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Author Topic:   Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith?
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


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Message 12 of 533 (526042)
09-25-2009 5:06 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Meldinoor
09-25-2009 3:37 PM


Degrees of faith
Hi Meldinoor,
I'm not sure how likely it is that you will get fundamentalists answering the questions in your OP; the one who has posted here so far has basically said that the book of Genesis is rational, which isn't a promising start. But I do find the discussion you're having with Catholic Scientist interesting.
To quibble over a semantic point, I don't think I would ever say I had "faith" in my friends; I'd say that I trusted them. But really I think the two are just about the same. Why would we trust our friends? Because they had done things in the past to earn that trust. So our continued trust is based on empirical evidence. It can shift if new evidence causes us to doubt the wisdom of that trust.
When you talk about "strong faith" it seems clear that you are referring to theism. There have been quite a few threads recently dealing with faith and evidence, for example Pseudoskepticism and logic, Immaterial "Evidence", How does one distinguish faith from delusion?. I think someone could have strong faith but still be willing to question it, as you did, when evidence that contradicts that faith arises. People who feel threatened by such new evidence and who are not willing to change their beliefs accordingly will usually employ cognitive dissonance strategies.
quote:
Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The "ideas" or "cognitions" in question may include attitudes and beliefs, and also the awareness of one's behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.[1] Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.
A powerful cause of dissonance is when an idea conflicts with a fundamental element of the self-concept, such as "I am a good person" or "I made the right decision." This can lead to rationalization when a person is presented with evidence of a bad choice. It can also lead to confirmation bias, the denial of disconfirming evidence, and other ego defense mechanisms.
The cognitive dissonance strategies that creationists use to deal with the mountain of evidence against the Bible being literal word-for-word truth, seem to know no bounds. And yet there are people who have managed to reconcile their faith with the evidence. I think that even the most hardline believers cannot escape evidence in their lives that calls their beliefs into question; it's simply a matter of what they are willing to do about it, consciously or unconsciously.
Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Meldinoor, posted 09-25-2009 3:37 PM Meldinoor has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by Straggler, posted 10-05-2009 7:05 PM Kitsune has not replied

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