Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith?

Hi RAZD, I admit that I'm basing my argument on a very specific definition of faith. When I say Faith I'm not referring to religious faith in general. Nor am I referring to a mere hunch that happens to lack supportive evidence.I'm referring to the belief in an entity or event that is held a priori, or, where the holder of said belief does not require any form of evidence in favour of his/her belief. For instance, I know people who, when asked whether they accept the TOE would say no because the Bible contradicts it (in their opinion). Now granted, in this scenario I am assuming their belief in the infallibility of the Genesis account to be their starting point. A faith position. If evidence led them to this conclusion then they may well be skeptics.Maybe I can better illustrate my definition of faith by providing some of my own background:If I had joined this forum a few years ago, I would have been a part of the Creationist crowd. Back then I was (and I still am) very passionate about the Creo VS Evo debate, however, my interest at the time mainly consisted of finding arguments in support of my pre-existing belief that the Genesis account accurately portrayed creation (although, like Peg, I allowed the creation days to represent vast spans of time). I was skeptical about any claims in favor of the theory of evolution, but I didn't question any of the arguments laid out by creationist authors like Hugh Ross. In other words, I was a pseudo-skeptic. I didn't question that the eye was irreducibly complex, nor that the first humans lived 900+ years, and I believed that the ToE was a dying theory only favoured by diehard secular humanists and atheists.Eventually I realized that an awful lot of intelligent people did accept the ToE, and that they could, with ease, demolish my arguments simply because they understood the theory much better than I did. I felt uncomfortable holding to a belief that I could not defend, so I decided to eliminate any of my a priori beliefs that I could not also arrive at through a reason and evidence-based approach. Furthermore, I would be agnostic for any scenario for which I held no evidence one way or the other.To date, I have not fully satisfied this goal. However, I have eliminated many assumptions I once held by faith alone, in order to pursue a more skeptical approach.That said, I have come across situations where I have been told by fellow Christians that I ought to make certain assumptions in order to qualify as a Christian. Message 83 (YEC without the Bible thread) This is what I consider a faith statement. In this case it is the belief that the Bible is the infallible word of God, no matter what contradictions with known facts crop up.
The point of this thread was to discuss whether there is any merit in holding any such a priori beliefs. I also have a personal interest in hearing the opinions of other Christians as to how much of one's faith one may question. This is true. I considered balancing my OP by showing that skepticism taken to the extreme (doubting even one's own ability to experience reality) won't lead us anywhere. In that sense, a small measure of faith may always be required to support a worldview. But how much faith is required? Descartes attempted to reduce all assumptions down to "I think therefore I am" (I exist) in order to describe reality using a minimum of faith. (Descartes was a Christian, but that's beside the point.)Wouldn't Descartes' approach be more prudent than also presupposing the existence of a Deity and the validity of certain scriptures? And this is where we have a choice. Either we remain agnostic about that which science can not tell us, or we subscribe to an explanation that fits nicely with our preconceptions, but is no more evidenced than any other explanation.Then there is a second class of evidence: Subjective Evidence. I may well have experienced something that supports a particular belief that can not be objectively evidenced. For instance, my father experienced a Near-Death experience in his youth. This experience might have changed the way he looked at the possibility of an afterlife, yet he has no objective evidence of the afterlife. I'm pretty sure a lot of faith is built on subjective experience that can be pretty darn convincing to the person going through it. But just because it's subjective, doesn't make it invalid.--------------------------------------------Best of luck with your recovery-Meldinoor

There may be a difference between church doctrine and a plain reading of the Bible. That still doesn't empirically affirm that the Bible is the word of God. Maybe the Church got it right, and the Bible is a bit off. How do I decide which one to pick? (If any)Respectfully,-Meldinoor

if you are unsure if the bible is the word of God, what sort of evidence (apart from God telling you himself) would you need to know if it really was the word of God?

I can't think of any. The best way to go about it is probably to start from a position of uncertainty, and compare the Bible to a list of criteria one would expect from the direct Word of God. Things like internal contradiction would have to be looked at, accuracy of predictions, agreement with known facts and so on.Just FYI, on a personal level I do have faith that God influenced scripture. But this is one of those beliefs that I really can't justify objectively, so for the sake of argument I'm taking a purely agnostic position.Respectfully,-Meldinoor

Possibilities with which everyone has consistently and unanimously agreed. I am bewildered by your ongoing inability to distinguish between the evidence based arguments regarding possibility and likelihood being advocated by your atheistic opponents with your preferred strawman misrepresentations of certitude of impossibility.Time and time again in thread after thread you have demonstrated your complete inability to distinguish between those possibilities that are derived from objectively evidenced facts and those possibilities with no objectively evidenced foundation whatsoever. This is why you will never understand why those of us who consider the possibility of alien life or the possibility of as yet undiscovered species existing here on Earth to be evidentially non-equivalent from the possibility of gods existing. This is why you will never accept that these conclusions are derived from objective evidence rather than subjective world view or faith. Only if each claim is viewed in a complete vacuum of all obejective evidence, only if evidenced possibilities are ignored because they are not evidenced as actualities, can these three examples be consideed to be evidentially equivalent. And yet this hurdle of evidenced possibilities is one your seem incapable of surmounting.As long as you are unable to overcome these intellectual blind spots you are destined to forever misunderstand, misrepresent and argue in circles with those who do not share your cognitive blinkers.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Hi Straggler, enjoying yourself? Having said that, I will not drag this thread off topic further to deal with you.Enjoy.Note: that I have hidden the content of this post as (1) it is off-topic to this thread, (2) the issues were already discussed on the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread, where atheists had plenty of opportunity to present the evidence to support their arguments, but failed to demonstrate any evidence to justify anything more than an opinion, and finally (3) an ongoing discussion of one opinion vs another is pointless.Edited by RAZD, : /qsEdited by RAZD, : material hidden to regain topic

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Hi Meldinoor Well, it seemed to me that the words had certain connotations that pre-suppose your conclusion. Assume you mean evidence against ToE being based on skepticism. To me this only holds if one is equally skeptical of the positions offered in it's place. Archangel was guilty of this one-sided skepticism while being gullible of any claim against evolution. Don't forget to keep an open mind where there is no evidence one way or the other and you will do well. Curiously, I was just reading more of "Consilience" (see Consilience - the Unity of Knowledge), and he was talking about AI and Turing Machines, and said that Descartes had concluded that such a machine that could replicate human intelligence could not be built.It seems to me that this issue is not the really the "existence of Deity" part, but the "validity of certain scriptures" part as being evidence for the existence of god/s. Exactly, but without substantiation, all we can conclude is that this is a possible explanation of the experience. The person having the experience has cause to believe it, but nobody else does. Nor can they disprove it, so at best they can be agnostic to it.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Untrue. The fact that you have to quote me making a general point of principle three years ago rather than citing anything I have actually said to you about what I actually believe in any of our conversations in the last six months exemplifies your need to misrepresent the actual atheist position to have any argument at all. Message 34I would say that the rational position towards any wholly unevidenced possibility is a 6. Except that some possibilities are evidenced whilst others are not. The possibility of as yet undiscovered species existing on Earth, for example, is objectively evidenced. And indeed highly likely. The possible existence of the IPU or any other gods is not objectively evidenced at all. How you cannot see the evidential difference between these examples beyond claiming that it is a matter of opinion and subjective world view I find incredible. But cest la vie. I have lost count of the threads in which this sort of thing has been explained to you without success.At least you seem to have taken the IPU to your newly agnostic, albeit apathetic agnostic, bosem. When we started this series of threads you were vehemnetly of the opinion that the IPU was "obviously made-up" and "absurd". So some progress has been made. If one can call it that............. But it does exist. That is the problem. That is your blind spot. Evidenced possibilities and unevidenced possibilities. You will never get it so I honestly don't know why I bother.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Hi RAZD, hope all is well. Because agnosticism assumes the question "is there a god?" is relevant. It assumes the premise is true and should be given thought to, before the premise has been given a reason to come up.The methods of science works in the opposite direction; a phenomenon needs to be established to have occured, then it works toward a logic answer.What phenomenon has taken place that needs to be looked into that relates to a "god?" In other words, why is "is there a god?" even a question?Agnosticism gives validity to the question where as science needs to establish that there even is a question.That's why I feel agnosticism is not a relevant, or even a worth while, approach for science.Personally I've always thought it was theism/diesm/agnosticism vs atheism - all of those assume the premise, where as one (atheism) must first need a reason to even ask the question.- Oni

Hi Straggler. Note: that I have hidden the content of this post as (1) it is off-topic to this thread, (2) the issues were already discussed on the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread, where atheists had plenty of opportunity to present the evidence to support their arguments, but failed to demonstrate any evidence to justify anything more than an opinion, and finally (3) an ongoing discussion of one opinion vs another is pointless.Edited by RAZD, : /qsEdited by RAZD, : hidden material to regain topic

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Hi Onifre, Note: that I have hidden the content of this post as (1) it is off-topic to this thread, (2) the issues were already discussed on the Pseudoskepticism and logic thread, where atheists had plenty of opportunity to present the evidence to support their arguments, but failed to demonstrate any evidence to justify anything more than an opinion, and finally (3) an ongoing discussion of one opinion vs another is pointless.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : hidden material to regain topic

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Meldinoor, apologies for bring in forces for non-topic discussions. This is a good approach: predictions that would provide positive or negative feedback, and then compare which are more important.For a believer (regardless of belief) the positive feedback is important (confirmation bias) while the negative feedback is discarded (cognitive dissonance).For a skeptic (regardless of belief) the negative feedback is important (confirmation bias) while the positive feedback is discarded (cognitive dissonance).To get around this log-jam we need some deal-breaker.Any suggestions? Assuming we are off the map of scientific process and knowledge, and only have subjective experiences of different people to go on.How do we decide some measure of truth in these circumstances? It would be interesting to go through the bible and do something like what Jefferson did - delete all the contradictions and known falsehoods. I think that a substantial volume would still be left.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
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Hi iano,
The subtitle is not personal by the way - it just seemed fitting. I've mentioned this before, but not for a while. I think one of the reasons for this confusion lies at the feet of believers. After all: Why is there an argument about 'faith' to begin with? This is my hypothesis.When a skeptic asks a believer 'Why do you believe Jesus came back from the dead'
The reply might be 'Because he was divine'
'Why do you believe he was divine'
'Because the Bible says so.'
'Why do you believe everything that's in the Bible?'
'Certain parts of it have been historically confirmed.'
'But why believe unconfirmed claims because other claims have been confirmed?'
'It's a matter of faith'.That is to say 'faith' evolved into the ultimate shield against awkward questions. If any skeptic should question this tactic then they get the retort 'you just don't understand.' followed by a smug self satisfied patronising smile of some kind.I was wondering if a believer such as yourself agrees that this has contributed to the skeptic's attitude toward the concept of 'faith' as a means of knowing things. As if faith is the end of the discussion, rather than its beginning.

No worries.. good title. Anglagard missed the opportunity to use the actual songs title over at the 'God is evil' thread.- I have my own idea (centred around a philosophy called empiricism) but let's have a look see.- If that's what skeptics are faced with then certainly, the fault lies with the believer. It would strike me as fair and decent that the believer approach things evidentially according to the rules of what constitutes evaluation of evidence. Or they begin their discussion, as you suggest, from the viewpoint of faith - the unseen evidence.. To mix the two as you suggest, even if not deliberately intended so, will surely leave the sour impression of faith: the bolthole.The problem could be expected to be accentuated if the believers understanding of what faith is and does is poorly understood (and I include myself in that - having only but grasped the idea that faith is at least a substance which powers the believers belief). It behoves the belief to be able to give a reason for the hope that they have - and whilst they can never prove their position they can at least atttempt to argue from a reasoned position given starting assumptions.We shouldn't forget the false profession of a "Jew", ie: the religiously Christian person who supposes themselves a believer but who isn't actually. There is no short measure of this type muddying the waters. Their faith, unbiblical in nature, has no substance. The resulting belief is, therefore, a blind and spiritually unevidenced belief, buttressed only by whatever indoctrination supports it + whatever hard evidence there is which can be argued to support that belief.It follows that such believers will be forced to tend towards faith: the bolthole. Which means you, an unbeliever, need take your complaint up with then, the unbelievers . Behold, Mod, you stand at the wrong persons door and knock.. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I think I need that explaining. How can a religiously Christian person not actually be a believer? Do you just mean - someone who is a Christian by habit or just because its what they were told? Why are we suggesting that their profession of belief is false? Why are we calling them a "Jew"?