Brian63

This may do no more than reveal my ignorance on the subject, but I'd like to learn what the answer is anyhow.

Several times on these boards several different people have said that they can't will themselves to believe something that their mind considers ludicrous. For example, I can't just want to believe that there's a giant, 40 ton hippo sitting on my car right now, and then come to believe it. For us to believe something is true, we need some reason or evidence that suggests that it is true.

If this is true, and going by this definition of faith (which I think is the customary one used by freethinkers, but please correct me if I'm wrong):

Faith-belief that a proposition is true despite a lack of evidence that it is true and/or evidence that it is false.

then I don't understand how a person can be said to have "faith" in anything. No Christian can just will themselves to believe in God, unless they have a reason.

What seems more sensible to me is that Christians believe in God, not on faith, but because of evidence. It may include archaelogical findings, philosophical reasons, personal experience, etc. The evidence that they do have in mind may in fact be piss-poor-pathetic upon closer critical examination, but they haven't taken on this closer critical examination. So for them, as it stands their evidence is valid.

If this is the case, then nobody believes anything on "faith," but on evidence. It is meaningless for us to talk about believing in something because we have faith in it, because we can't.

Help?

Brian

[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: Brian63 ]</p>

-DM-

If we want to believe something badly enough or if we already believe something because we were taught to believe as young children and we want to continue to believe, we can look for reasons to believe and/or to continue to believe.

In the absence of evidence for belief, we (some of us at least) can believe on the basis of faith provided that there is not obvious and convincing contrary evidence.

When we encounter contrary evidence, we can (sometimes, at least) continue to believe on the basis of faith even in spite of that contrary evidence. Christian apologists, for example, can take the most obvious contrary evidence and apply ad hoc explanations so that they and seemingly others continue to believe. Certainly there is an element of "want to believe" operating here. And I think that is what many people have in mind when they talk about faith.

---------

On the other hand, faith wasn't enough to keep me a believer once I began seeing the problems in the Bible and in Christian theology. Then, when I also looked at the contrary evidence and considered it against the supporting evidence, that was the end of my faith. So yes, I think there are limits for most normal people as to what can be believed on the basis of faith. Still, I know some people who believe what would be for me completely unbelievable and yet they do so on the basis of faith (or claim to do so).

--Don--

RyanS2

This depends on how far you go with it. Several athiests were raised by Christian families. I was, and I believed my parents that Moses really led three million people through a desert and saw a flaming bush, etc., etc. When I came to grow up and question this, I found it nonsense. I have never seen a flaming bush talking to me. Therefore, it's purely faith that I accept that it could happen. Lots of people have faith in things just because they trusted someone who told them it existed. We have "faith" in gravity because we can see repeated, demonstrable effects. If I asked a Christian to take one of the challenges in the Bible, like burning the oxen with fire from heaven, it would never happen. Therefore, faith in the second event is faith without supplication of evidence. It's faith in faith.

Why do we believe in it? Christians generally cite the reliability of the Old Testament and New Testament as being accurately transmitted facts, (the places, the dates, the times), so that if we believe that the history of it is correct, well then, why can't the rest of it be correct? Sort of like believing in Christianity as a kid, my Mom and Dad were the most authoritive figures I knew, and if they believed it, why shouldn't I?

Brian63

Thanks for the help, although it still doesn't quite work out for me.

If I'm of the mindset that I want something to be true though, wouldn't I look at a lack of obvious contrary evidence as evidence for the proposition? That may not actually be a valid position to hold, but I may be of the mindset that it is, and since I have evidence that my belief is true (which is again, just lack of evidence that it isn't), I don't have faith.

But in this case, it's not like their "evidence" was determined to be invalid, so in their mind they still have evidence, and thus they don't have faith, right? Am I using an inappropriate definition of the word "faith" here?

Ryan
In their mindset, wouldn't this be considered a valid appeal to authority? If I'm a little kid who was told by my parents that there is a God, and I believe my parents because they are very smart folks, then I would have evidence that there is a God, right?

The existence of these effects may be considered evidence of gravity though, so we don't have faith in it at all.

I'm not trying to be argumentative at all, although I may come off that way here. Sorry for that, but I'm just tryin to understand more.

Brian

Ron Garrett

As a Christian, a seminarian and a pastor I played around with the whole gamut of apologetics and theology and came to the conclusion that while some small, perishingly small portion of what was offered as "evidence" was suggestive, it was still hearsay, say so, and interpretations that were only one among many possible interpretations. There was simply no evidence offered of the exclusive truth and validity of Christianity that was not also put forth by other religions to "prove" their exclusive truth and validity, and in each case the evidence was suggestive only to one predisposed to assume the truth of the proposition, but never definitive and dispositive, and no more so than alternative propositions by other religions.

I have almost concluded that Freud's explanations are 99.9% of what is actually going on and that very few of those who believe they were overwhelmed by the evidence made their decision out of any more intellectual cause than a hysteric at a voodoo dance.

[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: Ron Garrett ]</p>

-DM-

You might -- if you were not familiar with common errors of reasoning.

An absence (or apparent absence) of evidence against a proposition says nothing necessarily about its truth. For example, you cannot necessarily provide obvious and convincing evidence against the existence of the Loch Ness Monster (at least not obvious and convincing to those who believe) yet the lack of obvious and convincing evidence against the existence of the Loch Ness Monster does not constitute evidence FOR its existence.

Also, when I said "not obvious and convincing contrary evidence." What I had in mind was either one of two possibilities:
1.) There is not obvious and convincing to the person in question contrary evidence, or
2.) the person is unaware of the contrary evidence (which is often the case, I think, with religionists who have been raised in the faith).

The existence of what we call gravity is believed NOT on the basis of faith, but on the basis of evidence. On this I agree.

You are, I think, trying to determine if faith is or can be the basis for belief.

I am convinced that it plays at least a part in the belief of many religionists (and others, for that matter). After all, Christians tend to take on faith what their Bible-study teachers, Sunday School teachers, and their Pastors tells them. They assume (as I did back when I was still a believer) that these teachers most likely know what they are talking about.

There is also the matter of Jesus allegedly telling us that we need to have the faith of a child; some Christians seem to take that seriously and in a sense become children in terms of what they are willing to believe on the basis of little or not evidence.

So yes, I say faith can form the basis for belief or at least part of the basis for belief.

--Don--

-DM-

Good point, Ron. And that sort of thing undoubtedly figured into the demise of your religious belief as it did the demise of my religious belief. BUT, the fact that some will still seemingly believe in THEIR "one, true, religion" as opposed to some OTHER "one, true religion" seems to involve, for them, a degree of faith.

What do you think?

--Don--

Brian63

I do understand the argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, but not everyone does (I know this from experience, as I'm sure you do too). Many people who do not understand it, commit it. So they still consider themselves to have a justified belief (based on what they consider evidence), so they wouldn't be said to have faith, as I defined faith in my OP.

-------------------------------------------------
I think I can summarize briefly my contention:

1. Many people here assert that they cannot believe that something is true, unless they have some reason to believe it is true (based on evidence).

2. Many people here assert that Christians believe in God despite a lack of evidence.

I'm assuming in the 1st point (although this may be contended) that it does not apply to just those people asserting it, but that every human being is incapable of believing that something is true unless they have some justified reason (in their minds, at least) of believing it. That is, Christians do not have some unique talent to believe in something without having (what they consider to be) a justified reason based on evidence. So if they have what they consider to be a justified reason (based on what they consider evidence), they do not have faith.

Given this, those two assertions are in direct conflict with each other (at least I think so). One of 'em has gotta give.
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What seems most likely to me, is that if a person really wants to believe that there is a God, and they see no evidence to suggest that there is, they will manufacture their own evidence in their mind, even if this "evidence" is ludicrous by everyone else's standards, but it is valid to them. They cannot be said to have faith, in this case, because they have evidence.

When they are presented with legitimate criticisms against their evidence, and they realize that it is legitimate, they will either cease to believe in God or they will continue to believe in God. If it is the former, then it is because they no longer consider their evidence to be valid. If it is the latter, it is because they will have simply ignored the criticism and they will try to forget about it, because they want to continue believing. It's a survival mechanism, in a sense.

That is what I consider to be the case. I don't see how those 2 statements above can be reconciled; it is either that people cannot believe in something without having evidence, or they can believe in something without having evidence. I believe that whichever one is true applies to ALL people, rather than to some but not others.

Bree-yahn!

Oh yeah, one more quote:

Wouldn't this be considered (in their minds anyway) a valid appeal to authority? If they believe their preachers/teachers know what they're talking about, then they will believe that if they say there is a God, then there must be a God. If their preachers say there is a God, they consider that evidence/reason for the existence of a God. If they have evidence that there is a God, then they don't have faith, right?

Brian

[ February 08, 2002: Message edited by: Brian63 ]</p>

Brian63

I tried to edit my above post a second time, but it wouldn't display the entire post in the window. WTH?? I typed in a wrong word somewhere in there, but hopefully my point is understandable anyway.

Brian

HelenM

hi Brian

This is an interesting thread...about your technical questions; I've found that posts with quotes in don't come up complete in the 'reply' box. You have to cut and paste them. But you ought to get the whole thing if you choose 'edit' your own post, not 'quote it back'.

Anyway, about faith: in a sense there is little we can be sure about so we all exercise some faith in doing basic daily things like getting in our car to drive somewhere (we assume it won't explode while we're in it). We don't know; we assess the evidence and we hope the statistics don't go against us and we ended up with the only exploding car that the car company made recently. Some evidence is very subjective and hard to explain - such as the 'personal experience' you cited.

So, what convinces one person won't necessarily convince another.

Also it's more comfortable to continue believing something than to change beliefs. So it would take a lot to convince someone to change their beliefs. So, once they have got to the point of finally changing, they will probably 'land on the other side' already with quite a bit of 'evidence' - as it were. Or maybe they won't change because the discomfort of changing outweighs the weight of new evidence. In that case you could definitely say someone is believing something, somewhat irrationally.

But I don't think you could find a person who would say "I believe in spite of their being more evidence against than for my beliefs". Theists will say it takes some faith to believe in God - especially at times. But they won't agree that there's more evidence against God than for God - imo.

love
Helen

[ February 07, 2002: Message edited by: HelenSL ]</p>