IHateMyJob2004
Lifer
When there is something people can not comprehend, dim wits immediately assign some sort of supernatural phenomena as the answer.
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Why do people believe in God if there's no valid proof?
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jjzelinski
Diamond Member
That's the thing; religiosity is not benign. It infects the way people treat each other, the way our very laws are formed. Through faith, which is necessarily absent of reason and proof (otherwise it would "knowledge"), we have things like blue laws forced down our throats. Stem cell research has been hugely impeded. Our children education is suffering in places like Texas where teachers can't convey a concept like evolution because the fundies don't like how it contradicts their faith.
These are merely examples a of broad pattern of the malignancy of religion on our secular society, without even broaching how our religiosity has affected the planet over the last 8 years alone.
jjzelinski
Diamond Member
My first guess would be the guy right above you. Unless this was some kind of self effacing joke and you were illustrating the irony in your criticsm by bumping it yourself.
Cerpin Taxt
Lifer
The problem with your position is that you are insisting upon "proof" for an empirical question. That no such proof is possible for any empirical question does not mean that all empirical beliefs are epistemologically equal. We have evidence of things about our natural world, but we do not have such evidence for a god.
moshquerade
No Lifer
To answer the OP's tired question: faith
dud
Diamond Member
PLEASE speak for yourself. I have a head on my shoulders and a brain therein ... I can think for myself. I don't have to back it up with all of degrees.
Mosh said it best (as I did):
"To answer the OP's tired question: faith"
It is a belief in something that you cannot see, hear, smell, etc. You just believe it's there. Most users here think they are so smart, so intelligent. True intelligence comes with admitting that you really know nothing ...
jjzelinski
Diamond Member
You can possess intelligence and still be foolish. For instance, I believe in Chavazunga; the Aztec puma king. I have faith that he will reward the many sacrifices of living virgins I've made to him on my bird bath. I know one of these sacrifices will impress him enough to he will finally see fit to bless with a tasty quiznos sub. I have no evidence to support my faith, belief, or expectations, but I consider myself an intelligent guy nonetheless. I'll let you know when i get my sub, as I will use that as a basis for my eventual proselytization of Chavazungaism. Depending on how that works out, I may lobby my congressman to impose legislation requiring all Mosque's, Churches, and temples to incorporate the teachings of Chavazungism as an alternative to creationism during Sunday school lessons.
videogames101
Diamond Member
Before speaking, check the definition of faith.
"firm belief in something for which there is no proof"
aka, no reason t all. The only reason most people believe in a god is because they were indoctrinated by their parents and told not to question. (Which should be considered child abuse)
S
SlitheryDee
Ah, but it is those with faith in God who are claiming to know something they cannot know, and those without it are simply acknowledging that they do not have that information. You can't really admit that you know nothing until you're able to admit that you don't know there's a God. "Just believing it's there" is the very essence of claiming knowledge you do not have, and not lack of that belief is recognition of the lack of knowledge. Yours is actually a very compelling argument for weak atheism and agnosticism.
videogames101
Diamond Member
Not knowing something isn't an excuse for making up an answer in an omnipotent being. Default position on all positive claims, like an invisible pink unicorn in the corner of my room, is to deny.
Not knowing means we look for the answer, not blindly believe in a "god" by way of faith.
Babbles
Diamond Member
Yes, in fact it is. That is basically why it is called faith.
No, no, no!
That is what you or I would do - not what everybody in the world may do. If you do not want to have faith in god or gods and as such look for some other explanation, then, cool, more power to you.
However you should never confuse your anecdotal opinions and thoughts with those of other people. Some people very well do not want to search for any sort of 'higher' answer outside of god/gods and they call that faith.
Deal with it and move on.
shortylickens
No Lifer
Bullshit.
I've seen santa.
zinfamous
No Lifer
you're new here, I take it. You probably think this question has never been asked on the internet and debated ad-infinitum.
not to mention the millenia of human thought and achievement prior to the internet's inception.
why do you feel that your asking this question will somehow contribute more to the debate?
S
SlitheryDee
What part doesn't make sense? Furthermore, how could you think I'm "trying to be clever and deep"? I'm saying the obvious here.
Dud states that "admitting you really know nothing" is a prerequisite of "true intelligence". The slant of his post implies that faith is a result of "true intelligence". I counter by saying that not only does faith require you to think that you know something, but to simultaneously admit that you have no good reason to know it. Besides being classic doublethink, that is exactly the opposite of what he claims to be necessary for "true intelligence". Coincidentally an agnostic or weak atheist will claim a distinct lack of knowledge about the existence of god, with the only real difference between the two being degrees of opinion on the subject. Agnostics and weak atheists therefore come closer to fulfilling his requirement for "true intelligence" than the faithful do. Professing faith is not claiming that you "don't know". It is claiming that you do know when you really don't, while somehow working the admission of your lack of knowledge into the meaning of the same word
Doublethink - the act of simultaneously accepting as correct two mutually contradictory beliefs. It is related to, but distinct from, hypocrisy and neutrality.
Babbles
Diamond Member
For the most part all of your premises are wrong - hence nothing makes sense.
It is in no way how I would phrase it nor do I wish to argue his point of view, but in a sense I totally agree with the sentiment. I think it is quite reasonable to think that you have to acknowlege that you don't know certain things in order to be able to discover the unknown. Us scientists do this all of the time - if we didn't we would think we know everything, now wouldn't we?
Your first mistake: there is no reason to counter this and hence part of my reason to believe you are being argumentative just for the sake of doing it. Furthermore it is quite reasonable to think you know something while also realizing there is "no good reason to know it." Before we learned more about astrophysics, gravity, and so forth I am sure our ancestors thought they knew how the heavens operated but also had no good reson for undertanding the physics of it. One can describe intuition as thinking "that you know something" while simultaneous not understanding why. I suppose another word that can be used is hypothesis.
Anyhow, if you want to call all of this faith, then fine. And, to an extent, I would agree with you. However I don't think it is counter to the previously made statement.
Nope, you are just making stuff up. As noted above I don't think it's necessarily some fallacious "doublethink" to be able to think you know something without fundamentally really knowing why. It's easy enough to see gravity at work without actually having a good reason to know why you can see gravity at work. Sometimes you just don't know; following the gravity analogy we 'know' certain things about gravity, but at the subatomic and Big Bang level we really don't know about gravity. If you want to call this "doublethink" I suppose that is your prerogative.
"Weak atheist"? Seriously? Based on simply etymology this doesn't make sense. Either atheist or not. How in the hell would a so-called "weak atheist" be fundamentally different than an agnostic? Anyhow, your conclusion about how agnostics and "weak atheists" fulfill the requirement for "true intelligence" more so than "faithful" makes no sense and does not appear to be based on anything other than your desire for that conclusion.
More importantly it is absolutely silly to somehow divide people's fulfilment of "true intelligence" (again not my combination of words and I will not get further dragged into this) based on if they are faithful or agnostic. It is the same old tired and pathetic argument that if you are agnostic or atheist you are somehow superior than if you are somebody of faith.
You just assume that your concept of "professing faith" is correct; again you just made something up. Why can't professing faith be claiming that "you don't know"? Now with that being said I do think some people approach faith in the way you defined it. Like religion, faith is a matter of personal choice. You can not, nor should not, define it for other people.
I suppose that leads me to my fundamental point: People approach and adopt the concept of "Faith" differently and you should not assume to make up a definition for this concept then argue against people's faith using some definition that you created. You are arbitrarily categorizing people; they are this or that - faith is this, not that. It's just silly.
S
SlitheryDee
Oh dear. This is going to get inconveniently long isn't it?
I agree with this. I restated it for clarity in case there was some misunderstanding.
I love arguing about religion, which is why I do it. That doesn't mean I'm merely playing devil's advocate here. Your examples are not comparable to faith as it pertains to religion. See below.
Once again you are inserting an idea that doesn't belong. Even if it isn't explainable, the fact that we can observe gravity puts it in a different class than God belongs in. I wouldn't expect to be able to give you a breakdown of the workings of God's ethereal body even if he were standing next to me as I typed this. If he proceeded to fill an empty glass with wine from thin air I wouldn't be able to tell you how he did it. Those two things however, would finally place him on equal footing with gravity as something I can observe but not explain. So, observable unexplainable phenomena != unobservable unexplainable phenomena. Observing something and not being able to explain it is not the same thing as believing in something without observing it.
Back to the point, faith in God has nothing to do with explaining how God works. It has everything to do with believing that he exists. Everything that follows is but a subset of that principle. You can't have faith in God's kindness, or love, or anything else about God without first having the faith in his existence.
I felt much the same as you about weak atheism once. I got into a pretty good debate about it with our own Cerpin Taxt (then known as Garth) and eventually conceded the point. It's really a semantic argument as a "weak atheist" is essentially an agnostic in principle who tends toward atheism. I probably could have left it as agnostic and avoided this bit. If it makes my points easier to swallow you can just assume that I'm referring to agnosticism exclusively.
On the other point you have to remember that I was rebutting Dud's specific idea about how faith follows from "true intelligence". Agnosticism is defined by the distinct lack of knowledge either for or against the existence of God. Faith, in the religious sense, is defined by the conspicuous filling of the very gap agnosticism leaves empty...with God. That is the essential point. If admitting that you know nothing is the beginning of true intelligence, agnosticism comes closer than faith because agnostics admit to less knowledge than the faithful do. Do you see what I am saying?
Waitasec. It was I that was originally contesting the "my philosophy is superior" argument. What else am I supposed to think when someone says that faith is the answer and follows that up with advice on the acquisition of "true intelligence". What would you think?
I can assume that my concept of faith is correct in this exact context. If you are a true member of any religion which worships a deity, you are not merely hypothesizing about his existence. You are believing in him as surely as you believe in yourself. I'm certain that many people fall short of this ideal. I am not contesting the various degrees of belief that may be held by people, but the very ideal itself. In the religious sense, faith is sure and certain knowledge of your beliefs without need of evidence. I did not make that up. Faith may mean other things in other contexts, but it's a poor tactic to throw those other contexts into this discussion as though they belong.
I agree with this. I restated it for clarity in case there was some misunderstanding.
[/quote]
I love arguing about religion, which is why I do it. That doesn't mean I'm merely playing devil's advocate here. Your examples are not comparable to faith as it pertains to religion. See below.
[/quote]
Once again you are inserting an idea that doesn't belong. Even if it isn't explainable, the fact that we can observe gravity puts it in a different class than God belongs in. I wouldn't expect to be able to give you a breakdown of the workings of God's ethereal body even if he were standing next to me as I typed this. If he proceeded to fill an empty glass with wine from thin air I wouldn't be able to tell you how he did it. Those two things however, would finally place him on equal footing with gravity as something I can observe but not explain. So, observable unexplainable phenomena != unobservable unexplainable phenomena. Observing something and not being able to explain it is not the same thing as believing in something without observing it.
Back to the point, faith in God has nothing to do with explaining how God works. It has everything to do with believing that he exists. Everything that follows is but a subset of that principle. You can't have faith in God's kindness, or love, or anything else about God without first having the faith in his existence.
[/quote]
I felt much the same as you about weak atheism once. I got into a pretty good debate about it with our own Cerpin Taxt (then known as Garth) and eventually conceded the point. It's really a semantic argument as a "weak atheist" is essentially an agnostic in principle who tends toward atheism. I probably could have left it as agnostic and avoided this bit. If it makes my points easier to swallow you can just assume that I'm referring to agnosticism exclusively.
On the other point you have to remember that I was rebutting Dud's specific idea about how faith follows from "true intelligence". Agnosticism is defined by the distinct lack of knowledge either for or against the existence of God. Faith, in the religious sense, is defined by the conspicuous filling of the very gap agnosticism leaves empty...with God. That is the essential point. If admitting that you know nothing is the beginning of true intelligence, agnosticism comes closer than faith because agnostics admit to less knowledge than the faithful do. Do you see what I am saying?
Waitasec. It was I that was originally contesting the "my philosophy is superior" argument. What else am I supposed to think when someone says that faith is the answer and follows that up with advice on the acquisition of "true intelligence". What would you think?
[/quote]
I can assume that my concept of faith is correct in this exact context. If you are a true member of any religion which worships a deity, you are not merely hypothesizing about his existence. You are believing in him as surely as you believe in yourself. I'm certain that many people fall short of this ideal. I am not contesting the various degrees of belief that may be held by people, but the very ideal itself. In the religious sense, faith is sure and certain knowledge of your beliefs without need of evidence. I did not make that up. Faith may mean other things in other contexts, but it's a poor tactic to throw those other contexts into this discussion as though they belong.
RoloMather
Golden Member
I would argue that religious people are the same as non-religious people in terms of intelligence.
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