The Admiral

Faith is a word coined to describe belief unsupported by knowlege. A friend whom I love dearly has a sign on her kitchen wall. It says, "when you have lost faith, you have lost everything". I pointed out to her that when you have lost faith you have lost nothing. You have gained knowlege and therefore no longer need faith. Loss of faith is a net gain.
She is still my friend.

The Admiral

Kent Stevens

I have looked at some of my basic ideas that have been examined and then accepted where appropriate. These basic ideas include the idea of reasoning and the law of non-contradiction. Another basic idea would be that people should not greatly harm others. But I find these basic ideas in opposition to the idea of religious faith.

First of all religious faith seems to be false. It is conflict with the law of non-contradiction as religious faith suggests that we believe things that we have no evidence for. That we believe things to be true that we know are not true. Religious faith could have us believe anything.

Secondly, religious faith appears to be immoral. This is because upon getting us to believe anything it can then get us to do anything. It excuses things like the all merciful God killing and torturing his son. It excuses people in the old testament of going around raping, looting , and pillaging. It helps motivate people to go around killing infidel. Presumably religious faith also encouraged the terrorists to commit mass murder and suicide on September 11. Any good things about faith cannot make up for the suspension of normal moral concepts.

Given that religious faith is bad then it not good to use this term. We might say that we have basic ideas, conviction, or basic morality but should not use the concept of religious faith. I have change my mind on what religious faith is like and have taken it from a neutral category to a negative category.

We have the necessity of having some basic ideas. That does not mean that these ideas are not justified and that we might not change some of them. It does not mean that we accept any old idea. This would be false and immoral.

Some of these ideas like the use of argument could be impossible to do without. Certain ideas that people should not murder seem obvious to most people.

emphryio

Thank you Clav for a post that was easily understandable to me.

I must admit I'm curious about what other way there is to "know a thing", other than through sensory, empirical, whatever data. But that would be for another thread.

To Kent:
I very much agree with you, but was curious.
What makes a faith, a religious faith?

It would seem to me, what is meant by religion is simply philosophic dogma. Wisdom/knowledge/a way of living that cannot be questioned.

But isn't faith a thing that can't be questioned? Therefore religious faith would mean not questioning knowledge which is not allowed to be questioned?

When you say religious faith, there is the assumption that there must be some other kind of faith. Some non-religious faith.

Personally, unless the definition of faith is very broad to the point of causing confusion, (For instance calling believing in your own sanity faith), I think that ALL faith IS religious.

If believing in your sanity can also be considered a question of faith, then the English language has some problems that need to be addressed.

owleye

Kent...

"It is not usually good practice to justify something by saying it is self-evident..."

I disagree. I think it makes perfect sense to use self-evidence as a justification of X if I believe X to be self-evident (with emphasis on the 'self' part of this). It is done all the time. To give but one example, W.D. Ross made use of it when he pointed out that it is self-evident that making a promise entails the obligation to keep it. Now, let me consider your examples.

"I consider it self-evident that god exists."
"I consider it self-evident that communism is right."

In order to convince yourself that these are self-evident, I would anticipate that you would have to require that they be self-evident to all who understand them in the way you do. Should you find that others legitimately disagree with them I believe you may find it necessary to concede that they are not self-evident. To be self-evident implies that the concept (i.e., of god's existence, or of the rightness of communism) contains everything already in it sufficient to warrant it being considered evidence for its being true. It is not just evident, but self-evident.

Obviously not everything falls -- indeed, very few things fall -- into the category of being self-evident. Moreover, justification is ordinarily not considered to be of signficance unless some assertion (or denial) is being made and (in most cases) we don't justify them unless we are questioned by others. I believe it is reasonable to assume that claims made by folks on this forum are subject to being questioned and so it behooves us, when we make claims, to justify them.

With respect to such things as justifying theft, we expect that we will be bucking the norm, since theft is, more or less, defined as something wrong. Thus, in our justification, we would have to consider theft in such a way that it is not wrong under some circumstances, or if we wanted to universalize the justification farther, we might have to figure out a way to define it without it entailing anything wrong, say for example, within a society in which everything is shared, in which case 'theft' is reduced to a kind of 'sharing'.

Fell

Kent Stevens

I used the term religious faith to differentiate between these two slightly different types of faith that usually comes up in these postings about faith. Some religious person will say "ah but you have to believe in something, you have to have faith in something. So why don't you take our teachings as the thing that you have faith in."

I agree that you have to believe in some things. I believe in certain scientific ideas and I accept reason as a basic idea common to virtually everyone. Sometimes faith is used to mean belief, or the acceptance of certain ideas.

Belief in something is different than faith as it is normally used though. I do not have faith in science as this would mean belief in it without any justification. This would mean that I would be trapped to certain ideas no matter what the evidence to the contrary might be.

I have used the term religious faith to differentiate between belief and faith. However, this was used only because faith was used ambigously sometimes in these postings. Outside of these postings I would think directly that faith is false and that faith is immoral. I would drop the unnecessary prefix.

In terms of self-evident truths, perhaps Jefferson could have made life easier if he had just used the term obvious truths. Alternatively, undeniable truths expresses a similar idea. Here, sometimes a judge might say the term societal norms.

Some statements like "pigs might fly" is neither obvious nor self-evident. Other statements like "I exist" are obvious and self-evident. I agree with you that we can use the term self-evident but only rarely. Something that is obvious to people in your society may not be obvious to someone from another society.

I personally feel uncomfortable justifying something by saying it is obvious to most people even if it was. I would not say that you should pursue happiness because it is self-evident. If I say that you should pursue happiness because it is morally good that you do so, then I feel like I am doing some reasoning.

emphryio

I agree totally that, "Faith is Immoral".
Actually at one time I went so far as to slap a bumpersticker on my car that said exactly that.

(Although I later took it off because it wasn't worth the people yelling obscenities at my wife and me. In other words, they were effective in censoring me.)

DMB

I'm interested in the examples of Euclidean geometry being true and 2+2=4 being true.

Pure maths is extremely abstract and the only claims it makes about statements is that they can be logically deduced from the premises. Everything also depends on the definitions of the elements referred to. What do you mean by a line, a point, parallel, 2 or 4, etc.? They are all abstractions that you cannot find in the real physical world.

To the ancient Greek mathematicians their axioms did seem to be self-evident, but in fact when later mathematicians started asking what would happen if you varied the axioms, non-Euclidean geometry was developed and Euclidean geometry lost its supposed truth.

I would point out that it is perfectly possible for 2+2=1 if 1 and 2 are elements of the finite field J3 rather than the infinite field of real numbers.

These abstract constructions are surely qualitatively different from "facts" about the physical world such as the existence of Mt Everest or whether or not the Wright brothers were the first flyers of aeroplanes. These are potentially falsifiable. If they are important enough to you it is possible to go and see whether the first one is there or not and as for the second, it is possible to do intensive research which has at least the possibility of coming up with a different answer. I don't see that you have to have faith in these "facts". All you need is to assess probablities and take a provisional position on their truth while remaining open to revising your views in the light of more convincing evidence.

Laurentius

Resuming:

(a) I KNOW THAT [p].
(b) I BELIEVE THAT [p].
(c) I BELIEVE IN THE FACT THAT [p].

In the case of (c) we deal with a restricted meaning of faith. Faith refers here to that non-critical adherence, largely emotional, to a theory or notion. This faith represents the opposite of reason.

In the case of (b) we deal with a broad meaning of faith. This faith refers to opinions, estimations, assessment, options that do not ground on sufficient knowledge and facts - they tend to rely on intuition. Such faith is indeed necessary since Man constantly has to perform evaluations and estimations, which have to be carefully processed for the right solutions to be adopted. All this under permanent circumstances of chronic uncertainty. Man's rational and scientific capabilities are impressive, but limited. This is the reason why alternative methods and means are seeked for, and these alternatives often prove to be mainly intuitive.

In the case of (a) we deal with a reaction meant to protect intellectual assets against the destructive effects provoked by the high uncertainty that necessarily arises when theories are questioned. Hence, every field of knowledge assigns any theory more value and certainty than it should reasonably bear. By doing so, people find these theories, and knowledge in general, less vulnerable to the eroding power of uncertainty. Only in this way knowledge can be confidently put in practice and theory can contribute to the progress of mankind.

That is, indeed, you've got to have faith.

A3

Hi Kent,
There was a call for a definition of the word ‘faith’ because there would be different kinds of faith.
In general I would say, based on what I’ve read in Swedenborg’s writings and what some have written in this thread, there are different levels of faith, religious or not. He writes:

Spiritual faith is nothing else than an acknowledgment that something is so because it is true; for one who is in real faith thinks and says, "This is true, and therefore I believe it." For faith is of truth, and truth is of faith. If such a person does not see the truth of a thing, he says, "I do not know whether this is true, and therefore as yet I do not believe it. How can I believe what I do not intellectually comprehend? Perhaps it is false."
Truth and faith are the same word in Hebrew are they not?

Blind faith, however, is an acknowledgment that something is true because someone said so, without us (and probably them) understanding it.

There are people that don’t believe anyone went to the moon, others believe the earth is flat. In the morning I don’t need faith to get up, I need the money. In every day living we seem more in need of a certain confidence or hope but should always use good judgment. This judgment seems mostly based on experience and common sense so it should improve with age. To have faith in or trust what we read in the newspapers or the internet seems very foolhardy and the same applies to what politicians say. To do our shopping in a well established store shows common sense.
If we get the same information about the Himalaya from two different sources our experience tell us it is true. Isn’t that also how the justice system works?
The only thing any human being can do in determining if something is true is to examen it in freedom and according to reason and get on with life. This should function at home, school, work as well as in church.
Regards
A3

owleye

Kent....

If Jefferson had used the term 'obvious' it would not have made life easier. Indeed, I'm not sure what difficulty he is in because of his use of 'self-evident'. What do you have in mind? In any case, 'obvious' and 'evident' are probably synonyms. Note that 'clear' is probably also a synonym, though Descartes rather made much of it.

On the other hand, 'undeniable' may serve the same purpose that 'self-evident' does though I'm thinking that being 'undeniable' is already too general and for that reason less convincing, unless, that is, it bears on what is sometimes called an analytic judgement, such as 'All batchlors are unmarried'. Aristotle would have used the term 'apodictic certainty' whose meaning is what we might call, 'beyond doubt' (or possibly, 'beyond the need for proof'.) Kant made use of apodictic certainty when a judgement was a priori, having as its main properties that it is absolutely necessary or strictly universal in its application (though I believe even here we need to constrain this to whatever it is that it can possibly apply to, not necessarily to everything logically possible).

"Here, sometimes a judge might say the term societal norms."

I assume you mean here, in the context of Jefferson's self-evident truths, that it would be quite acceptable in other societies that some of those who are bound by this culture live at the expense of the death of others, or that some of them are free to be masters, while others are not free and should be enslaved, or that some of us have the opportunity to pursue happiness while others are not. Note that, in a Jeffersonian society, given these "inalienable rights," it implies that no policy, rule, or law, can be enacted that abridge these rights without "due process" and "strict scrutiny." BTW, the US constitution is written in such a way that these inalienable rights belong to all persons, not just those who happen to be citizens of the U.S. or members of that society.

I do agree, of course, that cultural and religious differences do exist. Jefferson is not the last word on truth and justice. However, unless you believe that no common ground can be found among the variety of real values throughout human existence, I should imagine we should keep trying to formulate such inalienability. I'm aware, of course, that the Chinese do not have the same concept as the West does when it uses the term 'right'. This term is generally understood to mean 'power'. Thus, whereas we can express some alarm that 'might makes right', in China, this is rather more of an analytic truth. Notwithstanding this, I am in general agreement with Donald Davidson that 'conceptual schemes' though they play a significant role in our judgements, are not strictly untranslatable, at least potentially.

"I would not say that you should pursue happiness because it is self-evident. If I say that you should pursue happiness because it is morally good that you do so, then I feel like I am doing some reasoning."

Jefferson's use of self-evident was a justification for the inalienable truths, including pursuit of happiness. It deals with rights, which, in this context, are such as to constrain government. It says nothing, here, about any moral obligation to pursue happiness. The idea is that we are not entitled to prevent persons from pursuing happiness. One might also conclude that pursuing happiness is morally permissible, according to Jefferson, but not morally obligatory.

owleye