Is faith the answer to cognitive dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously (Cognitive dissonance - Wikipedia). I guess this whole forum is one huge example!Understanding that Faith is a belief "not resting on logical proof or material evidence." (Faith - Wikipedia - I am open to discuss alternative definitions)I wonder.Is faith the answer given by religion, and more interestingly, accepted by its' followers to short circuit cognitive dissonance?

Thread copied here from the Is faith the answer to cognitive dissonance? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

You should identify what you think these two contradictory ideas are. I cannot talk for all faiths of all people, but I can talk about how what I think it is. The greek word for faith is Pistis, which is related to Pisteuo meaning 'believe' and pietho meaning 'to convince by argument'. This is, I believe, the Biblical view on Faith. It should be evidence-based, it should be logically consistent.I once viewed a debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox on Dawkins famous book 'The God Delusion''. At one point they were discussing faith vs science, where Dawkins was advocating that faith was blind, it did not rely on anything but wishfull thinking. Lennox then proceeded to ask a question: ''Do you have faith that your wife loves you ?''. To which Prof. Dawkins answered 'Yes of course'. Lennox continued and said ''Well how do you know this?'' And Dawkins answered ''Well because of the evidence I see, the twinkle in the eye, ...''Knowing he had been a bit 'played', Dawkins proceeded to explain that religious faith cannot be the same. But the issue is of course that it is the same, or at the very least it should be. CHristians are not asked to have blind faith, they are asked to have a rational faith. (PS The debate is online I think, and I paraphrased by memory here so it might not be perfectly accurate quotes) Well I can't fully answer the question since as I said you didn't identify where the dissonance was, but I can say that for mybe the majority of christians, blind faith is the answer to the dissonance they could perceive in their beliefs. That and the appeal to authority. They say ''Well I don't understand all these contradictions, but that guy (insert intelligent christian name here) is a christian, so there are probably logical explanations to these apparent contradictions''But of course, as I touched upon my view of what faith should be biblically, it shouldn't be this way even though I feel this is how it is.

I think that faith leads to cognitive dissonance. Those who base their views on faith start with their conclusions and abuse reason to try and rationalise those conclusions. They do not care about consistency or evidence - they often do not bother to investigate or understand the subjects the discuss and they care so little for consistency that some will even change their arguments in the middle of discussion - apparently without realising that they are doing it.In fact this happens so often and so obviously here that I can't believe that any serious participant in this forum could possibly be unaware of it.

I don't quite agree with this. Aren't there passages in the bible praising "blind" faith? Wasn't doubting Thomas ridiculed for his wanting evidence of Jesus' wounds by the other disciples?I could be wrong here, but this is how I seem to remember it.I could go look up the passage this evening, if a bit more detail is required.

This is the account of Jesus's first encounter with Thomas. Jesus never seems to ridicule Thomas for his skepticism. THis is even though Thomas had other evidence to believe Jesus had risen (Pretty much everybody elses testimony at this point). Despite this, Jesus still appears to him and gives him the amount of evidence he needed to believe.So it wasn't even Blind-faith vs evidence-faith. It was evidence-faith vs more-evidence-faith.But you may be referring to another passage, since you are saying that the Apostles ridiculed him and in this one they don't even speak.

Well, doesn't the phrase:

quote:

---

blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

---

Kinda say that you should just believe (in "blind" faith) whatever you're told, regarding Jesus? I mean, he says that those who had not seen any evidence about these claims, yet still believed them, are blessed, right? Yeah, could be. I'll see to it this evening. Thanks for your reply.

Why should it be considered the same? Dawkins' belief concerns his wife, and the Christians' belief concerns God, and there's a glaring difference between the two cases.Dawkins' wife actually exists, there is objective proof of that fact. If she then displays behaviour that makes Dawkins believe she loves him, so much the better for his case.In the case of God, however, there is no objective evidence that he actually exists and, from an objective point of view, the story simply ends there.That should be a big difference in anyone's view.

---

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

quote:

---

Knowing he had been a bit 'played', Dawkins proceeded to explain that religious faith cannot be the same. But the issue is of course that it is the same, or at the very least it should be. CHristians are not asked to have blind faith, they are asked to have a rational faith. (PS The debate is online I think, and I paraphrased by memory here so it might not be perfectly accurate quotes)

---

But it isn't. Dawkins' can directly see his wife, directly see her actions and reactions, directly hear the words she says and read the words she has written with her own hand. Even if you want to claim a few rare exceptions, that cannot be said of God for the vast majority of people. Worse, love is an internal mental state and cannot be expected to be directly accessible to us, but God is not an internal mental state, so surely it shoudlbe easier for God to demonstrate his existence to us than it would be for Dawkins' wife to demonstrate her love for him.So religion is not like that, no matter what it should be.,And often it is far worse. Biblical inerrantists frequently allow their faith in Biblical inerrancy to dictate their interpretation of the Bible - as we see in these forums - placing their blind faith in the doctrine that denies the existence of contradictions above any sensible reading of the text. If I recall correctly, you yourself essentially dismissed a disagreement between Luke and Matthew on the grounds that you had the two Gospels exactly agreed on all other points - a clear example of blind faith as they do disagree and anyone who has truly studied them would know that.So I have to say that many christians not only place their faith above the evidence, they place it above even their sacred scriptures.

I think you are bundling all of those who claim to have faith into one basket. Here at EvC I see two (very) broad churches.There are those who say they have faith and that any evidential support or even conflict is irrelevant as that is kinda the point of faith. They take a very rational approach to their irrationality.Then on the other hand are those (the vast majority) who claim to have faith but if questioned at all on this will immediately start talking about evidence. These range from nutjob creationists to the more subtle and complex arguments of those who advocate forms of immaterial evidence as being valid.The first group are aware of their contradictions and seem quite accepting so I don't think cognitive dissonance is particularly a factor there.The second group I think can become cognitively dissonant if forced to confront the inadequacy of the evidence they are advocating or (worse) the superior evidential basis of conclusions that contradict their own.

Intuitively, it is quite obvious.They rationalize their way through the contradictions, but because of their human defence mechanism cognitive dissonance they are probably not aware of it. If you say this to them they probably just say "yeah, those evilutionist guys are nuts and are possessed by eternal cognitive dissonance because they're afriad of god's almighty power - screw thos who spent their entire life on research. Fucking magnets. They are just lying." (prejudice/sarcasm with some sort of truth I guess).Of course, cognitive dissonance is not only related to believe in God, but also more mundane stuff, just as the wiki page points out. But when we see cognitive dissonance as a cause to faith I think we are missing a lot of factors in the equation. Intuitively I think t is more related to the phenomeneon of maintaining your belief and faith in God. Might be a quite obvious statement, but that was just my 2 cent of thoughts.

faith in part is an 'evident demonstration of future realities'the evident demonstrations are based on facts. An example that you may understand might be when a marriage proposal takes place. If that proposal is backed up with an engagement ring, then an 'evident deomonstration' has taken place. Though the marriage has not taken place yet, each are assured of the 'future reality' that they will be married.when it comes to religion, the bible provides the 'evident demonstration' thru its record of historical events linked with Gods people. These are too numerous to mention individually but they include things like prophecies and the arrival of the Messiah. The people who wrote these historical facts were eyewitnesses to them and this is why christians today can put faith in their words.there is no cognitive dissonance involved in my opinion.And if you want to argue that we today cannot know if the bible is factual, let me ask you this...Do you believe that a man named Shakespear wrote Romeo and Juliet? If you do, how do you know that he did write it?ORDo you believe that the USA's 'Declaration of Independence' was actually written by Thomas Jefferson? If so, how can you be sure that he did write it and not some other person?Did you personally witness the writing of either? If not, what makes you accept them as authentic documents? Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

Hi slevesque Can you give some examples of your evidence-based faith? I don't know exactly what your faith encompasses, but I assume it must include certain things that atheists consider highly improbable. Do you, for example, believe in an afterlife? If so, what is the evidence for that?

Being told to 'have faith' is like being told 'don't worry about it: it works'.But, I would be suprised if someone who had cognitive dissonance (in the first place) would then cease to have it when faith was entered into the mix.I would suggest that faith is what people have instead of cognitive dissonance.

Yes I think you might be onto something there. This is what I think I was referring to with regard to the rationally irrational in my previous post in this thread.