[quatona]

What about ideas like "faith in inductive arguments, faith in logic" etc. People sometimes claim to have knowledge after a leap of faith there. Maybe, they may say, because these things work for us.

I´m all for "if it works for you" - I just don´t get the step to "I have knowledge".

So why not faith in God?

Because logic is axiomatic and "God" is not.
Because having "faith" in an argument isn´t the same as having "faith" in poorly defined entities.

When does pragmatism lose its prestige?

It loses it´s prestige as an intersubjective argument at the very point where there is no common ground that suggests the strategy as being pragmatically sound.

 

[paulm50]

So why not faith in God?

Let's narrow it down to a particular god. The one in the bible, what bible? King James Version.

Where the world is created in 6 days, all starts 6,000 years ago, the first born are farmers, people lived to be 600 years old. A very old man built a huge boat, over 120 years, and then nim, his wife and only three sons and wives, survived the flood, along with two of each animal that repopulated the entire Earth with all it's animals.

Then a man got swallowed by a fish, the Red Sea parted, and on.

So why not faith in this god, and not faith in established science?

Beats me.

 

[Chriliman]

Some have posited faith as an epistemology here; that you can know something through faith in it.

For those making that claim, I have a simple question.

If you hold on faith that a particular god exists, and I hold on faith that your particular god does not exist, how do we determine which one of us is right? We cannot both be right; one of us must be wrong. But how, using faith, can we determine which of the two of us is in the wrong?

Simple, it comes down to what makes the most sense when considering everything we know about our existence. God makes the most sense to me.

A universe coming from nothing or coming from a singularity or being self-sustained by "imaginary time" simply does not makes sense when you really honestly think about it.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Simple, it comes down to what makes the most sense when considering everything we know about our existence. God makes the most sense to me.

A universe coming from nothing or coming from a singularity or being self-sustained by "imaginary time" simply does not makes sense when you really honestly think about it.

A timeless, spaceless, immaterial conjurer who brings the universe into being through incantation makes sense?

 

[paulm50]

Simple, it comes down to what makes the most sense when considering everything we know about our existence. God makes the most sense to me.

A universe coming from nothing or coming from a singularity or being self-sustained by "imaginary time" simply does not makes sense when you really honestly think about it.

We don't know the Universe came from nothing, it came from the Big Bang. What created the Big Bang is still a mystery.

How does this link to your god?

 

[Chriliman]

A timeless, spaceless, immaterial conjurer who brings the universe into being through incantation makes sense?

He only claims to have spoken the universe into creation because this is the best way we can understand it. In order to understand exactly how He created the universe would require you to be infinite and timeless, just like God, fortunately there can only be one infinite and timeless God, which makes it possible for you to have a beginning, but no end, so you will eternally exist.

Of course all of this requires you to believe it, just like faithless scientist require you to believe that something other than God came before the Big Bang, even though all the concepts they've presented contradict and make 0 sense, but you have to be willing to honestly think about them to realize they don't makes sense. So are you willing to honestly think?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

He only claims to have spoken the universe into creation because this is the best way we can understand it. In order to understand exactly how He created the universe would require you to be infinite and timeless, just like God, fortunately there can only be one infinite and timeless God, which makes it possible for you to have a beginning, but no end, so you will eternally exist.

Of course all of this requires you to believe it, just like faithless scientist require you to believe that something other than God came before the Big Bang, even though all the concepts they've presented contradict and make 0 sense, but you have to be willing to honestly think about them to realize they don't makes sense. So are you willing to honestly think?

Yes, I do try to think about the question honestly, which is why I concede that I don't know how the universe came to be. Cosmogony remains an area of profound human ignorance. In my view, positing the existence of a personal creator deity does nothing to alleviate that ignorance.

 

[The Cadet]

He only claims to have spoken the universe into creation because this is the best way we can understand it. In order to understand exactly how He created the universe would require you to be infinite and timeless, just like God, fortunately there can only be one infinite and timeless God, which makes it possible for you to have a beginning, but no end, so you will eternally exist.

...So, basically, it makes sense to you, but it's also fundamentally unintelligible. Right. Makes sense!

 

[Archaeopteryx]

He only claims to have spoken the universe into creation because this is the best way we can understand it. In order to understand exactly how He created the universe would require you to be infinite and timeless, just like God, fortunately there can only be one infinite and timeless God, which makes it possible for you to have a beginning, but no end, so you will eternally exist.

Of course all of this requires you to believe it, just like faithless scientist require you to believe that something other than God came before the Big Bang, even though all the concepts they've presented contradict and make 0 sense, but you have to be willing to honestly think about them to realize they don't makes sense. So are you willing to honestly think?

Wikipedia isn't the best resource, but I think it says it well: "It is not known what could have preceded the hot dense state of the early universe or how and why it originated, though speculation abounds in the field of cosmogony." In essence, we know that the universe began to expand from a hot and dense state roughly 13.8 billion years ago. However, what happened before then, if "before" even makes sense in this context, is still a mystery.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

...So, basically, it makes sense to you, but it's also fundamentally unintelligible. Right. Makes sense!

The usual rebuttal I hear to this point is that because the cause exists beyond the universe, we shouldn't expect it to be intelligible! Or more precisely, we shouldn't expect it to conform to whatever principles operate within the universe. Okay. Fine. But then wouldn't any unintelligible nonsense suffice for an explanation?

 

[Chriliman]

Wikipedia isn't the best resource, but I think it says it well: "It is not known what could have preceded the hot dense state of the early universe or how and why it originated, though speculation abounds in the field of cosmogony." In essence, we know that the universe began to expand from a hot and dense state roughly 13.8 billion years ago. However, what happened before then, if "before" even makes sense in this context, is still a mystery.

My question is do we considering that hot dense state to be infinitely hot and dense?

Your right in thinking that "before" does not make sense in the context of what was before the Big Bang. Because what was before the Big Bang existed then and it exists now and it will continue to exist for eternity, put simply it infinitely exists in timelessness. This is how the God of the Holy Bible describes himself. He was and is and is to come.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

My question is do we considering that hot dense state to be infinitely hot and dense?

Your right in thinking that "before" does not make sense in the context of what was before the Big Bang. Because what was before the Big Bang existed then and it exists now and it will continue to exist for eternity, put simply it infinitely exists in timelessness. This is how the God of the Holy Bible describes himself. He was and is and is to come.

No, we don't know whether it makes sense to speak of "before" the Big Bang because time is supposed to have "begun" in the Big Bang (i.e., time is thought to have had a first moment). If that is correct, then asking what came "before" the Big Bang doesn't make sense because it's like speaking of a time "before" time. A common analogy is that it's like asking what is north of the North Pole.

Timelessness poses problems for an intelligent agent. In a state of timelessness, how is an intelligence supposed to think? It cannot undergo any mental transition or initiate any action. How then is it able to create anything?

 

[Chriliman]

The usual rebuttal I hear to this point is that because the cause exists beyond the universe, we shouldn't expect it to be intelligible! Or more precisely, we shouldn't expect it to conform to whatever principles operate within the universe. Okay. Fine. But then wouldn't any unintelligible nonsense suffice for an explanation?

Not if the concept is confirmed by a book that was written 2000 years ago. I don't think people who just happen to believe in Jesus just happen to randomly think of a concept that just happens to explain how our universe came to be in a way that makes sense. And it also just happens to be the very concept that modern scientist are desperate to avoid. Hmm...something deceptive is going on here.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Not if the concept is confirmed by a book that was written 2000 years ago.

What do you mean? Why should we regard that book as an authority? Did the authors possess more knowledge about cosmology than contemporary astrophysicists?

I don't think people who just happen to believe in Jesus just happen to randomly think of a concept that just happens to explain how our universe came to be in a way that makes sense.

It's not enough to claim that it makes sense. You have to show that it makes sense.

And it also just happens to be the very concept that modern scientist are desperate to avoid. Hmm...something deceptive is going on here.

What makes you think that scientists are desperate to avoid it? If it had any explanatory power, they would be eager to integrate it into cosmological models. They don't do that because, as it turns out, it lacks explanatory power.