Is faith the answer to cognitive dissonance?

So in essence you don't feel any cognitive dissonance or discomfort at having your previous beliefs proven wrong because you didn't really care very much if they were correct in the first place. Flip-flopping between beliefs about the historical accuracy of the Flood wouldn't be painful as you don't have any strong compulsion to believe true things.This interpretation fits with my opinion on the subject; cognitive dissonance increases along with the importance one places on being correct in their beliefs. People who have "faith" are not disturbed by cognitive dissonance because they are not particularly concerned about their beliefs being true.

It doesn't have to be the basis; that isn't what I was getting at.Think about the behavior of faith, such a a "leap of faith", or having faith a god will see you though a hardship. This is fundamentally the abdication of one's perceived responsibility to justify one's actions; the leaper does not know what will prevent them falling, and the person in hard times does not know what will bring them through. Faith is giving up one's personal judgment to another, in a way not based on previous experience.Such things go against our nature. Nobody is comfortable jumping off a cliff without knowing themselves if something will catch them, not without deliberate training to give up that urge for knowledge and surety. It is the driving force behind both religion and science; we need to *know the reason* for things.Science and religion are two different answers to that urge. Science provides some answers, while religion answers them all with one solution: "You don't need an answer."The point I was getting at is that once one is trained to suppress that urge for understanding and confidence, the realization that one was wrong in a belief is much easier to swallow. It isn't so easy for someone not trained in faith to give up the reigns and the responsibility that goes with them.So thats it: Faith is the distancing of personal responsibility for the truth of one's beliefs. Thus it should be no surprise that cognitive dissonance is less of an issue for those comfortable with faith.

No, it would be like telling you that no matter how much you like that chocolate, it isn't evidence that they are actually delicious unicorn poops deposited in faery glades.Your personal preference for a religious behavior or belief does not in any way justify its existence. It is simply proof that you like it.

Only in conflict with a creator that needs to continually patch and hold its creation together with spit and baling wire. A creator only specifically deals with the act of *creation*, not maintenance. Evolution deals with the development and advancement/adaptation of life, and abiogenesis with how that life arose from non-living material; neither addresses where that material came from in the first place.Evolution and abiogenesis are only in conflict with *your* concept of a creator Peg, not all creator concepts. The ability to acknowledge things that conflict with your beliefs will greatly aid conversations on the topic.

But considering you have evidence of naturalistic things happening (even unrelated to abiogenesis) and absolutely no evidence of supernatural things happening (related or not to abiogenesis), I don't see how you can prefer supernatural over natural.At the very least I would think you should consider them equally likely and the question unsolved. I would tend to slant toward the category I actually knew existed, but that is just me. I don't think such a statement is supported by the evidence, but it is a tangent not suited to this thread.

Then perhaps you can point at that specific chemical or physical reaction in life that is impossible; the "duct tape" that has been requested.I suspect you don't actually have an objection against a specific process or reaction, rather a simple incredulity of the entire occurrence. If every reaction in life is naturally possible then it would be reasonable to conclude that life is naturally possible to arise; we can argue about improbability, but unless you can demonstrate that "duct tape" blockage you are making an argument from ignorance.

We know that those reactions are what we call "life".
We know that those reactions can occur outside cells, in similar environments.Nothing about those reactions are impossible. You are asserting that the *path* to those reactions is impossible in the natural world, but you cannot point at any particular part of that path that is insurmountable.In turn science has not yet shown a clear path either, only a series of dots that might be connected. The issue is that you are drawing a dichotomy without making that dichotomy exhaustive; you don't know the path *at all*, and yet you are blithely declaring it to be impossible.Differing opinions on facts and the validity of evidence notwithstanding, your reasoning is faulty in and of itself.

Right, it is an emergent property. But the point is the same; the reactions are all possible. Some bacteria use right-handed amino acids too.Wouldn't supernatural creation be more likely to result in 50-50 distribution of chirality rather than mostly all the same as though *gasp* they developed from a common ancestor? Besides, it isn't like there is no explanation; the weak nuclear force, responsible for beta decay, produces only electrons with left-handed spin. Chemicals exposed to these electrons are more likely to form left-handed crystals, and so... left-handed amino acids. I couldn't ask for a better summation of an argument from ignorance.

Only if I were making a logical argument. My point is that you don't show a block in the path, not that the path is necessarily unbroken. Potentially, but it would still be exposed to selection pressures. Left-handed amino acids effect the handedness of other organic products; a peptide replicator can increase the proportion of a particular handedness in a random solution.This isn't proof of course, but it is hardly an impossibility. Service, R. F. 1999. Does life's handedness come from within? Science 286: 1282-1283.But then we are straying rather significantly from the topic. Then it appears our difference of opinion stems again from your acceptance of the plausibility of supernatural happenings over naturalistic processes that are currently poorly documented in your view. This is again beyond the scope of this thread.

A rejection of *your* argument. You claim that naturalistic abiogenesis is impossible, and I point out that you have not met the burden of proof for that assertion. I need not create a logical argument proving the assertion that naturalistic creation is possible in order to reject your assertion.If you cannot get from point A to point B, then there must be something along the way that prevents such a thing from occurring. You claim getting from A to B materialistically is impossible, and I point out that you have not shown any step from A to B to *actually* be materialistically impossible.It may be that neither of us actually know all the steps between A and B, but your summary elimination of the possibility as support for your supernatural alternative is unwarranted. My not accepting the argument "This is impossible because I don't understand it," is not the same as saying "This is possible." Then it isn't really faith that you are talking about. If faith is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see," (Hebrews 11:1) then what you have described is a normal logical conclusion based on your interpretation of the evidence. Faith would be confidence in that conclusion without the evidence you mentioned.We can debate what evidence exists, what that evidence indicates, and the conclusions we should draw from that evidence, but none of that involves faith.

Wow, 50 years of research into the field as a hobby has convinced you that you are such an expert as to be omniscient? Or are you admitting that the dichotomy you are subjectively drawing is false?Perhaps you have additional support, such as statistics showing a proportion of biologists being theists that is higher than the population average... but the truth is rather different isn't it. This would tie into my position that faith is illogical. You are trying to equate faith with the same process by which normal decisions are made, which runs contrary to the entire concept of having a unique word describing the behavior.We call Christianity a faith-based belief, while we don't call science faith-based. When the Bible tells people to have faith it is instructing a departure from the normal method of decision-making. Faith has always been used as a *counter* to different evidence-based conclusions.The usage of faith is rather odd using that definition as well. Like when Matthew tells people if the only had faith as small as a mustard seed then they can move mountains... if they only have evidenced belief as small as a mustard seed? What sense does that make? Evidence as small as a mustard seed would be awfully tenuous evidence indeed, given that a handful of evidence to the contrary would replace such a belief.