Tom Piper

Franc28,

I asked You said I'm confused? Why are you confident in the history that you (think you) know? You cannot have checked your sources against the facts.

You didn't answer the request in the passage from my earlier post quoted above. Before you make another asinine remark like , why don't you look an see how you have come to know most of what you know about the world. It is easiest when looking at how we know the history that we know. If you do not simply accept as authoritative without support some source or other, you can't learn any history. Rather than simply spewing the 'faith/evidence- dichotomy' dogma, (paraphrasing Wittgenstein), 'Don't think (how it must be)-- Look (and see how it is)!

Tom

Viti

Because heavier than air craft fly NOW, it is not a matter of faith to believe it was done THEN. I do accept the historical records that the Wright Brothers were the ones to accomplish this feat, but the "who" in this case is somewhat irrelevant.

I have seen pictures of Mt. Everest, I have spoken to people who have been there, I could get on a plane and go there and see it myself if I want.

How do either of these in any way equate with faith in a personal God?

Tom Piper

LadyShea,

But it isn't irrelevant at all. You do know that it was the Wright brothers, because you accept the historical records.

None of this is problematic. But, that the pictures you have seen are pictures of an actual mountain is something that you just accept. That these people have been there, you just accept, or you know that they are reliable because they have been on other occasions (but how do you know that?). Of course you can get on a plane and go there and see it yourslef, and acknowledging this is an expression of your faith in the sources that have told you that it is there. None of this is intended to cast any doubt on what you know. Rather it is intended to get you to look at how you know what you know.


Wittgenstein is eloquent when he says, in On Certainty

161. I learned an enormous amount and accepted it on human authority, and then I found some things confrimed or disconfirmed by my own experience.

162. In general I take as true what is found in text-books, of geography for example. Why? I say: All these facts have been confirmed a hundred times over. But how do I know that? What is my evidence for it? I have a world picture Is it true of false? Above all it is the substratum of all my enquiring and asserting. The propositions describing it are not all equally subject to testing.


and later at 166, 'The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing.'

at 170. 'I believe what people transmit to me in a certain manner. In this way I believe geographical, chemical, historical facts, etc. That is how I learn the sciences. Of course learning is based on believing. If you have learnt that Mont Blanc is 4000 metres high, if you have looked it up on the map, you say you know it.'

Tom

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Tom Piper ]

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Tom Piper ]</p>

Francois Tremblay

I am not sure why you think that "checking your sources against the facts" is the *only* method to ever have any confidence in something. I can also trust an authority, although this is a less effective method, and the trust is necessarily linked to the credilibity I put in this authority. I can also use other methods to check the fact in question.

As I said, you put faith where it does not belong - no faith is necessary to reckon that Mt Everest exists. It is a known fact and I trust the authorities involved, who have no reason to lie and are very trustworthy. That doesn't mean I consider it *equally* factual in terms of probability than if I saw it myself. Perhaps you attribute lower levels of probability to a faithful attitude, which would be a fatal mistake.

1sec

Kent Stevens, dear. Faith is not ice-cream - we do not try flavors of faith just for the fun of it.

Faith is so intimate that it has to cling on something felt so necessary, so dear - as though your life depended on it.

If I feel that I need God, and my life depends on it, I will put my faith in Him. If I don't, I won't.

That's it. Faith is an emotional business, an irrational vector of our life-flow.

Kent Stevens

Dear 1sec. We are getting into a semantic disagreement. I was originally using the term faith to suggest we have to accept some things in order to function normally.

You are using faith as religious faith. Which is the belief in some religion, or higher power. This is the usual meaning of the term, though you can also say things like I have faith in my daughter and this is not using religious faith.

I agree that religious faith is emotional and is often irrational.

If I need God for emotional reasons this suggests a weakness of character, or a lack of resolve. Perhaps we are better off having pets as companions than needing figments of our imagination for emotional reasons.

Of course religion suggests that we need God or we are going to hell. We need God or we will lead bad hedonistic lives. But I disagree with this and try to lead a good life anyway.

owleye

Kent...

I'm not entirely sure what your point is. If you are seeking a first priniciple or set of first principles on which you wish to build an edifice, and are lamenting over its impossibility on the grounds that nothing can secure it, I believe you will only get frustrated. Thomas Jefferson began his Declaration of Independence with the statement: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These grounds were sufficient to the formation of a nation of laws under a constitution in which these rights were secured. I suspect there is something to be learned from this.

I'm getting the impression from your anguishing over faith at first, and now acceptance, that you are stuck in some quagmire and can't get started. My general advice here is not to worry so much over acceptance and faith. Begin with something as given to you. For example, a good place to begin a philosophy of science is from what science gives to you -- namely the accepted theories, such as the theory of relativity or quantum theory, and try to formulate the Kantian question of what makes it possible for science to accept these theories. You can inquire into the theory itself to find an answer or you can inquire into the mind of the scientist, or both.

Similarly you can begin with something you find as a given in the moral domain, in order to develop a moral philsophy. You might begin with the immorality of deceitful acts and proceed to investigate why they would be held immoral. Similarly, you might ask yourself why it is that a war was recently declared on terrorism? For a political philosophy you might take the above declaration as a given and ask how this is possible.

In this way you don't need to get hung up on whether or not you should believe or accept them. This you might be able to do after you deliberate over how others have come to accept it or the conditions under which they are able to do so.

Fell

jordan_tar

Not at all. You talk of Euclid, and his axioms. These axioms would indeed be based on faith if we had no evidence whatsoever that they're true...but it's obvious that they're true, because they're in accordance with reality. Reason is the best way of going about things, because we've seen for ourselves time and time again its benefits. And humanistic morality is beneficial precisely because of its reciprocal qualities.

Why do I want to be happy, you ask? You've got to come up with your own reason, and inserting "faith" as that reason won't get you anywhere.

jordan_tar

What reason do we have not to believe these things? If it was a life-or-death matter, I'd certainly look into it...

emphryio

I've mentioned before and I'll say again that there should be a few different words used to define the different types of faith.

Having faith that 2+2=4 and having faith in the lord are obviously different types of faith.

Anybody care to separate the different types of faith and invent new words for them?

How about:
1. I'm not crazy faith, (2+2=4 or, I more or less trust my ability to use reason)
2. General faith or small faith, (The wright brothers flew the first airplane).
3. I AM crazy faith, (the invisible pink unicorn is my personal savior).

Any other ideas?

[ February 20, 2002: Message edited by: emphryio ]</p>