Faith vs Skepticism - Why faith?

My parents have given me good reason to trust them, but I don't believe their views on politics, religion and cosmology. Is there any reason I should trust a cherry-picked selection of anonymous thousands of years old authors to tell me the truth about god, cosmology and politics? My father was adopted. He knows I've been trying to track down family on my paternal side. I have known him for about thirty years and I've never known him to lie about anything particularly significant. I have evidence that would suggest he would likely have told me if I was chasing the wrong paternal line. I don't run my life basing decisions on my parenthood. More importantly I don't insist that other people respect my beliefs about who my parents are. And if I do want them to adopt a certain policy based on them believing my parentage I will expect them to demand birth certificates and DNA testing.You want to believe in God? Go right ahead. You want me to respect that belief? I'll need evidence. You want to make social policies on the back of that belief? I'll definitely require evidence.If I came onto this board and said "I am the great great grandson of Darwin and I demand Administrator status", then a lot of people would say that being related to Darwin is irrelevant to Admin status - but let's assume it wasn't. I'm fairly sure that Percy would request a little more than my word on that fact...unless I had demonstrated several years of honesty with him already. But if it is not possible to verify things in principle - then people can take advantage of your credulity. People who are close to you have things to lose by lying to you (a social penalty), dead authors have nothing to lose socially by misleading me and I'm not going to trust them to give me relevant or useful guidance for living in modern society. Agreed. But if someone tells me something which they themselves cannot know - then I don't trust them. I don't have everything figured out and I distrust anybody that says that they do. In fact if I ask someone "Did Jesus rise from the dead?" and they say "Yes." - then I won't trust that this is the case because they can't actually know that this is true.

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.

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"?

True - but you don't need million of people believing for such an observation to 'objective'. If one person believed that also would be objective evidence. If we're happy to abandon logic then anything is a reason to suppose the existence of god. The grass is green, the sky is blue, Steven is a name. None of them has any logical connection that leads from them to strengthening the hypothesis that god exists, though.I also point out there is a subtle paradox in your statement that allows for 'logically fallacious ' and 'reason' to be used in that manner. Many people would not regard the concept of a logically fallacious reason as a sensible or coherent one. Reason is tied with rationality and rationality is tied with logic.And this is where the confusion might come into play. When someone says there is no reason to suppose that any god exists, they mean there is presently nothing which can rationally increase our confidence in the proposition that god exists.This is easily confused with a similar idea.

The world will end tomorrow!!!!!

There is no reason to consider that the world will end tomorrow. But if I asked you why you considered the concept of the world ending tomorrow - you'd probably say something like, "I did so because you displayed the concept to me using words that I was unable to ignore."That is a reason to suppose that the world might end tomorrow (somebody brings it up), but it should not increase our confidence in the proposition that it will.So yes - lots of people believe in god and this fact is apparent to many of us. Therefore we are placed into a position of considering the existence of god. But that doesn't suggest that god can exist within the realms of reality, nor does it suggest that it does exist.Finally, saying that something 'might exist' is basically meaningless. All it means is that it cannot presently be demonstrated that it does not exist. And we don't need millions of people to believe in something to conclude that.

No wonder you thought the arguments were specious: You didn't understand them. But there is evidence for there being a pelvic girdle in the living species of Tiktaalik.A faith based position might be saying that the specimens we have do have preserved pelvic girdles - we just can't detect them.The absence of evidence position would be that the lack of evidence for these specimens having preserved pelvic girdles is evidence that these specimens don't have preserved pelvic girdles. The faith based position is that we haven't found the Tiktaalik's pelvic girdle because Dave the wicked Palaeontologist removed them all in such a fashion as to ensure nobody would detect his theft. The evidence, say the faithers, is that there is no pelvic girdle found in the specimens.The skeptical position here would be "There are so many names and jobs that the probability it was a Palaeontologist called Dave is low. Moreover, he could also be benevolent or ambibalent. Or it might have not been a human. Or a corporal entity. Or an entity that resides in the universe. There are so many unfalsifiable possibilities that picking one of them to explain the absence of the girdle would mean that your choice is likely to be false."If we translate it to the pseudoskepticism thread: you would have us arguing that religious experiences don't exist, which isn't what we were doing.To continue the (pseudo) skeptic would argue that there are known mechanisms that can result in parts of fossils not being found: erosion, predation etc etc. And that it is more likely that this kind of explanation is the case here.Now - true, we might not know what actually caused this particular absence - but to think that evil Dave hypothesis should be entertained beyond a philosophical argument about epistemology should be viewed with skepticism.David Deutsch put this in an interesting way. He describes the concept of easily varied explanations. I'd say that faith based explanations are often easily varied, and that the philosopher's God is one of the ultimate in easily varied explanations. The first ten minutes or so of that video are the setup.Deutsch uses a Greek mythological explanation for seasons which involves one goddess being forced into a marriage contract with a god and as part of the contract has to go into the underworld periodically which makes the goddess' mother sad and the goddess' mother is the earth and so the earth grows cold until the goddess returns.The point Deutsch makes is that this explanation happens to be falsifiable (and falsified) but that it is easy to vary it slightly to avoid that falsification. And there are potentially infinite ways of varying the story to avoid subsequent falsifications, ultimately culminating I assume in the story that an undefined deity causes the seasons by {insert scientific explanation}.

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...this easy variability is the sign of a bad explanation because without a functional reason to prefer one of countless variants, advocating one of them in preference of the others is irrational...

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Which seems to me to be an excellent alternative (and more complete) way of putting the point I was making in that earlier thread - and seems to be on topic here.

I explicitly accepted that there are no fossil specimens with a pelvic girdle. But there is still evidence that Tiktaalik had a pelvic girdle. Unless you think evolution is bunk or something? I mean - it's possible that Tiktaalik's ancestors and close relatives had one, as did its descendants and Tiktaalik didn't have one. But that would be very unusual. The evidence therefore suggests that it did. I am not suggesting that Dave the evil Paleontologist doesn't exist. I was just saying that without a functional reason to prefer one of countless variants, advocating Dave the evil Paleontologist in preference of the others is irrational. That is to say: Faith in Dave is irrational and skepticism about the Dave claim is a rational position to take. Not "Dave doesn't exist." but "I don't believe Dave was responsible for the lack of pelvic girdle specimens in Tiktaalik and won't believe until I see some evidence in favour of that claim." Fair point. In that case, maybe you do understand them - but you choose to argue against a different argument and pretend that is the argument raised against you.However, I'm using my experience of your honesty as evidence that you, for whatever reason, are not understanding the argument. Why else would you get it wrong when you try and describe it in your own terms?

In which case - we don't need a prevalence of the concept. One person publicly postulating it is enough for those that hear the postulations to consider the concept.I don't that wasn't what Onifre was saying. I think he was more gunning for the idea that there is no reason to accept the claim 'god exists'. By so doing, it doesn't explain anything and we advance no further in our discourse. He was going in the other direction: since it does not explain anything, why bother arguing over whether god exists in the first place? Of course you can. First of all you define what you are testing they are better at? At writing music that entertains Mod? Stick me in an MRI and give me music to listen to and have me score each piece. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

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General ideas respecting God and human nature are therefore the ideas above all others which it is most suitable to withdraw from the habitual action of private judgment and in which there is most to gain and least to lose by recognizing a principle of authority. The first object and one of the principal advantages of religion is to furnish to each of these fundamental questions a solution that is at once clear, precise, intelligible, and lasting, to the mass of mankind. There are religions that are false and very absurd, but it may be affirmed that any religion which remains within the circle I have just traced, without pretending to go beyond it (as many religions have attempted to do, for the purpose of restraining on every side the free movement of the human mind ), imposes a salutary restraint on the intellect; and it must be admitted that, if it does not save men in another world, it is at least very conducive to their happiness and their greatness in this.

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This is especially true of men living in free countries. When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Every man accustoms himself to having only confused and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his fellow creatures and himself. His opinions are ill-defended and easily abandoned; and, in despair of ever solving by himself the hard problems respecting the destiny of man, he ignobly submits to think no more about them.

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Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude. Not only does it happen in such a case that they allow their freedom to be taken from them; they frequently surrender it themselves. When there is no longer any principle of authority in religion any more than in politics, men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded independence. The constant agitation of all surrounding things alarms and exhausts them. As everything is at sea in the sphere of the mind, they determine at least that the mechanism of society shall be firm and fixed; and as they cannot resume their ancient belief, they assume a master.

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For my own part, I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious independence and entire political freedom. And I am inclined to think that if faith be wanting in him, he must be subject; and if he be free, he must believe.

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Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2, Chapter V, HOW RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES AVAILS ITSELF OF DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIESTocqueville makes some interesting points in defence of faith. He goes on to say that, "The greatest advantage of religion is to inspire diametrically contrary principles" - an early defence of the utility of cognitive dissonance perhaps, and the truth behind the religion is not of concern to him since religions impose a sense of duty towards his fellow man and that this is true even of, "the most false and dangerous religions."It's the dangerous religions the skeptics point at - and the way that it is impossible to know if the one you believe is dangerous while also believing it. But to Tocqueville, the unity that religion brings to a nation gives it a direction and without it the nation would be forced into inaction through indecision and hand wringing.But read the first paragraph of the first quote I gave and look at that clause:

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but it may be affirmed that any religion which remains within the circle I have just traced, without pretending to go beyond it (as many religions have attempted to do, for the purpose of restraining on every side the free movement of the human mind ), imposes a salutary restraint on the intellect

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What does that mean? Tocqueville gives an outlook of Islam and Christianity within the context of free democracy:

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Mohammed professed to derive from Heaven, and has inserted in the Koran, not only religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The Gospel, on the contrary, speaks only of the general relations of men to God and to each other, beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, while the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.

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I don't think Tocqueville would garner agreement over his characterisation of Gospel, but I think we can understand the kind of religion that Tocqueville is praising having faith in from it.But for Tocqueville, religious faith isn't just a functional goodness it is the natural state for man to be in and that only by, "a kind of aberration of the intellect and with the aid of a sort of moral violence exercised on their own nature do men stray from religious belief. An invincible inclination leads them back to religion. Disbelief is an accident. Faith alone is the permanent state of humanity". Faith makes life happier, and gives us reasons to be nice to one another and having reasons to be nice to each other is nice too, and it doesn't require rigorous training in logic, deduction, empiricism, morality and metaphysics to deduce reasons to be nice to one another.Tocqueville probably had a 'religions provide morals' thought going on in there somewhere - but I think it can be generalised to 'religions provide us with easy to understand reasons for our moral drives' - and there is merit in having easy to understand answers - even if they are false.Let me expand a little. Take the concept of 'liberty'. There is no empirical reason why 'liberty' is 'good'. It may be possible to derive some philosophical argument as to why 'liberty' is worth fighting/dying for, but it won't persuade everyone. Some people will take longer to be persuaded than others, some will never be persuaded. A sort of Tocquevillian paralysis might occur and while that happens we all stand to lose liberty. Perhaps it would be better that we find an easier way than philosophical persuasion to inculcate a strong belief in the principle of liberty, so that we as a group will be universally ready to defend it should it be threatened. This belief we want others to have is based on our own personal desires (whether philosophically derived or otherwise), it is the substance of things hoped for. It serves as the evidence of things that are not actually shown.

Don't worry 'bout that. I'm in no hurry! I know what the point of the analogy was. And my counter-point, was to explain how your translation of the argument was faulty.Take your 'point 13' which is an attempt to characterise my argument. In the religious form:

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the probability of religious experiences being true is highly unlikely.

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Which translated into something more accurate (after all, I've never disputed the existence of religious experiences!) becomes

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the probability of religious experiences being as a result of a divine entity is highly unlikely.

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This is how you have translated this argument to Tiktaalik:

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the probability of a Tiktaalik pelvis being true is highly unlikely.

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Which is nothing like it (possibly as a result of the grammar in your original characterisation which implied that I was originally denying religious experiences). As my counter-argument went, a much better translation would be something like

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the probability of the Tiktaalik pelvis being missing is as as a result of a exceptionally skilled malevolent paleontologist called Dave is highly unlikely.

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You have just provided further evidence that you are having some kind of critical comprehension problem. I am not implying you are lying if you don't "cave". I explicitly cited your record of honesty as evidence against this hypothesis and nothing in my comment said you had to accept my argument, just employ it correctly.Therefore, it seems reasonable to me to conclude that the reason you have failed in attempting to utilize my argument in a novel circumstance in an accurate fashion is because you have failed to understand the argument.Edited by Modulous, : "your are" corrected to "you are"

I thought we had hashed this out already. I ended up having to ask you directly in Message 515, in the old pseudoskepticism thread.I am not asking if RAZD believes X to be false.
I am not asking RAZD if he thinks X can be known.
I am not asking RAZD if he thinks he does know X is false.
I am merely asking RAZD if he has accepted a belief in X. Does RAZD hold the belief that X is true? Is RAZD a '2' on X?This is a 'yes' or 'no' question. You could answer 'I don't know' but that merely expresses an ignorance of your own beliefs, not whether you believe or not. What strikes me as odd is that you aren't able to both say 'I don't know and I don't believe' or 'I don't know but I believe'.Saying you don't believe something is true is an entirely different kettle of fish than believing something to be false: despite this significant difference I often see people getting the two confused.

Was the last sentence revenge for my ambiguousness? It is my position that it is possible to say "I don't believe that!", without also knowing that it is false.Indeed - one could also say "I do believe that is true.", without knowing that it is true.Belief and knowledge are seperate things. One can believe or not without having knowledge (or even without having the possibility of gaining knowledge).Does that help?My sentence was originally meant to say (but editting ruined it):What strikes me as odd is that you aren't able to say either 'I don't know and I don't believe' or 'I don't know and I believe'.

An atheist is just someone who is at position II on your scale with regard to the existence of God (ie., low confidence). A person of faith is someone who holds level III position's levels of confidence, but without level III's evidential requirements.

I do take issue with the utility of your three point scale. Might I suggest we translate it to a seven point scale again to see what I mean?

1. Zero Confidence: the claim is definitely false.
2. Very low confidence, but short of zero. It can't be ruled out. Any evidence only exists using one type of measuring device that is renowned for its errors and artefacts, or the effect exists right at the threshold of statistical significance. Many competing claims with identical evidence exist, and many of them are mutually exclusive.
3. Low confidence. The claim has a modicum of independent evidence in its favour, but other claims which contradict it have more evidence in their favour.
4. Undecided: There are a number of competing mutually exclusive claims with the same amount of evidence for them.
5. A modicum of confidence: The multiple independent lines of evidence slightly favour the claim, but rival claims cannot be ruled out.
6. High confidence: The multiple independent lines of evidence are most parsimoniously explained by the claim being true. Rival claims require large amounts of 'patches' to explain some of the data. Unique predictions have been made and have been demonstrated as accurate. A widely accepted scientific theory.
7. Total confidence: The claim is true. No question about it.

Your position II might cover my positions ii, iii and iv (and maybe even v)! I disagree. You ask even a moderate Christian about what they think about the claim 'Jesus was crucified and was resurrected from the dead.' and you are likely to get an answer in region of vi and vii regarding the level of confidence they profess. A particularly liberal Christian might concede that they don't have any warrant for their confidence and that technically (or philosophically) they should have much lower confidence (ii to iv) in such a claim and if you asked them why they don't you'll likely hear the word 'faith' somewhere in the explanation.I'm not claiming universality of this principle - but it seems to me to be a very common phenomenon. That's why I say that 'faith' seems to be a cognitive tool to give greater confidence in a claim than is warranted - since that is how those that have 'faith' say they are using it.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Seems to me to do the opposite. As you said Phat was a 2 on the seven point scale "I think God exists with a very high probability." which sounds to me like he has high confidence in the proposition that God exists. Then he later says he has low confidence.I think the reason is the focus on the evidential requirements. Since people know they don't have the objective evidence they would feel foolish saying they had high confidence in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.If you just asked "How confident are you that Jesus was resurrecteda) Zero confidence
b) Low confidence
c) High confidenceYou'd probably see different results. I mean really - do you honestly think that practising Christians who have not been primed with several months of philosophical debate about knowledge would be inclined to say that they had only a low confidence in the resurrection of Christ? I agree - but I didn't say there was invalidating evidence. If you notice at level ii I said that the claim couldn't be ruled out. The same applies for iii. The other theories aren't conclusively demonstrated just yet. I'd suggest that the evidence strongly points to this being an integral part of the human brain and so is almost certainly true for all people, not just most.The difference in worldviews is the subject of this thread. In one worldview, skepticism is the way: a claim is made and it is given a low confidence (or zero confidence if it is of the ilk of 'p not p') until evidence is provided.The faith worldview has certain claims which are accepted with a reasonably high confidence 'on faith'. Modern faith includes certain elements from skepticism except when it turns its eyes to the 'articles of faith'. Since skeptical positions here are inconsistent with their worldview they are rejected.The question is - why is faith a worldview that is considered a good thing? What is the pro argument for faith?You might argue that some of the atheists around here are not proper skeptics, but that's another thread.Forget my own evidential requirements for moving up the seven point scale - it seems that you agree in principle that we should start at 'ii' (or maybe even 'i') and work our way up from there. Faith would have us take a position higher up the ladder of confidence than skepticism would. Is this a good idea? RAZD - take a close look here - you're argument against bluegenes has relied on the meaning of the word 'is' since you began it. You are the one equivocating on this.If it is your position that one cannot both be agnostic and atheistic at the same time - can you explain how there are a ton of people running around saying 'I don't believe, but I don't know'?What does it mean to 'believe' something? Do you think that belief is the same as knowledge?

It seems the majority of this thread has been about skepticism and what is skeptical and what is pseudoskeptical and very little of this thread has been justifying using 'Faith' in epistemological questions.

Skepticism:

Skepticism is characterised by doubt or incredulity towards some specific thing, or as a general outlook regarding any claim.Skeptics are generally incredulous to the idea that absolute truth can be 100% known (principle of fallibilism).Skeptics start doubting a claim. Their modus operandi is to criticise the claim. If it becomes clear that the claim has no supporting evidence, and requires ad hoc explanations to explain shortcomings, incredulity regarding the claim remains.This is because most claims that can be made are false, this should be self-evident. All true claims can be phrased negatively to render them false. Add to that all the claims which are nothing to do with the truth at all and it should become clear that false claims outweigh positive ones.If a claim can survive the trial by fire - it gains acceptance from skeptics, all the while evidence is sought.If a claim, in order to survive the trial by fire, has to whittle itself down to an untestable or unfalsifiable position - then it is doomed to remain in the position of incredulity, doubt and well...skepticism.This is not pseudoskepticism which is apparently the process of dismissing experimental results as being the result of interference, bias, poor experimental setup etc...without having evidence that the things claimed could be a factor.Nor is it the superpseudoskepticism which seems to be the process of dismissing experimental results as being the result of interference, bias, poor experimental setup etc...without having evidence that proves this is what happened in the specific experiment in question.It is my position that the most successful epistemological methodology has doubt at its heart: science.

Faith

Faith is essentially the opposite of skepticism. Instead of starting from a position of doubt, the explorer of truths starts by trusting certain claims as being true. It represents a certain level of trust.This trust is not usually based on evidential propositions. This is usually seen in cases where a skeptic will question a person's faith based position only to find themselves going around in circles as the faith-based claimer seems to be suggesting that the skeptic would accept the evidence if they first trusted the source (as in - one needs to have faith before one can accept a faith based conclusion).I feel this is a terrible way of going about knowledge since there are so many possible false claims compared with true ones, there is a good chance a faith based claim is one of the false ones.