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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
 Posted - 07/22/2006 : 22:02:38 [Permalink]
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Marf, correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to evaluate religious belief by its products, that is to say what faith leads to. Sometimes faith leads to horrible deeds done in the name of religion, but more often than not faith is innocuous, and perhaps even leads people to do more good than they would otherwise. Is that about right?
Because then I think you'd be missing Dawkin's point, which is that regardless of how faith affects most people's actions, it is inherently detrimental and dangerous. Faith is the antithesis of reason. Faith is why people fall for quack medicine or vote for incompetent politicians. Faith is the reason why education is suffering and why holy wars are still being fought. Faith is irrational, primitive, and animalistic. Faith is the absence of critical thinking and sound reason, and I can't think of a single aspect of life where that absence isn't cause for worry. Why should partial insanity ever be encouraged or validated? Because doing so does indeed open the path to complete insanity. The progress of humankind will be forever stunted so long as faith exists.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 01:35:20 [Permalink]
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Humbert wrote: quote:
Marf, correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to evaluate religious belief by its products, that is to say what faith leads to.
In order to "evaluate" religious belief one must have a system for evaluation. If we are to evaluate the ethical character of religion then actions are as important as intentions. However, no, I am not only evaluating what faith leads to, I am also evaluating the character of very different types of faith, which other people here tend to just brashly group together as if they are all one thing.
I would hold that I, an atheist, have more philosophically in common with Bishop John Spong than I do with an Ayn Rand objectivist, who is also an atheist. The natural world isn't the only reality that humans must deal with. He have to solve social problems and make personal moral decisions. It would just dandy if science could totally help us out with that, but it can't. It can't tell us what values to base our moral systems on in the first place or how to prioritize those values, so even if two people believe the exact same thing about the natural world, they might still fight to the death over moral differences. Sure, science helps us to some degree with all this - it helps us learn more about natural reality, and that damn sure does help when we're trying to figure out how to keep to our values and priorities. However, that's not a totally scientific endeavor either. As Kil mentioned in another conversation going on about politics, two people could have the same goals and being using the same skeptical approach, but just by the fact that they are different people with slightly different info and perspectives, they might come to different conclusions on what is the best policy to enact.
The same is true for worldview. Science has not answered all our questions. Evolution does not explain the origin of life, as creationists so often try to claim it does. It explains the origin of species. As an atheist, I am confident that science will also someday give a iron-clad naturalistic explanation for not only the origin of life, but the origin of the universe, and that evolutionary psychology will produced concerete answers about other human impulses, instead of mostly speculation. However, that day is not here and a rational person does not count their chickens before they've hatched. Just like a progressive believer, I am fully aware of the difference between what I believe and what I know.
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Because then I think you'd be missing Dawkin's point, which is that regardless of how faith affects most people's actions, it is inherently detrimental and dangerous.
I'm not missing Dawkins point at all. I'm disagreeing with him and charging that he has no hard scientific evidence for his claim, and what's more, he's being rather self-righteous about it.
quote:
Faith is the antithesis of reason.
First Dave says emotion is the antonym of rational and now you say faith is the antithesis of reason. First of all, the word "faith" gets tossed around a lot these days, what with fundamentalist Christians and Sam Harris twisting the word to have a much more religiously loaded and narrow meaning that it previously had in common conversation. Ethical culturists (who are a type of atheist) preach of rational faith, just as do Unitarians and other progressive Christians. But apparently nobody around here can wrap their brain around the idea that some faiths are not irrational. Scientists themselves make guesses all the time. Of course they never would consider their guesses to be facts, and they are constantly trying to prove or disprove their guesses with experimentation. Are those guesses themselves rational or irrational? They are neither, but they are a useful part of the process toward greater understanding. If every person with faith turned off the brain at that point, as Dawkins claims they all do, then faith would be inherently dangerous and dentrimental. But that fact is that plenty of faithful, if not most, keep a humble faith that is vulnerable to being altered or eradicated by opposing scientific evidence. That is why I keep calling them progressive believers.
Every person who bothers thinking about the meaning of life has the option to consider a possibility of a transcendant or spiritual side to reality. Such notions, however vague or specific, are universal to human cultures. Belief in some concept of such spirituality is a guess about something we cannot know. People don't make those guesses out of thin air. They do respond to cultural suggestions as well as personal spiritual experiences. But a progressive believers is fully aware that the specifics of their spiritual perspective is colored by their humanity and cannot be and should not be use as evidence to convince others. That is partially why they are not self-righteous and exercise scientific thinking to all things it can be applied to. It is also why they tend to identify more with other people outside of their religious group who share their values and actions, rather than those within their group who don't share their values and actions.
Pissing all over the entire concept of "faith" while calling all religious folks at least partially insane is not a display of superior rational thinking. It is an opinion, and one that is expressed with a frothing mouth. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 02:12:03 [Permalink]
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Dave W. wrote: quote:
I can find no way to similarly reason one's way to "God exists," and due to the logical faults which are obviously a part of things like Pascal's Wager, I can find no way to even reason one's way to "I should act as though God exists." In a like manner, I can find no chain of logic which leads to the conclusion that it's more practical or expedient to believe that souls or a spiritual realm exist than to act as if they do not. These statements, however, may simply be due to a deficit of imagination on my part.
I doubt any progressive believer comes to their religious beliefs through such a process of linear, logical conclusion.
I've been arguing most of this time for the use of thinking that is not logic, but also not against logic. (Sort of how we appreciate art and there is nothing logical about that process either.) I think intuition is valuable. I think it has proven itself to be valuable time and time again. Often intuition leads people to the wrong answer, and for often the same reasons that scientists end up doing bad science: they fall prey to their own biases and desired expectations. The advantage of science is that other people can use the exact same method to cross check the first person's conclusions and show exactly where a mistake was made. This is not possible with intuition since the process is subjective and not entirely conscious. If science cannot tell us about the meaning of life and whether spiritual things exist, but an individual's intuition strongly tells them that such things do exist, even if humans cannot understand them in specific detail, I don't see how that person accepting the belief is irrational. I only see they are irrational if they deny plain reality – granted not a black and white measure either - but it at least gives us somewhere to start.
I met a person who believed in aliens but who I didn't think did so irrationally. She was a HS librarian who basically suspected it was true because she thought eye-witnesses were reliable and she knew there were so many people with similar stories. She wasn't passionate or certain about it (the topic came up casually and went after a minute or two). She just tended to think that aliens probably had visited earth. Given what information she had been exposed to, I found her conclusions to be pretty reasonable and rational for her. After all, eye-witness accounts are a form of evidence, and most people aren't aware of other evidence which shows how unreliable eye-witness accounts can be.
I suppose one could argue that this librarian should have been investigating the whole alien abduction thing a lot more and finding out whether her inkling was well-supported or not. But that's sort of silly. It wasn't something she cared about deeply or that was likely to affect her life. It was more like an occasional passing thought in the midst of the important things in her life such as her job, family, and local politics. So, yeah, I am arguing that some people have beliefs in things like alien abductions that are not arrived at due to irrational thinking because if the person had the time or interest, they would continue in a line of appropriate research and critical thinking and eventually arrive at a better conclusion. They aren't irrational in their thinking, they simply aren't interested enough to bother doing the rest of the research. The beliefs might still be wrong, but if they are not important to the person, are not taken by the person to be fact, are not preached by the person, not acted on, then they are benign and pointless to criticize.
You talk about whether people should act as if God exists – but that depends on what you mean by that. The woman in the Orion article acts as if God exists, but that belief it completel |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 04:20:26 [Permalink]
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quote:
You are half right. Most fundamentalists do not do extreme acts like killing abortion doctors or volunteer for suicide bombings. However, most do engage in milder forms of behavior that is destructive to human welfare, such as voting for conservative presidents because the Dem “advocate killing babies” and “gay marriage is an abomination”. They do infiltrate our school boards and try to get Creationism taught. Moderate believers not only don't engage in such stupidity, but they are frequently a force fighting against fundamentalists. That was my point.
This thread has really become a tangle of cobwebs. Most people with dumb ideas (such as theists)do not do extreme acts like killing abortion doctors or volunteer for suicide bombings. However, most do engage in milder forms of behavior that is destructive to human welfare, such as voting for conservative presidents (such as Clinton or Bush) because more reasonable people advocate voting for people who do not attack other countries or increase poverty and pollution. People with dumb ideas believe in a constant battle of good vs evil, or believe that the drug war is a good idea, or believe a whole host of destructive things that they "intuit" or "feel" is right.
Is it also a dumb idea to say that people with dumb ideas do smart things because of those dumb ideas, or do they do them in spite of those dumb ideas? |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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| Edited by - Gorgo on 07/23/2006 04:22:47 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 10:26:29 [Permalink]
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Gorgo wrote: quote:
This thread has really become a tangle of cobwebs.
I'm sorry you see it that way. No one involved in this conversation in a nutjob. Everyone is actually pretty damn smart and a lot of really smart things have been said(Dave W.'s last long response was pretty dense and I'm still rolling a lot of it around in my brain). Just because the subject gets complicated doens't mean it is a tangle of cobwebs. We haven't even strayed from the original issues brought up by Dawkin's film and my criticisms of it.
quote:
However, most do engage in milder forms of behavior that is destructive to human welfare, such as voting for conservative presidents (such as Clinton or Bush) because more reasonable people advocate voting for people who do not attack other countries or increase poverty and pollution.
Wait a minute, so now everyone who simply votes for Clinton or Bush is engaging in destructive behavior based on "dumb ideas"? You are just taking this too far. The examples I gave - including the voting - of destructive behavior were all examples of people who did their behavior based on irrational ideas about reality: infiltrating school boards because they think the earth is only a few thousand years old and the flood happened, or being motivated to vote primarily so they could vote against gay marriage/unions, despite the fact that there is zero evidence that being gay is harmful and there is evidence that legal gay marriage would be benefifical to the security of society.
Do not confuse progressive religious folks with political progressives. There is some overlap, but the word "progressive" does not refer to the same things. A progressive religious person is progressive in their religion because they embrace reason and allow their faith to be open to change, and they are humble, rather than self-righteous about it.
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People with dumb ideas believe in a constant battle of good vs evil
Then I guess Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Brian Flemming have dumb ideas since they regularly refer to religious beliefs as being "evil" or "wrong" and refer to struggles between that which is good and evil. Or... maybe some people use good and evil in an absolute sense (fundamentalists) and other use good and evil in a relative sense (Dawkins, most atheists, progressive believers).
quote:
or believe that the drug war is a good idea, or believe a whole host of destructive things that they "intuit" or "feel" is right.
Well, you've managed to totally simplify everything I've written. No wonder you feel like this is turning into cobwebs. If someone relies purely on how they feel, then, yeah, they are being pretty damn dumb. But first of all, even if you have all the facts available, you will not have all the facts possible to know, and therefore to some degree you have to make some small or large leaps of faith. Some make their leaps based purely on the logical default position. (On the question of God, those are agnostics) Other people allow their intuition and feelings to influence their position. So long as those feelings and intuitions do not actually contradict the scientific evidence, they are not being irrational.
Saying the "drug war is a good idea" isn't a position on policy. It is far to vague to be a position on policy. Now you say instead "Decriminalization of drugs is a bad idea", then you begin to have a policy. Of course for it to be a clear policy, you have to explain how the laws will be enforced and deal with all those consequences. If you say instead that "Decriminalization of drugs is a good idea." then you have to explain how the government will regulate and classify the drugs that are no longer banned. And once the two sides have drawn out their policies out of thousands that could have been drawn out, in reality, we can never know for sure what policy would have promoted human welfare the most because it's not like we can try them all out in a simulator. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 07/23/2006 10:26:53 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 10:41:42 [Permalink]
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Did anyone see the episode of Late Night with David Letterman with Bill O'Reilly being interviewed? In it, Letterman said to Bill at one point, "I have the feeling that 60% of what you say is crap." In that moment, Letterman didn't have the time or access to research to logically refute O'Reilly's rantings. But Letterman's intuition sent him a lot of warning signs. Sure, if we take the time to analyse and research everything Bill O'Reilly says then we might be able to say with some degree of certainty what percentage of what Bill O'Reilly says is false. But in that situation, Letterman had only a few seconds. He could have either been total rationalist and not said anything until he'd had time to do the proper thinking and research, or he could go with his gut and say what he said.
Life is full of situations like these. I'm not defending people who are intellectually lazy when they have a responsibility (such as those who vote but who just vote by party lines or some other equally-mindless system), nor am I defending people become self-righteous about a belief they cannot prove (which happens with political ideologies as much as religious).
In regards to what Dave said about the Australian aborigines being deluded - that is not a good word to use. It is like calling someone a liar because they have said something that turned out to be wrong. If they believed it was true, they weren't lying. Likewise, given how much exposure an aborigine living traditionally has to the modern world, it is absurd to call them deluded in their religious beliefs. It wouldn't even be enough for some foreign scientist to come and tell them all the stuff we know because they'd have no framework for why they should trust that scientist. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 11:46:15 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by marfknox
The natural world isn't the only reality that humans must deal with.
Of course it is, unless you unnecessarily restrict the definition of "natural world" for some reason.
quote:
He have to solve social problems and make personal moral decisions. It would just dandy if science could totally help us out with that, but it can't.
Why are you switching the discussion to science? Science is not the equivalent of rationality, nor is the irrational simply "that which contradicts settled science," as you seem to imply.
quote:
It can't tell us what values to base our moral systems on in the first place or how to prioritize those values, so even if two people believe the exact same thing about the natural world, they might still fight to the death over moral differences. Sure, science helps us to some degree with all this - it helps us learn more about natural reality, and that damn sure does help when we're trying to figure out how to keep to our values and priorities.
Yes, which is why no one is suggesting replacing faith with science. That is your straw man. The dichotomy is between faith and reason.
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As an atheist, I am confident that science will also someday give a iron-clad naturalistic explanation for not only the origin of life, but the origin of the universe, and that evolutionary psychology will produced concerete answers about other human impulses, instead of mostly speculation. However, that day is not here and a rational person does not count their chickens before they've hatched.
Because in the entire history of the human pursuit of knowledge we have only ever found natural causes, it is supremely rational to assume a natural cause of life's origins. It has nothing to do with counting chickens before they hatch. Just because a question remains unanswered does not mean that all possible answers are equally rational.
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I'm not missing Dawkins point at all. I'm disagreeing with him and charging that he has no hard scientific evidence for his claim, and what's more, he's being rather self-righteous about it.
Hmm. Well, I haven't found anything over which to disagree with him yet.
quote:
quote:
Faith is the antithesis of reason.
First Dave says emotion is the antonym of rational and now you say faith is the antithesis of reason.
Faith is highly intertwined with emotions. It is a kind of emotional thinking devoid of reason.
quote:
First of all, the word "faith" gets tossed around a lot these days, what with fundamentalist Christians and Sam Harris twisting the word to have a much more religiously loaded and narrow meaning that it previously had in common conversation. Ethical culturists (who are a type of atheist) preach of rational faith, just as do Unitarians and other progressive Christians. But apparently nobody around here can wrap their brain around the idea that some faiths are not irrational.
Faith is belief without evidence or reasonable cause. As such, it is by definition irrational. There is no such thing as rational faith, and especially not in any beliefs pertaining to the supernatural.
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Scientists themselves make guesses all the time. Of course they never would consider their guesses to be facts, and they are constantly trying to prove or disprove their guesses with experimentation. Are those guesses themselves rational or irrational?
It depends on the guess, of course. In the "Does the sun have a solid surface?" thread, it has become extremely evident that Michael's hypotheses about the nature of the sun are totally irrational.
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They are neither, but they are a useful part of the process toward greater understanding.
Actually, you are wrong here. They can either be rational or irrational. Only rational hypotheses further us toward a greater understanding. Irrational hypotheses are more likely to prove an obstacle to understanding, if not actually lead us away from it.
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If every person with faith turned off the brain at that point, as Dawkins claims they all do, then faith would be inherently dangerous and dentrimental. But that fact is that plenty of faithful, if not most, keep a humble faith that is vulnerable to being altered or eradicated by opposing scientific evidence. That is why I keep calling them progressive believers.
In my experience, I have found the exact opposite to be true. The overwhelming majority of most people's faith tends to be highly impervious to scientific evidence. But regardless, belief without cause or drawing conclusions beyond what the evidence permits is irrational, and so it makes no difference how tenously a faith is held.
quote:
Every person who bothers thinking about the meaning of life has the option to consider a possibility of a transcendant or spiritual side to reality. Such notions, however vague or specific, are universal to human cultures. Belief in some concept of such spirituality is a guess about something we cannot know. People don't make those guesses out of thin air. They do respond to cultural suggestions as well as personal spiritual experiences. But a progressive believers is fully aware that the specifics of their spiritual perspective is colored by their humanity and cannot be and should not be use as evidence to convince others. That is partially why they are not self-righteous and exercise scientific thinking to all things it can be applied to. It is also why they tend to identify more with other people outside of their religious group who share their values and actions, rather than those within their group who don't sha |
"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 07/23/2006 11:50:41 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 14:39:00 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by marfknox
But first of all, even if you have all the facts available, you will not have all the facts possible to know, and therefore to some degree you have to make some small or large leaps of faith. Some make their leaps based purely on the logical default position. (On the question of God, those are agnostics).
Actually, depending upon how the terms are defined, atheism is the default position. Without evidence the supernatural exists, it is not logical to seriously entertain the possibility that it does, even without absolute knowledge.
quote:
Other people allow their intuition and feelings to influence their position. So long as those feelings and intuitions do not actually contradict the scientific evidence, they are not being irrational.
Wrong. So long as people's emotions and intuition lead them to take positions beyond what the evidence suggests or reason dictates, they are being irrational. Belief in the existence of a teacup in orbit around Pluto is irrational even without scientific evidence to the contrary.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 07/23/2006 16:02:12 |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 15:39:38 [Permalink]
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| Like I said, this thread has turned into a tangle of cobwebs. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 16:57:08 [Permalink]
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quote:
If they believed it was true, they weren't lying.
aka The George Costanza Defense.
Just my feeble attempt to inject a bit of levity. |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 19:56:44 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by marfknox
They aren't irrational in their thinking, they simply aren't interested enough to bother doing the rest of the research.
Then why would they even assert the truth of a concept they aren't interested in? If they really don't care about whether what they believe is true or not, then hell, yes, they're irrational. And while it may be my ignorance showing, I can't think of a single philosophy - and certainly no epistemology - which is centered on the idea that the truth value of a proposition doesn't matter. Even the craziest clinic-bombing fundamentalists care deeply that what they "know" is "the Truth" (note the capital T).quote:
The beliefs might still be wrong, but if they are not important to the person, are not taken by the person to be fact, are not preached by the person, not acted on, then they are benign and pointless to criticize.
Okay, now I'm lost. Are you trying to make a distinction between rational and irrational ideas, or between harmful and harmless ideas? The way you've defined "irrational," the rationality of an idea is completely independent of the harm that idea might cause. In other words, you can have rational harmless ideas, and rational harmful ideas (and irrational harmless, and irrational harmful ideas). The use of CFCs was a rational, but ultimately harmful idea (it was rationally thought to be safe, by your definition, prior to there being any scientific evidence that CFCs destroy ozone in signficant quantities).
I think the point that others are trying to make here is that ideas which aren't formulated on reason are more likely to cause harm. Thinking with one's genitalia, for example, is something that most people understand isn't particularly wise, and generally leads to all sorts of trouble. And while scientists may use intuition to help formulate hypotheses, that isn't the end of the truth-seeking process for them like it is for many others who promote intuition as a valid method of knowing things. "If it feels good, do it" is not an acceptable scientific procedure.quote:
You talk about whether people should act as if God exists – but that depends on what you mean by that.
No, I spoke about whether a set of valid logical arguments can be made which could lead to the conclusion that one should act as if God exists. Many people believe in God simply because the alternative makes them uncomfortable, an emotional appeal, pure and simple.quote:
The woman in the Orion article acts as if God exists, but that belief it completely intertwined with a search for the truths of the natural world, using science, and then using that info to act on what is best for humanity. To her, that is what acting as if God exist is, and she explains how in her worldview, atheists can even be evangelical.
Oh, I see. Most of the basic Christian "rules" of behaviour are really just extensions of the idea, "would you want someone else to do that to you?" Helping your fellow humans, not stealing or lying (etc.), aren't therefore limited to those who believe, and so aren't examples of acting as if God exists. Acting as if God exists would involve doing things that you wouldn't |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 20:13:18 [Permalink]
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Humbert wrote: quote:
Of course it is, unless you unnecessarily restrict the definition of "natural world" for some reason.
Fair ‘nuff, let me rephrase. Facts about the natural world and how to use those facts for our benefit isn't the only way to improve the human condition. That is what Barzun was talking about in the quote I cited about cultivation.
quote:
Because in the entire history of the human pursuit of knowledge we have only ever found natural causes, it is supremely rational to assume a natural cause of life's origins. It has nothing to do with counting chickens before they hatch. Just because a question remains unanswered does not mean that all possible answers are equally rational.
This dismisses personal spiritual experience. Those are real and extremely common. They cannot point to any specific description of the spiritual or God, as Gorgo asks for, but they give many people a strong inkling that there is more than just the natural world. So I disagree with you that it is supremely rational for everyone to be an agnostic.
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Faith is highly intertwined with emotions. It is a kind of emotional thinking devoid of reason.
So is love. Perhaps you would argue that love is not devoid of reason since it enriches our lives. And a religious believer would also argue that faith enriches their lives, so what's the difference?
There is no reason to pay any mind to aesthetics, and yet most people count aesthetics as being an important part of the human experience, we pay extra for it, we house aesthetic objects in museums, and Japanese followers of Shinto would tie red ribbons around naturally aesthetic formations and trees and such to mark them as containing a spiritual being. That spiritual being was no more specific than the type of spirituality expressed by progressive faithful. How can you condemn something that makes no specific and falsifiable claim, but which also does not claim to be scientific, also does not inspire destructive behavior, and might enrich the individual's experience of life? How is that type of spirituality any different than having a highly attuned aesthetic sensibility? The reason fundamentalist beliefs inspire destructive behavior is because they are specific claims about reality.
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Faith is belief without evidence or reasonable cause. As such, it is by definition irrational.
You are narrowly defining “belief”. If I say “I believe it is wrong to kill without reason.” I am not stating a belief about the natural world. I am stating a belief about the subjective realm of morality.
quote:
It depends on the guess, of course. In the "Does the sun have a solid surface?" thread, it has become extremely evident that Michael's hypotheses about the nature of the sun are totally irrational.
I do not read that thread, so I won't comment on that directly. However, I will say that one think I tire of is the greater emphasis on defining whether something is rational or not, to the dismissal of understanding why someone m |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 20:17:46 [Permalink]
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Gorgo wrote: quote:
Like I said, this thread has turned into a tangle of cobwebs.
I'm following the conversation perfectly fine, and Humbert and Dave seem to also be following it perfectly fine. Sure, there've been some miscommunications and difficulties with semantics, but that is inevitable in any conversation about such complex ideas. Did you just make the above comment because you are confused, or are you trying to imply something else?
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 07/23/2006 20:19:40 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 21:05:03 [Permalink]
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Dave wrote: quote:
Then why would they even assert the truth of a concept they aren't interested in?
Because they can't help having an opinion. In context it's not a big deal. It's like a conversation I had with a group of people about ghosts recently. One of the people adamantly believed in ghosts because she had had several personal experiences within 6 months after her mother's death (she did not expect anyone else to believe because of her experiences, and admitted that the experiences might have been incredible coincidences, none-the-less, she remains a believer, and I can't say I blame her). The general consensus among 3 of the people was that they tended to think ghosts were real, but they still had some skepticism. Another person tended toward non-belief, but admitted to being occasionally swayed the other way. I was the only hard-core skeptic. We had a nice friendly discussion about it, and I wouldn't have called any of these people irrational.
Perhaps if we agree to call these beliefs “irrational” (because maybe we were meaning slightly different things when we use this word), I should instead assert that not all types of irrational thinking are dangerous or detrimental. However, I do not want to call them “irrational” because that is a heavily loaded word that suggests a weakness of mind which I do not think applies to these peoples' thinking.
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I can't think of a single philosophy - and certainly no epistemology - which is centered on the idea that the truth value of a proposition doesn't matter.
I'm not talking about academic philosophies in these examples. I think you are overemphasizing something abstract that in practice shouldn't be so emphasized. What I mean is that these are casual claims about pretty insignificant subjects. (These being the alien and ghost examples, not everything we've been discussing here.)
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Okay, now I'm lost. Are you trying to make a distinction between rational and irrational ideas, or between harmful and harmless ideas?
My original point was to argue against a black and white, either/or distinction of rational/irrational regarding different types of faith, to claim that different types of faith are fundamentally different in nature in regards to how rational and reasonable they are, and to argue against Dawkins's claim that all forms of religious faith are “dangerous and detrimental”. Does that answer the question sufficiently?
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I think the point that others are trying to make here is that ideas which aren't formulated on reason are more likely to cause harm.
I'm not sure we are on the same page with how we are using the word “reason”. If you were to state that replacing “reason” with “logic”, I would respond: Yes, and I am disagreeing with that opinion.
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Thinking with one's genitalia, for example, is something that most people understand isn't particularly wise, and generally leads to all sorts of trouble.
My, this really gets into it, doesn't it? I would disagree with this. I would say that thinking |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 07/23/2006 21:10:05 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2006 : 21:51:35 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by marfknox
Humbert wrote:quote:
Because in the entire history of the human pursuit of knowledge we have only ever found natural causes, it is supremely rational to assume a natural cause of life's origins. It has nothing to do with counting chickens before they hatch. Just because a question remains unanswered does not mean that all possible answers are equally rational.
This dismisses personal spiritual experience. Those are real and extremely common.
No, it doesn't dismiss them, it provides a more reasonable alternative (and therefore more likely) explanation for them.
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They cannot point to any specific description of the spiritual or God, as Gorgo asks for, but they give many people a strong inkling that there is more than just the natural world. So I disagree with you that it is supremely rational for everyone to be an agnostic.
You disagree that "spiritual" experiences are more likely a natural phenomenon rather than a supernatural one?
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Faith is highly intertwined with emotions. It is a kind of emotional thinking devoid of reason.
So is love. Perhaps you would argue that love is not devoid of reason since it enriches our lives.
Emotions are not necessarily devoid of reason, only the bad ones are. Whether an emotion is rational or irrational determines whether it is bad or good. For instance, love can be a great benefit when it bonds us to a suitable mate or leads us to protect our offspring. That is rational love. Irrational love is the type that keeps a woman from leaving an abusive boyfriend. Obviously the relationship is not in her best interest, yet she finds herself unwilling to part. Another example would be rage. Channeled to protect oneself or one's family from attack, it is a good thing. Unbridled rage that leads you to get into a bar brawl is bad. Reason is what allows people to control themselves. Reason is what separates us from animals.
Letting one's emotions run unchecked by reason is dangerous because one's passions can lead one anywhere, to any outcome. Likewise, faith is dangerous because it can be used to justify anything, to reach any conclusion. I believe Dave was alluding to this when he said "What people do with irrational beliefs isn't generally predictable, no."
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And a religious believer would also argue that faith enriches their lives, so what's the difference?
The difference is faith is an absence of reason, and without that rudder, faith is as likely to enrich one's life as it is to cause harm.
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How can you condemn something that makes no specific and falsifiable claim, but which also does not claim to be scientific, also does not inspire destructive |
"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 07/24/2006 00:11:42 |
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