Clavius

CLAV: This does seem, essentially, like a concession to a person who find epistemological grounding in only empirical verification. It is like say "I admit the realm of reason is the only REAL way of measuring any sense of probability and thus faith is really just a good probability" No doubt this person's "Faith" is now essentially an object of study for the basic college statistics course. Talk about "God of the gaps" fallacy big time.

I am a theist, i can honestly say that anyone who equates faith with the realm of probability is setting themselves up for a slam dunk on the skeptic side, for they essentially admit to their worldview, and then argue from there


CLAV: It is a major distortion of the term, but I doubt any atheists/agnostics/skeptics would complain because it is really self-defeating, and the person who does equate some universal on the basis of any statistics or defining of reality with a system of symbols does so at their own peril

CLAV: It really is the nature of language in general, in my opinion. The way the term faith, which can be "you've got to have 'faith' in the government", vs. a 14th cent. Scholastic discussing the theological virtue of "Faith" is a good example of this.

I think this is also a good example of how language is bound to the culture more and more than it used to be.

peace,CLAV

Kent Stevens

I could do a further justification of why I want to be happy, or pursue happiness but I consider this to be a basic idea or assumption. If I say that pursuing happiness is a moral good then I still have to justify moral goodness and so on. You can keep on digging further down to justify things but there are limits to how far you want to dig.

I just accept certain things like equality, human rights, reason, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence did not really justify the his self-evident truths or assumptions. I disagree with the assumption of Creator but I agree pretty much else with what Jeffersen is saying. I do not get into major justification about the things said there.

Now, what I am saying is that everyone must come up with their own set of self-evident truths, beliefs, convictions, or assumptions. Someone may use reason or they may not, but in order to function normally they must stop digging for answers and be content with what they have found for now.

By the way I am not American. I am just using the Declaration of Independence as a good example of things that are more or less just accepted or assumed. However, I think that the Declaration of Independence is a good document and expresses Enlightenment values well.

emphryio

Huh?

[ February 22, 2002: Message edited by: emphryio ]</p>

WJ

"Obviously the two are different. Is the problem that, saying you have faith that 2+2=4 is an incorrect usage of faith?"

That would be false; the two *are* the same. The only difference is when they are applied. One application is metaphysical. The other, physical.

Faith seeks understanding.

Walrus

emphryio

My attempt at translating Clav:

Clav quote: It is like say "I admit the realm of reason is the only REAL way of measuring any sense of probability and thus faith is really just a good probability"

Emphryio: Huh? So I guess Clav is saying in a strange roundabout way, that he doesn't think reason is the only way of measuring any sense of probability? Huh? And yet he says it as if, "Ohh, of course not. Everyone knows that."

As far as then asserting that faith is really just a good probability. I'm not sure, but I think he's referring to me referring to christians who say that knowing that 2+2=4 is an example of faith.
But I personally think that unfortunate misuse of the word that has developed so actually I guess Clav is agreeing with me.
At least in the second part of that one sentence. In the first part he is asserting that, "Ohh of course reason isn't the only way of measuring any sense of probability." Which seems bizarre to me personally.

quote:
No doubt this person's "Faith" is now essentially
an object of study for the basic college statistics course. Talk about "God of the gaps"
fallacy big time.

Emphryio:
Those final two sentences of that paragraph are based on the MOSTLY christian misuse of the word faith. In the misuse of saying knowing 2+2=4 is from faith, you get faith being related to a college statistics course. (Why a college statistics course in particular? I have no idea. God of the gaps fallacy? I have no idea.)

Emphryio's original quote:
They say, "You have faith that 2+2=4, having faith in god is essentially no different". Obviously the two are different. Is the problem that, saying you have faith that 2+2=4 is an incorrect usage of faith?


CLAV's quote: It is a major distortion of the term, but I doubt any atheists/agnostics/skeptics
would complain because it is really self-defeating, and the person who does equate
some universal on the basis of any statistics or defining of reality with a system of symbols does so at their own peril.

"It is a major distortion of the term,"
Yes we agree on that I guess.
"but I doubt any atheists/agnostics/skeptics
would complain because it is really self-defeating,"
You know I give up on the rest of this paragraph. Whooosh! Right over my head I guess.

In the final paragraph not reproduced here, he is saying it isn't christian apologists fault but the fault of the language in general. Fine whatever.

So what was Clav actually saying?
I think he was agreeing that 2+2=4 should not be considered a matter of faith. But that also he thinks reason isn't the only way to know something.

I imagine there's a very good reason why he didn't just say the above two sentences instead. But I'm very afraid to hear what it is.

emphryio

Now on the other hand:
From WJ:
Emphryio quote: "Obviously the two are different. Is the problem that, saying you have faith that
2+2=4 is an incorrect usage of faith?"

WJ quote: That would be false; the two *are* the same. The only difference is when they are applied. One application is metaphysical. The other, physical.


(Back to real time w/ Emph)
WJ disagrees with Clav and me that the two are different. (Although I probably shouldn't speak for Clav.) Now I personally might say that the purpose of language is to understand one another and if one application is physical and the other metaphysical, how about different words for the two? But I really think WJ should discuss this with Clav.

Best of luck WJ.

WJ

Thanks EM! FYI-I don't have faith in luck. I do believe in faith though!

Walrus

Clavius

CLAV:I'm not here to make excuses for bad arguments at all, i've seen enough of the trolls on here who say crazy things.

CLAV: What i'm essentially saying is that i agree with you that "You have faith in the equation like i have faith in God" is an extremely poor argument.

I think reason is the only way you can *know* something, I have never known anyone to pass an exam with ESP or a person with a brain disorder, and lower reasoning skills to give lectures on relativistic quantum field theory.

A reasoning human can't escape his reason. It almost sounds like an axiom!

If you mean by *knowing something*= only valid/meaningful knowledge is sensory-empirically-(whatever) verifiable I would have to disagree. This is of course not what i was discussing in the post you were responding to.

I agree that probability is the proper function of reason and rests fully in reason, as do all our daily pursuits.

peace,CLAV

[ February 22, 2002: Message edited by: Clavius ]</p>

owleye

Kent...

You wrote...

"Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence did not really justify the his self-evident truths or assumptions."

That's exactly wrong. The justification for the "truths or assumptions" was that they were "self-evident." You may question the validity of the justification, but I'm pretty sure you can't say it isn't one.

Indeed, this is usually the stopping point in all our searches for justification -- that it winds up being self-evident. If you wish to criticize this, you should first decide whether it makes sense to deny it. Consider the alternative, do you think it reasonable that it could be in our nature to die, or to be enslaved, or to pursue unhappiness? I think there are interpretations in which this makes sense. If so, you might want to inquire into what assumptions are being made by Jefferson that permit these to be held as truths and the opposing view false, or if you can't to provide an alternative rendering of what constitutes "self-evident truths" that would have the appropriate mixture of living and dying, freedom and slavery, happiness and unhappiness.

In any case, justification remains important if we are to judge the value of whatever it is that we wish to say. Indeed, I'd say you are trying your best to justify your points and I, through the way I respond, am doing the same.

Fell

Kent Stevens

It is not usually good practice to justify something by saying it is self-evident or I assume that this to be true. To say: I assume that pigs fly. I assume that a man can walk on water. I consider it self-evident that god exists. I consider it self-evident that communism is right. These things can be further justified or even rejected after further consideration. But we can only use reason to do this with.

Reason is one of those things which I consider is a basic assumption. It is one of those things generally accepted by people. Now you might say that reason is self-evident. It is accepted by both religious and non-religious people alike. Theologians may try to use reason to prove the existence of god.

It is not usually considered self-evident that theft is good. In fact we might say that it is self-evident that theft is wrong. But to those people that steal this may not be so obvious. I think that theft is wrong and I have done some justification into why this is so. I still consider it to be a fairly basic idea and I do not want to spend a whole afternoon justifying it as such.