Aethari

For those of you who remember me, (Makaio), my mother always likes to get on my case about issues of religion. This being said, she has recently been very into the whole ‘faith’ thing, and will jump on the opportunity to comment on any statement that uses the word ‘faith’. So in an attempt to silence her, I wrote the following argument, which I believe shows that faith, in a strict philosophical sense, can never equate to justified belief. All comments are welcome, I’m looking for input:

Definition: Faith: Faith does not rest upon empirical knowledge or deduction/induction from this knowledge. Faith constitutes a purely mental knowledge claim that is devoid of reference to the material world. In one sense, faith is to catch a glimpse of the metaphysical world that is postulated by dualism.

I think the definition is pretty straightforward, and would be agreeable to pretty much any theist. People don’t have faith because they see something, or are told something by an authority. Rather, it is the sort of inner feeling that one might expect if dualism was in fact true. In sort, faith is a knowledge claim based upon metaphysical perception, not empirical perception. I’m fairly confident this isn’t a strawman, I couldn’t conceive a better general definition than this. Yes, this whole definition is granting that faith isn’t some sort of cult-propagated nonsense term to keep people believing. It is also granting that dualism is true. But if it’s possible to show that faith is untenable even under favorable assumptions, then I think it would be an argument better received than one that undercuts basic assumptions such as dualism, idealism, etc.

Major Premise: Faith is fallible.

This seems obvious, since so many groups have faith in explicitly contradictory ideas. They cannot all be right. It does not do to claim that all the other groups do not really have faith, because, by definition, the faith of others has just as much support as one’s own.

We are now led into a hornet’s nest of problems. By definition, faith isn’t based upon empirical reasons, so there is no way of verifying which faith might be correct. We obviously can’t have faith in faith, as this would be entirely circular. So now, it seems that there is no way of ever being justified in believing one’s own faith over another person’s faith. If both faiths lack empirical or rational support, and both are equally likely to be wrong, there is no justification in believing that one is right, and one wrong. These same lines of argument apply to all of the various counterarguments: “The other religions are deceived by the Devil”, “The other religions don’t have *real* faith”, etc.

We see that it is never justified to believe in a proposition on faith, because a multitude of equally justified faith propositions oppose our own. But this might lead one to believe that we can have faith in matters for which all people are agreed. That is, one might say “Everyone who has faith believes in God, and since there is no contradictory faith claim, it is reasonable to believe in God on faith.” But here, there is a further difficulty. I might say, “I have faith there is no God.” Of course, I would be lying, because I really don’t have faith in the first place. This is the real kicker, however; in matters of faith, there is no way of determining what is an outright falsehood, from what is the truth. Simply put, there exists no reason to believe the traditional Christian assertion “God exists.” over an admittedly falsified faith claim “God does not exist.” One could create faith statements against any faith claim, and the believer is left between two equally justified and wholly contradictory statements.

“I have faith Jesus is the Son of God."
“But I have faith that he is not.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove yours.”
“But I know you’re lying about this faith thing.”
“Nope, I’m not, I swear. So why should we believe your faith over mine? There certainly isn’t proof either way.”
“There isn’t a reason, but I know you’re just lying about this.”
“Even if I was, does it say anything about the reasonableness of your belief when you can’t give a reason to make your claim more substantiated than an off-the-cuff falsehood?”


So, in conclusion, my assertion is this: it is never justified to base a belief on faith. Since the positive and negative faith claims on any belief X are necessarily of equal justification, any attempt at justifying a belief on faith amounts to “I’ll believe this because I want to, and for no other reasons.” Faith can never lead to truth, because truth can never be distinguished from falsehood. In matters to which theists claim they have faith, they can never be better off than agnostic, because there is simply no way of making progress against both genuine and fabricated opposition.

Thoughts? Comments? Bitter complaints? Flames?

-Aethari

Marz Blak

FWIW, your argument seems sound to me.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

That's a long way to say it, but essentially, you're correct.

I prefer the shorter:

1. 'Faith' is 'belief without evidence.

2. To be rational, beliefs must be based on evidence.

3. Faith is thus irrational.

(Now, at this point, those who advocate faith-based beliefs have two options: they can either agree that faith is not rational, but is in fact better than reason; or they can claim that faith is rational, and that your definition of faith as 'belief without evidence' is incorrect.)

Nonetheless, 'faith' is exactly what I don't have, don't want, and do not need.

Keith.

Jonesy

"Faith" is unfortunately another meaning for "the lack of knowledge". People "believe" (that is "have faith") in something, because they have no "proper account" of what has actually occurred or what is occurring presently. For example, people "have faith" in "a God" because they don't "know" precisely all about God's existence etc. - since the amount of information available is too confusingly large to organize and understand properly so that people can "know" - they don't bother and remain "believers", not being ENTIRELY certain of these things. Please read this intriguing account if you want to see a good try at bringing all the multitude of information into a flowing account (of what "may") be happening in the universe. And since only the author "went there", I guess anyone saying "I know" after reading this or anything similar, will still be really "believing" or "having faith that they know". It's all personal and looking for generalised accounts of reality for everyone to agree to is impossible - people are different and have different opinions.

<a href="http://www.thiaoouba.com/ebook.htm" target="_blank">www.thiaoouba.com/ebook.htm</a>

Can anyone find a better, even if book is sci-fi, (although ultimately even that cannot be proven) account/flowing collection of information about "mysteries", "god", "aliens", etc...? I would be interested to read them, as sometimes it's worth checking out people's stories so we can judge if we think it's just a story or that perhaps it really happened.

Keep searching, because only you can increase your own understanding. No one else.

seanie

At it again eh Jonesy?

I thought you'd agreed not to promote your cult.

Aethari

Keith-

While that came to mind, I intentionally overlooked that argument because I don't think any intellectually competant theist would say faith is 'believing without reasons'. As I indicated in my argument, I think a more realistic and approachable view is that faith is believing for non-empirical or metaphysical reasons. No-one is full possesion of their mental faculties is going to assert that they believe in faith, then accept both of your two premises. They will either object to the definition of faith in such a sense, as I did, or deny premise 2, which I would also do if this were a thread on another topic

Jonesy-

That link looks just a mite too cultist for my tastes...thanks anyways

-Aethari

GeoTheo

I kind of take the Cartesian view that impiricism is unreliable because the whole Universe is composed of thought. So in that sense impiricism is no more reliable than faith.

Aethari

So then we're left with no knowledge at all? <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> What does "the entire universe is composed of thought" mean, in any event?

-Aethari

Starboy

Apparently to Christians the entire universe is the thought of god. They are a superstitious lot.

Starboy

Bible Humper

Hello Jonesey,

Since when? Most believers think they know all about the Great Magic Sky-Juju, all the real lore can be found in their holy book.

Haha, I love when believers try to convince me that "belief" and "faith" are the same thing. I believe that I'm sitting in front of a computer right now, don't I? haha

I saw that! Thought you could pull a fast one, didn't ya?

Don't know "all about" God's existence, eh?

Another source of endless amusement, arguments that begin with the presupposition that Yahweh exists, and then miraculously come to a conclusion that......wait for it.......Yahweh exists.