Txiasaeia

"Intelligence leads to pleasure"

This statement is not always true. My wife, for example, is a very intelligent woman. She thinks too much about the pain and suffering in this world, and this causes guilt and pain. Intelligence may sometimes lead to pleasure, but not always.

wildernesse

Emphryio:
Stupidity does not necessarily lead to pain. It leads to error, maybe, but error is not always painful.

Pain is not always evil. Physical pain in childbirth can lead to the joys of parenthood. Emotional pain of guilt can lead to atonement and a new way of life. These are two ways by which pain could be a means of good.

I agree with Txiasaeia about intelligence leading to pleasure.

In practice, good or bad luck plays a large role. There are many happy idiots. But so what? I don't wish my happiness to be determined by luck. So ideally the above is true.

“Good or bad luck plays a large role”—in what? In faith or pain? Or in happiness? I’m not clear about this sentence. In fact, I’m not so sure what that paragraph means at all—are you saying that being an idiot is based on luck? And how does happiness relate to your previous paragraph about stupidity, pain, and intelligence? Can you not be happy and be intelligent? Stupid? In pain?

Now I define faith as belief in something that there isn't enough logical evidence to warrant a belief in. Some people give it a much broader definition. Some people feel belief in your senses is an act of faith. I would suggest that this means that we are acting on faith every second of our lives. If we are acting on faith every second of our lives than to say, "You've got to have faith," is the equivalent of saying, "You've got to have consciousness." This would be a very silly and meaningless thing to say.

The only thing that I have a problem with in this paragraph is the first sentence. I believe that what you mean is that faith is a belief in something that there isn’t enough logical evidence for. Period. I don’t believe you need empirical/logical evidence for faith—otherwise it becomes more of a fact and not faith at all. I am often annoyed at theists who say that they do not have blind faith. If your faith isn’t blind, it’s not faith. If there’s logical evidence to warrant a “belief” in it, then it’s not faith.

Anyway, the faith I'm referring to obviously leads to stupidity. Or I could say, "Belief in something that there isn't enough logical evidence to warrant a belief in, leads to stupidity."

Not withstanding luck, which isn't how I hope to achieve happiness in life, stupidity leads to pain. And that which causes pain can be considered evil.

Therefore faith is evil.

First, can you be lead to stupidity? Or intelligence? Faith might lead to stubbornness, willful ignorance, arrogance, etc. Faith might lead to altruism, patience, generosity, etc. There’s really no telling—it depends on what the individual brings to the table. (IMO) That’s the reason you see angry, deceitful, kind and nice theists—and atheists.

Faith leads to stupidity. Stupidity leads to pain. Pain is evil. == Faith is evil. I don’t agree with any of these conditions. And I don’t agree with your conclusion. I still don’t understand how happiness and luck fit into this argument.

So next time you meet a Christian remember to inform them…

Why just tell Christians? IF you are correct, you need to broadcast this to all people who have faith in anything.

FAITH IS EVIL! Therefore they are immoral for practicing faith. And the Christian religion is immoral.
(Of course, make sure said Christian isn't your boss or has a gun, or is anyone that you're afraid might attempt to hurt you in some way, or is someone that you hope to dishonestly befriend in order to gain something from, etc.)

Is evil immoral? Ah, I just noticed that evil hasn’t really been addressed/defined in this post. Anyway, if someone is being immoral (and they don’t know it –Is this possible?) wouldn’t you have some sort of moral obligation to tell them? No matter what the consequences?

--tiba

Kent Stevens

The problem with faith is that it is selective gullibility. If someone told others to believe things without logical evidence then this would be immoral.

It is wrong to promote gullibility because it could lead to financial ruin. Should you believe all potential sale claims, then you would buy anything even if it was junk.

Gullibility can lead to violence. Suicide bomebers through gullibility believe that killing themselves and others, they are going to get eternal bliss from the Great Fairy. Also through gullibility these suicide bombers think that it is all right to do their atrocious deeds.

Religion preaches gullibility. Religion preaches credubility and seeks to create a group of suckers.

Religious faith is selective gullibility as religious people encourage others to be total suckers about what their particular religion says, but to reject out of hand everyone else's religion.

wildernesse

Kent Stevens:

Faith/Religion is equal to gullibility. Gullibility leads to financial ruin/violence.
To be aggravating, I’ll have to ask why financial ruin/violence(all kinds?) are bad/evil.

Gullible is defined (Webster) as being easily duped or cheated. Your idea of selective “gullibility” means that people who subscribe to a religion allow themselves to be duped into believing. Maybe. I think that this would be a better argument if instead of gullible you put ignorance. Selective ignorance, ignorance leads to violence/financial ruin, religion preaches ignorance, etc.

What is credubility?

--tiba

Autonemesis

Faith is Doubt's Yang.

Kent Stevens

Faith means to believe in something, perhaps without any logical evidence. I think that people are easily duped when it comes to religion.

We are ignorant about various things. For example we do not know how exactly the Universe came into being. The honest response to the mystery of creation is to say that I do not know. What religious people tend to do is make up some myth about how the Universe came into existence. The belief in this myth is based on faith. A religious person may believe whatever their religious book tells them to believe. If their religious book says that the Universe is created in seven days then they believe this is the case. These religious people do not admit ignorance about anything much and can get quite adamant about the Universe being created in a week. Instead of having humility about knowing certain things some of these fundamentalists are arrogant about their beliefs.

I think it is gullible to believe some of the following things. That God chose Moses as his main messenger. That Muhammad ascended to heaven. That Jesus walked on water. That Jesus is God and man simultanously. That aliens landed in a place near to you ten years ago.

In terms of what is "credubility", it is a spelling mistake. It is supposed to be credulity. Credulity meaning basically the same thing as gullibility.

Try having a talk to some Mormons sometimes about religion. See for yourself if they are selectively ignorant or selectively gullible about certain beliefs? For to me they seem to be selectively gullible about a certain Joseph Smith.

emphryio

Maybe I addressed some of these questions when I was rather longwinded on this same topic in the Moral Foundations section.


Don't remember if I defined evil in this other thread. (I defined most of the words). You could just say faith leads to actions that increase the overall amount of pain in an individual. (Notwithstanding luck)

I find it surprising there is so much disagreement with the idea that intelligence leads to pleasure notwithstanding bad luck.
I must admit, it seems rather obvious to me.

And yes, you can correctly nitpick a few things.
(Maybe "leads" isn't the best word. I don't know. I get a little sick of things when I introduce an idea and not a single person posts to give the slightest agreement on anything.)

(Pretty sure, I'm not just crazy though. I think?)

Kent Stevens

I think that faith can lead to evil. I would agree with the general idea that faith is bad news emphryio. It might be overstating the case to say it is evil, as sometimes it is fairly innoculous. Maybe faith is like the influenza virus. Sometimes it kills people in large numbers such as with the World tower disaster. But often influenza causes minor problems to people.

Reason should lead us to good results most of the time. The use of reason helps us understand the world in all of it's complexity. The use of faith just keeps us ignorant or deluded about the world.

[ June 20, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Stevens ]</p>